Prior to running this years syrup (2014) I figured I would run what I had left over of last years (2013) syrup though Daryl Sheets Filter Press. I probably had a little more than a gallon of syrup that I had real issues filtering last year. Some of the frustration I now know was finishing the syrup to heavy, which made it harder to run through the gravity filters and I am sure I may have pushed some of the sugar sand through. This made for an unsightly layer of sugar sand in the bottom of my 8 oz. and 12 oz. glass bottles. So these bottles sat for a year and we would use them as we needed more syrup. This unsightly product prompted me to get a filter press. Probably overkill for our small scale operation but if I am going to do something I want to do it right.
The first steps involved in setting up the press can be found in my previous post about The Dry Run with Daryl’s Press. So, after opening all the old small bottles of syrup and dumping them with all the settled sugar sand into a double boiler, I began re-heating the syrup up to 185F so I could run the syrup though the maple syrup filter press made by Daryl Sheets. I used three cake plates as you can see below and cycled the heated syrup with diatomaceous earth (DE) through the press and filled up some glass quarts.
Below I removed the end waffle plate from the filter bank. The filter papers stayed on after removing the waffle on the end and I was surprised to see what looked like some brown syrup or sediment trapped in the bottom left corner of the cake plate. To describe the process of what happens simply. Hot syrup with DE is allowed to flow freely into the cake plate via the hole on the bottom right. The DE collects on the surface of the filter paper inside the cake plate and the syrup pushes through the DE and filter paper to the waffle plate where filtered syrup leaves the waffle plate via the holes that you can see in the bottom left of the waffle plate in the left image. The filtered syrup than travels out of the bank via the hole on the bottom left of the filter bank.
Removal of the last cake plate from the press, it came off easily with filter papers on both side of the cake plate stuck on as you see below.
After setting the cake plate on a real dinner plate, it was time to reveal what was behind the filter paper. There was a layer about 1/8” thick of DE on the inside of the cake plate, with the brown sediment concentrated down at the outlet of where the syrup would pass from the cake plate to the waffle plate to leave the press.
More of the same as I removed each plate. Each side of the filter paper had a nice cake of DE that was about 1/8” in thickness.
The final result was 5+ quarts of crystal clear syrup. I had to keep checking this batch up to the light for at least a week because I could hardly believe the clarity. I know a lot of people have success with gravity filtering, and the press is not cheap, but in my mind Daryl’s filter press is worth every penny, based on the results that I observed.
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