Flew too close to the Sun

Another boil, another result. Today I got the most dreaded (by me anyway) result of a maple boil:  the flip off.

The still has a bi-metal breaker that trips when the temperature goes above 212F.  When maple syrup is "done" the temperature is roughly 7 degrees higher than the boiling point of water.

I like to avoid a breaker trip for a couple of reasons:

1) although I have no data I do remember bi-metal breaker lore: they only have X numbers of trips in them before they become unreliable.  So to prevent a trip I try to stop the boil early, usually when there is just under 8 oz of liquid left inside.

2) maple syrup that has gone above the magic 66% threshold becomes thicker (which is fine) but also tends to crystalize easily and often has more sugar sand residue in suspension.  IOW it doesn't keep as well.

The input sap was 3.7% just like yesterday but the flip-off happened about 11 minutes early.  There was about 5 oz of 74.5% syrup (aka maple honey) resulting:

It's better to have "almost syrup" and either use it as is or boil it down later using temperature to know the concentration.

Live and learn.  Last year I was flying blind since I didn't have the sap sugar data.  Sometimes the syrup was watery, sometimes I got maple honey and a flip off.  Hopefully I can dial things in better, soon.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm