Vol. LV. No. 2402. 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 8, 1896. 
$1.00 PER YEAR. 
STEAM SUGAR MAKING IN OHIO. 
THE NEW WAY OF EVAPORATING SAP. 
Saves Fuel, Time, Labor and Water. 
The most advanced step yet taken in the reduction 
of the sap of the maple tree to syrup and sugar, is by 
the use of steam. There is scarcely a farm in Geauga 
County, the best maple sugar producing county in the 
world, but has its sugar camp, and in nearly all of 
them, the most approved of modern appliances are 
used. Only a few producers, however, have “turned 
on the steam ” to aid them, but enough have tried it to 
carry it out of the experimental stage, and prove be¬ 
yond a venture that it is the most rapid and econom¬ 
ical method yet tried. 
An opportunity occurred recently for me to inspect 
one of the most complete and perfectly arranged 
steam sugar plants to be found in this county, where 
every farmer is a 
sugarmaker. Mr. 
K. W. Henry of 
Bainbridge, is 
owner of the plant 
and also of a fine 
farm that is con¬ 
ducted on the 
same advanced 
ideas of manage¬ 
ment and cultiva¬ 
tion that he car¬ 
ries into his sugar¬ 
making processes. 
In response t o 
Some inquiries 
about making 
sugar by steam, 
Mr. Henry said: 
“I have made 
sugar for nearly 
40 years, and dur¬ 
ing that time have 
passed through 
nearly all the suc¬ 
cessive steps that 
have been taken 
in the manufact¬ 
ure of maple syrup 
and sugar. I have 
a camp of 1,200 
thrifty, vigorous 
trees, and until I 
got my present 
apparatus for boil¬ 
ing, I felt, all the 
time, as though I 
were wasting 
much valuable 
time and fuel. 
Three years ago, 
feeling certain, from a careful investigation, that 
steam was the most successful servant to employ, I 
made the change from the common pans and heater 
that I was then using, to the boiler and pans necessary 
for the using of steam. This change involved an out¬ 
lay of just about $200. I purchased a boiler 44 inches 
by 16 feet—called a forty-horse power. I built up one 
of my old pans so that it had a depth of 18 inches. 
My pans are now four feet in width by 16 feet in 
length, and this gives me a boiling surface of 64 
square feet. The steam passes directly from the 
boiler through common steam pipes to the front end 
of the pans (Fig. 32), and from there wends its serpen¬ 
tine course through many coils along the bottom of 
the pans to the rear end, where just before it ex¬ 
hausts, it rises to a beater, in which all the cold sap 
is heated previous to its being admitted into the boil¬ 
ing pans, thus saving considerable heat,” 
“What steam pressure is necessary to do your 
work ? ” I asked. 
“ I keep the pressure at about 60 pounds, and begin 
boiling when it is 40 pounds. In just three minutes 
from the time steam is turned on, the sap is boiling. 
It immediately rises in a clear, sparkling foam to the 
top of the pans, and stays like that constantly—a 
bubbling, seething mass, almost as white as the foam 
on a pail of milk.” 
Rapidity of evaporation is the point of all points to 
be reached, where it can be done without too great an 
outlay of fuel. It is a matter of considerable diffi¬ 
culty to ascertain accurately just how many barrels 
per hour one is boiling away with the fire arch and 
its pans or evaporator, after all is well heated up and 
boiling well. With this steam heat, where the boil¬ 
ing point remains so regular and constant, I thought 
that this would not be a difficult matter to find out. 
SUGAR MAKING BY STEAM ! A MODERN SUGAR CAMP IN OHIO. Fig. 32. 
Upon this point of rapid evaporation Mr. Henry said : 
“To make the matter clear by comparison, let me 
tell you what a gentleman told me about his new 
evaporator. He came from quite a distance to see me 
boil by steam. He said that he was using a new 5 x 20 
foot evaporator, and could boil away only five barrels 
per hour, counting the time from starting the fire, to 
the finishing up—both very slow processes with an 
evaporator. I can, with less than two-thirds of the 
boiling surface that this gentleman has, boil away 
eight barrels per hour, including both start and 
finish, which is not so slow a process, and while 
everything is booming along, I can evaporate 10 bar¬ 
rels per hour. This I have done many times in the 
presence of witnesses, as I have a great many visitors 
at my camp.” 
How the Work Is Done. —“ I keep two men with 
two teams gathering sap every day we boil, and the 
difficulty that I always experienced when using my 
arch and pans. I 6nd exactly reversed now. Then it 
was always a matter of great difficulty to boil away 
the sap fast enough to keep the gatherers from over¬ 
flowing the receiving tanks. Now I have to wait at 
the start till a good and sufficient supply is assured, 
before I venture to turn on the steam. Often when 
there is only a small amount of sap in the buckets, 
and the work of gathering is necessarily slow, I do 
not start the fire under the boiler till after dinner ; 
then I can “ boom” it along to a finish without stop¬ 
ping to wait for the sap to come in. 
“One great advantage about this method, is that 
there is no more night work about my sugar camp. I 
am willing, however, to forego all the poetry and 
romance connected with that part of sugar making, 
and in place of it take a good night’s rest. I gather 
as much as 80 barrels a day when there is a good run 
of sap, and we 
never have to 
work at the camp 
any later than 
8 or 9 o’clock in 
the evening to 
have that amount 
of sap all reduced 
to nearly as many 
gallons of the 
most delicious 
compound ever 
distilled from 
Nature’s sources. 
“ We syrup oft' 
at frequent in¬ 
tervals during the 
day, usually tak¬ 
ing oft about two 
large pailfuls at a 
time. Our buckets 
are all fitted with 
covers, so that 
nothing but sap 
gets into them— 
not even a ray of 
sunlight is admit¬ 
ted to begin the 
chemical process 
of souring. The 
buckets are all 
scalded at the 
opening of the sea¬ 
son, and thorough¬ 
ly washed at the 
tree once or twice 
during the sea¬ 
son. This all oper¬ 
ates to make a 
finer grade of 
sugar and syrup, 
and of better quality also. On this point of quality 
and clearness, Dr. W. I. Chamberlain of the Ohio 
Farmer remarked while sampling some, ‘You would 
better not try to make it any whiter, as the public 
might suspect that its purity was due to granulated 
sugar.’ 
“ The essential points to be observed in the manu¬ 
facture of a fine, white quality of syrup and sugar, 
are frequent gathering, careful straining, and rapid 
evaporation. When these points are carefully ob¬ 
served, any good sugarmaker can mane a quality of 
syrup as clear as honey, but having a tine, rich, golden 
tint. When made like that, it is the finest tasting 
sweet that Mother Nature ever mixed.” 
The Advantage of the Steam Method. —“If the 
making of sugar by steam is so superior to all other 
methods, why do not more farmers use it ? ” 1 asked. 
“ In the first place, nearly every farmer is already 
