I’m currently out of stock on all bur bourbon barrel aged syrup. Will be more soon. I ran out at my local retail outlet and had to take my ready to ship syrup to restock there. Tomorrow or Sunday I hope to get more bottled. I started today to set up to bottle but ran into a pump issue. Having been out for my new hip for so long, my diaphragm pump that moves all of my syrup from a barrel to the finisher, then to the filter press and finally to the bottler failed to pump. It’s powered by compressed air. The compressor worked fine, my thought now is that the long time since I used the diaphragm pump was long enough that the syrup residue in the pump has stuck the diaphragms or check valves shut or open. Tomorrow, I’ll take the pump apart to hopefully fix it. That pump has set idle as long as 6 weeks in the past, this time with my bad hip, then the new hip surgery it hs been idle for over 3 months. Apparently too long. Once I open it up and soak the parts in hot water it will hopefully work again. If new parts are needed I think I have a set of diaphragms and check valves if needed. If not I’ll need to order them. If aqll goes well, I’ll bottle either Tomorrow or Sunday. Once I get some bottled I’ll show inventory to ship in the web store.
Ouch, as I tried to pump regular syrup from a barrel into the finishing pan in order to bring it up to temperature for filtering, the pump failed. I then disassembled the pump and cleaned all components, reassembled it and tried again. It tried to pump but had a leak, took back apart, it seems the lower cross member on the air powered double diaphragm pump was leaking. The issue was that when new, it had no gasket, nor was it supposed to.. It’s simply 2 smoothe plastic surfaces mating together. I ordered some food grade silicone gasket material. It will arrive sometime Tuesday. I’ll go to the sugarhouse tomorrow and bring the pump home so when the silicone arrives I can assemble the pump then . Then hopefully when I put the pump back into service it will work on Wednesday and I can resume packing syrup. I’ll post an update when packing resumes.
The special sealant arrived today. I applied some to the part that had leaked and re-assembled it. Now I’ll try to put the pump back into service on Wednesday, giving it plenty of time to cure and then I’ll try to get the pump to work again. I looked up a new pump just in case, I paid $509 for this pump back about 10 yrs ago, the same pump is now $918.00 plus shipping.. Ouch. Unfortunately the pump is made in China, A domestic pump meeting the necessary specs is over $2000 now. Need to sell a lot of syrup to recover that expense!