LAKE PLACID, N.Y.—Meet the Brix Balancer.

Ever had to add permeate to a barrel of syrup because your brix was too high?

Last season researchers at Cornell's Uihlein Maple Research Center in Lake Placid, N.Y. had an opportunity to demo a Brix Equalizer by Dominion and Grimm.

The innovative unit has a digital in-line brix meter that measures the finished brix of syrup after being drawn-off and filtered, but before being packed into a barrel.

A digital touch panel screen allows the user to set the desired brix level and if the unit reads a brix higher than the set point, it will inject a little permeate water from a small tank on the machine.

Syrup is re-circulated through the unit from an insulated mixing tank that has a rotating paddle specially designed to homogenize the syrup to ensure a consistent brix through the entire batch.

Once the desired brix level is reached the unit allows a user to pump directly from the unit into a barrel.

After demo-ing the balancing unit, the crew at the Uihlein Forest found that using the equalizer as part of our production made sugaring easier.

"We do utilize an automated draw-off on our evaporator and, as every sugarmaker should, we pay close attention to ensure we have consistent brix to prevent spoilage or crystallization in the bottle," said Uhlein director Adam Wild.

"Knowing the equalizer could bring the brix back down, having the balancing unit allowed us to relax a little, especially if the brix spiked during evaporator startup," he said.

However, adding too much permeate water will lower the temperature of the syrup, Wild said.

The main advantage to the brix equalizer is its ability to ensure you are within the regulated brix parameters for finished syrup which avoids pricing penalties and allows an increase in syrup production.

By trimming down the brix, Uihlein staffers were adding a half-gallon or more of permeate per 40 gallon barrel. Wild said he was able to make an additional barrel of syrup by keeping the brix lower than he normally would through his traditional production method.

The equalizing unit allows the user to set margin of error parameters above and below the desired brix set point.

"When we put the machine to the test with very high brix, the unit did not always bring the brix down to the set point when we had tight parameters," Wild said. "It still brought the brix to within a couple tenths of our set point which was acceptable and better than we could achieve manually."

It is not suggested to draw off syrup with too high of brix anyway as it requires a lot of permeate which will lower the temperature, Wild said.

The brix equalizer is a great tool for large operations to ensure consistent brix within their syrup and can even allow an increase in production, Wild said.