Home-produced sugary syrups

[Atash Hagmahani]

Sugar prices have more than doubled in a year. I think they had already run up a bit last year, so they're up handily.

OzarkLady brought up growing Sorghum and Sugar Beet.

I've been wondering too, because anytime the price of something starts soaring due to supply issues, it gets my attention.

First Sorghum: I had read in a book that it is possible to "have your cake and eat it too" with Sorghum, that is, extract the sap from the stems AFTER harvesting the grain.

I brought that up on Homegrown Goodness, expressing my skepticism because it sounded too good to be true, and someone piped up that it is possible because the sugar levels are still high at ripe-grain time.

If it's true I suggest the cane should not be wasted if at all possible to put it to good use.

You can also feed Sorghum greens to livestock, BUT BEWARE: Sorghum responds to drought by producing something toxic--I think it was Prussic Acid. You can actually poison your livestock feeding them Sorghum that has been stressed. You need to know what you are doing. It's actually fairly common as a livestock feed and probably most farmers who use it know what they are doing.

Now I have never actually seen a Sorghum up-close. Only from a distance in fields. So I don't know how tough the stalks are, but from the scale of the plant I would guess fairly tough.

Sugar-beets, at least, should be easy to process using a juicer. Traditionally they're just sliced thin and boiled in water but it would make more sense to me to juice them and boil down the juice. Sugar beet juice is around 30% sugar so you already have quite a bit of reduction to do.

I have an old centrifuge-type juicer that works great on beets or carrots. Sugar beets should work just fine.

Some people have tried making beet syrup and have gotten nasty-tasting messes. Other people have tried it and said it was absolutely delicious. My guess is there are prospects for mistakes. One possible problem is non-sugar solids burning and turning acrid while boiling down the juice to reduce it.

But those solids are probably fairly valuable. I don't particularly WANT snowy white granulated sugar; I want something more rustic, that I suspect will not only have a more interesting flavor--like traditional Chinese sugar, or Indian Palm sugar--but will also contain minerals lacking in white sugar.

Might be a matter of experimentation to get it right. Might need to keep it to a simmering boil to keep from damaging the solids-possible including the sugar itself which you don't want to over-carmelize.

Getting it down to crystalline sugar is a messy process that I do not think is worth the effort. I suspect that trying to do it might be one of the sources of disasters--people are probably over-carmelizing the sugar.

[opsec]

Prussic Acid also has alternative uses that would be of interest to the survivalist (heh, heh). The chemically knowlegeable among us know what I mean, but are also savvy enough to not post specifics. 

[Dame]

I am going to speculate here that the white crystal sugars are done so for very long term storage reasons.  Even the bugs do not like it in this form.  Ants are the only thing I have every seen that like dry white sugar and they can be kept out with paper.

Sugar does not provide much "nutrition" but pure calories which are easy to eat and easy to keep have a lot going for them when working very hard.  It is also very valuable when using sugar in preserves such as fruit, pickles etc.

[Ozark Lady]

Bees collect sap.  They then reduce it by dehydrating it.  Think about it... they fan it, to drive out the moisture.

That said, what if you got your syrup, however you get it... juicer, apple cider press, or just chopping and boiling the plant, any how, reduce it by boiling it a bit.

Then, when it begins to thicken and starts wanting to stick on the pan...
what if you cooled it a bit, then spread it in your dehydrator like a fruit roll up?  Of course, with a moisture sheet, not the open holes! 

That was my plan anyhow to get it thicker than just runny syrup, and dehydrate it.  You could even build a solar dehydrator.  I am not interested in bleaching the "sugar" but I would like to reduce it so that it no longer will support molds.

I have also researched getting sugar out of rice... yep plain white rice can be boiled into a syrup.

And let's not forget the tree saps, not just maple, that make great syrups.

[darwinslair]

traditional sugar here is maple and popple sap boiled to the point that it is crystal at room temp.

<shrug> easy enough to do.

Tom

[Atash Hagmahani]

I love maple syrup, but it's thin enough to really take a lot of energy to reduce it.

We don't have sugar maples, but supposedly you can harvest the sap of our native Bigleaf Maples just the same. The other native maples are too small.

I've never had, but I've heard Birch syrup is really good. Thinner, though, and takes even more energy to reduce.

[darwinslair]

any maple works.

Yes, birch and popple work well too, but need twice as much sap.

Tom

[offdalip]

my wife and her two brothers used to make gallons and gallons of maple syrup when they were younger in the "sugar shack" they built on the farm in Vermont.

I still have the last gallon sitting in my fridge

[Ozark Lady]

I don't have maple or birch trees.  So, I will be totally dependant on growing my sweeteners, or harvesting sweet fruits, like elderberries, mulberries, grapes, blackberries, strawberries and my peaches and plums for sweeteners.  Now, if the bees would only show back up!  I grow plants for them, and last year, they just were a no-show.

[Atash Hagmahani]

Do you have mason bees? Bumble bees?

Mason bees unfortunately just have a short season, but they show up right in time for spring pollination. Bumblebees have a long season. Both bee types have higher resistance to sudden colony collapse than honeybees.

[Ozark Lady]

Pollintation went well last year.

Everywhere you looked you would see bumblebees and yellow jacket bees... just no honeybees, until really late in the season and then there were only 2 or 3 not the usual masses of honeybees.

[The Future]

I've grown sorghum but it didn''t do very well largely due to my neglect.  With that said, it self seeded and I saved the seed from that.  Might try it again at some point.  Sugar cane is much easier to grow.  I have plants a few years old that require to looking after at all.  Juicing it takes some effort so I just eat it instead.  I bought some sugar beet seed this year.  Will see how that goes.

[silverseeds]

  You might try to get some sorghums out of hotter regions future. they are very neglect resistant actually and many are perennial in warm regions... (although the more desirable ones have since been bred and selected elsewhere, those are still useful though)

[Ozark Lady]

Does your sugar cane set seeds?
If so, I would love to have some to experiment in getting a sweetner out of them.

According to many forecasters they are predicting that sugar will go to $32.00 per pound!
But bread would only be $24.00 per loaf.... sheesh.

With such dire forecasts, it just makes sense to start learning to meet our own needs now!

[Atash Hagmahani]

Tom and I are going to try our hand at Sugar Beets this year.

There are several problems with sugar beets. One is that they are low-growing plants that do not cover ground fast enough to beat the weeds. That's one reason that Monsanto tried to standardize the whole industry on roundup-ready(tm) beets, which when last I heard were in legal limbo.

Oh, and sugar beets are reputedly "a magnet for deer" and other herbivores. Fancy that. At least sugar can and sorghum are tough enough to deter pests, not like tender juicy beets. Mmmm--mmm.

Another problem is that to get crystalline sugar you have to do some processes that get very messy. We won't try to take it that far, but will just try to get syrup.

My understanding is that sugar-cane juice is a little easier to work with.

Ozark Lady, I think Sorghum would be an excellent bet for the Ozarks. In fact I'm counting on it; if we grow out enough to be useful I'll ask folks in the Ozarks to try it. Should be better adapted to the soils than corn is. Should be able to thrive on natural rainfall too.