[Homestead] was sorghum, now sweeteners
SJC
indexer at localnet.com
Sat Nov 1 13:40:16 EDT 2008
Don Bowen wrote:
> The processes for making cane sugar is very similar to Sorghum Molasses
> except you go beyond the molasses stage. You could make sugar from Sorghum
> molasses. Similar process for beet sugar.
>
> Let's see:
> Honey. Easy to get, just take the caps off the comb and drain.
> Maple Syrup. Collect sap in the spring then boil off the water.
> Other trees can also yield a sweet sap.
> Sorghum Molasses. Grow Sorghum, cut the whole stalk, squeeze out the
> juices, boil off the water.
> Cane sugar. Same as Sorghum except the molasses is taken a few more steps.
> Beet sugar. Grow sugar beets, harvest roots, mash, squeeze, boil off water,
> continue as cane sugar.
>
> Others?
>
Several tree saps are good, process same as maple. Here we tap birches
(my favorite, as I'm not that fond of maple syrup, plus that's a cash
crop around here, better to sell that one). When I was still in IN we
used hickory, another favorite, but hickories are few and far between
here, not a good resource. Some folks use butternut or black walnut,
also not favorites of mine, but a lot of folks like it. I'd not do
anything to jeopardize a black walnut unless for some reason that tree
not good for the wood, anyhow). Basically, I'd say if you have an
abundance of some sort of tree, try a run one spring and see how it
goes. Warning: it takes a LOT of sap to get syrup (maple 40 gal to get
a gal of grade A syrup, birch almost double that, others vary a lot, and
they all will vary some year-to-year). Warning #2: Do not try to boil
down sap in the house unless you are doing a tiny trial run. You will
be scrubbing sticky off walls, chair rungs, light fixtures, window
frames, etc, for a year if you make a batch in the house!
Not a sweetening syrup per se, but when I was a kid my uncle always
boiled down some cherry sap to syrup stage to be used as a cough syrup.
And if that didn't cure ya, ya got the pine sap treatment, so we always
tried hard to stop with the cherry.....
The other homestead-produced sweetener I use is boiled down fruit
juices. I usually steam fruits for the juice before going any farther,
that juice I sometimes can for using as juice, but I always boil some
down to use as syrup. The berries make especially good pancake syrups.
Cherry and apple I usually boil down quite a bit of the juice for
syrup. I don't necessarily boil it all the way down until it's any
particular density, instead I boil it down until it's somewhere near
right and can it. Then when I go to use it, if it's not sweet enough, I
either adjust recipe to fit it or boil it down a bit more. This year I
put back 26 quarts and 14 pints of finished apple syrup, and that will
pretty much hold me for a year, I hope! Sweet, soft apples that aren't
good for much else are good for this use, then feed pulp to
hogs/goats/whatever. Mostly I use the apple syrup for making
cookies.....I'm part of a group that meets every military transport
plane in and out of Bangor International Airport and provides the
guys/gals with cookies, drinks, thanks, and good wishes, so seem to be
baking more cookies now than I ever did when I had kids at home!
SusanJane, in Maine
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