So yesterday we pressed the sorghum stocks at a farmer's place about 10 miles down the road. We got home and started cooking the sorghum juice to reduce it to syrup.
We didn't get a whole lot of juice, about 8-10 gallons. This should yield about 1 gallon of syrup. Next year we will space the sorghum better and give it more manure.
We cooked a few gallons yesterday and figured out when to stop cooking. One batch we had to cook again because we took it out too soon.
This morning I am cooking the rest. It is a 3-4 hour process to cook a batch. We don't have an evaporator, so we are cooking it in batches on the stove. If it was a little cooler I might cook it outside.
We had a little sorghum to sweeten our cream of wheat at breakfast. Delicious!
Oremus pro invicem!
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2 comments:
Ok so how do you know when enough is enough cooking?
Did you use a stone press and mule to press the cane?
How about a little fermentation followed by distilaion?
We read alot, especially from the KY extension on cooking it. If you don't have a sugar refractor or syrup hydrometer (we don't), you can tell by temperature 226-230 F.
It really changes thickness and color right around 220 F.
A farmer up the road had a press driven by a basic small engine, geared down. He also has one set up to be run by a mule, but only uses this on his 'field day'.
Maybe next time, when we get more we can try some fermentation ....
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