# how do the amish get sugar?



## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

So I was looking at various things regarding cooking, and for now lets set aside "buy it in bulk!" lol! 

from some online browsing it looks like sugar needs a LOT of water to grow, which explains the tropical regions famous for producing it... but how did/do the Amish do it? especially in areas like Ohio, Penn, etc


----------



## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

sugar beets


----------



## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

Thanks Bobb, looks like I need to look at getting more seeds!

http://www.ehow.com/how_4516340_grow-sugar-beets.html


----------



## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

I'm interested in this too. Do a search on this forum for sugar beets and processing them. Apparently the processing makes quite a stink and the yield is low. I'm thinking that if you process lots at a time and you can feed the pulp residue to pigs or chickens then it might be something that could work.


----------



## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

None of my critters would eat the beets or pulp ... not even the chickens. 

Just so you know ...


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

to some extend sorgum molasses is substituted in when sugar is needed, as well as honey. But mostly right this minute the amish buy it at wal mart like we do. But historically they used less sugar and more molasses and honey.


----------



## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

*Andi said:


> None of my critters would eat the beets or pulp ... not even the chickens.
> 
> Just so you know ...


That's not encouraging news. I guess I better love the taste of beet pulp sandwiches


----------



## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

Here is one of the threads on beets ...

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f78/sugar-beets-14399/


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

Like the feller feeding his dogs garden scraps. His buddy says my dogs won't touch that stuff! Feller says mine wouldn't either, the first month. 

Wonder if you dried that pulp out and then ground it up fine what it might be good fer. Should still have some protiens and vitamins a little sparing use in human food soups and stuff and in grain mixes and mashes for the critters would still see it used and benefitted from. Maybe?


----------



## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

This is likely for commercial production but the sugar versus pulp yields are better than I thought:

100kg fresh sugar beet can give 12 - 15kg sucrose, 3.5kg molasses, 4.5kg dried pulp and varying amounts of filter cake.


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

And I dunno about the comparison to sugar beets but the beets we grew when I was a boy were fairly easy to raise and get good yeilds from. I still love pickled beets and get em from the store when my family doesn't produce extra. Seems that sugar cane should grow about the same places as Cattail ought to look into that and see what it might take to get it started. Althought the cattail itself is pretty useful stuff all by itself


----------



## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

Instructions for Home Refining of Sugar Beets

With home equipment you can’t expect to get more than small amounts from sugar beets, but you can get some.

We’ve drawn the following suggestions from 4-H club experiments, carried out with assistance from the sugar companies in areas where sugar beets are grown and processed commercially.

Equipment

You will need, in the way of equipment, an orange juicer, a percolator top and a large canning size pot. Also a meat slicer, a grinder or grater.

First, you take two big beets (they should weigh 8 to 10 pounds each), wash them, and run them through a slicing machine, a grinder or a grater so that you have (a) thin strips, (b) a loose mass, or (c) thin grated pieces.

The sugar companies use the first process, having large equipment to turn out vast quantities. The purpose is to speed up the next process, which is to boil them in your large canning pot, having covered them first with water.

You boil them till they are soft and mushy, which probably will take about an hour. Then you strain off the juice and reserve the remaining pulp. You should have about three quarts of juice.

Seltzer Water

The next procedure "purifies" the juice. You use about 1/2 cup of milk of lime and a shot of seltzer water. The seltzer water is your home substitute for the carbon dioxide they use commercially.

The milk of lime is calcium hydroxide suspended in water. Most pharmacies handle it. A small bottle will make a gallon of milk of lime. "Lime water" is the usual use of the calcium hydroxide; for the "milk of lime" you would just add less water to the powder for a somewhat thicker suspension.

You use only what you need for the amount of sugar you are processing. The rest will keep nicely in its powder form until you need it again.

Now, you let the purified juice set for about two hours. The semi-solids will have settled to the bottom by then.

You carefully pour off the water that is on top, and you might as well add that to the beet pulp you set aside to feed you stock animals or chickens. Or you might even want to experiment a little yourself using it for cooking. A pudding? An addition to dessert?

Cook Slowly

The sugar mass that is left you cook very slowly and carefully. You know what happens to sugar if it gets too hot. It will take about an hour and a half to reduce it to molasses-like thickness. It will be molasses-black, and you will have about a cup and a half when the boiling is completed.

Sometime between stirring you should get busy with your orange juicer and your percolator top.

The top fits onto the turning mechanism after you have removed the juicer part. What is about to happen is the separation of the refined sugar from the molasses by the spinning action of the juicer.

You pour your cup and a half of reduced sugar mass into the percolator top, turn on the juicer and let it spin. It would be a good idea to cover the top, because the white sugar being precipitated will be flying around and a lot will fly out otherwise.

The spinning action throws the white sugar onto the bowl of the juicer, and the molasses drips down through the spout into whatever container you use to catch it.

You will wind up with about a cup of sugar and a half cup of healthful black-strap molasses. The refined sugar will be a little damp, but air drying will take care of that.

If that seems like a lot of work for a cup and a half of sugar products, it is. But it is also fun to do, and a sort of minor triumph of individual enterprise.

Some family food gardeners undoubtedly will consider the simple principles involved and rig up equipment to handle a great deal more than two sugar beets. Remember that any motor that will give you sufficient turning speed – equivalent to that of the orange juicer – will do the job. Boilers for the juice can be improvised that are certainly larger than a canning pot. If you go to the trouble of reducing maple sap to sugar, you will find it considerably less involved to handle sugar beets.

A word to those who live in areas where sugar cane grows: The refining process is the same. Crushing the cane to extract the juice involves roller improvisation; perhaps metal plates on an old-fashioned wringer washer, or the equivalent.


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

Thanks Bobb. Any chemists here know what function the lime fulfills? or CO2 for that matter. Will sugar not form if those ingredients are not used? I can see suplying those ingredients hard enough that I should just store lots of sugar rather than trying to stock the lime and co2. If they are just ways to hasten the process to cut the boiling down you might be better offboiling it down than messing with the extras.


----------



## Bobbb (Jan 7, 2012)

It cleans the sugar. You can just reduce the beet water until you get molasses, scoop out the crystals you find, or just keep sugar syrup. 

The selzer water and the milk of lime don't seem to be too onerous a hurdle to jump, in my opinion.


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

Not now but what about later once the trucks stop running. How well is that seltzer going to store? Guess I'll have to try it to see or at least look for the stuff local and see which is better store 50 more lb of sugar of enough stuff to grow beets and render my own sugar. keeping in mind doing so over an open fire or a wood stove is going to be much harder than a propane or electric range. And you have t figure how you are going to process the fuel (wood) for the process etc. might be a decent winter project when you are already trying to heat a house though and the beets should store like other root crops. I had NO IDEA they were that large I always related them to my base line of knowledge which are small Fst size and smaller beets.


----------



## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

Info tidbit - northwest Wyoming had a huge sugar beet crop this year. The piles of beets looked like mountains.


----------



## cnsper (Sep 20, 2012)

jsriley5 said:


> Thanks Bobb. Any chemists here know what function the lime fulfills? or CO2 for that matter. Will sugar not form if those ingredients are not used? I can see suplying those ingredients hard enough that I should just store lots of sugar rather than trying to stock the lime and co2. If they are just ways to hasten the process to cut the boiling down you might be better offboiling it down than messing with the extras.


Or you can learn to cook more stuff without sugar. It is not hard, I don't have any white sugar in the house but I do have brown sugar, honey and maple syrup. I have had the same 1lb bag of brown sugar for 6 months and it is about 1/2 gone.


----------



## AnonyManx (Oct 2, 2012)

Dakine said:


> but how did/do the Amish do it? especially in areas like Ohio, Penn, etc


Many of the Lancaster-area Amish buy it, frequently at the Lancaster Costco (which even has plenty of buggy parking)!


----------



## IlliniWarrior (Nov 30, 2010)

AnonyManx said:


> Many of the Lancaster-area Amish buy it, frequently at the Lancaster Costco (which even has plenty of buggy parking)!


above almost everything else the Amish and Mennonites are practical people .... Walmart encourages their trade big time .... most have special parking areas for horses/buggies ..... crazy to see drive-thru buggy shelters


----------



## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

When I was Amish, we grew sugar beets (and mangles). You can shred them up for livestock feed using a mangles shredder after you have extracted the sugar. Sorghum is another source of sweetner. And, of course, honey!


----------



## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

jsriley5 said:


> Any chemists here know what function the lime fulfills? or CO2 for that matter. Will sugar not form if those ingredients are not used? I can see suplying those ingredients hard enough that I should just store lots of sugar rather than trying to stock the lime and co2. If they are just ways to hasten the process to cut the boiling down you might be better offboiling it down than messing with the extras.


From Wikipedia, "the alkaline conditions convert the simple sugars, glucose and fructose, along with the amino acid glutamine, to chemically stable carboxylic acids."


----------



## jsriley5 (Sep 22, 2012)

OK that makes it clear as mud  Thaks though for doing the leg work I was too lazy to do.


----------

