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Chris
01-23-2011, 02:05 PM
We have people who make their own flour and whatnot, but I was thinking of staples the other day and thought... what about sugar.

If you truly wanted to be on your own, how would you refine your own sugar? I know next to nothing about the process.

I know we've had a thread about maple syrup, and then there is honey, but if you wanted to make your own raw sugar from say, sugar beets, how would you go about doing it at home? Could you? Anyone ever try it?

mountain1
01-23-2011, 02:35 PM
why would you want to refine it? the wife and i NEVER eat refined sugar. or refined anything for that matter.
read this:http://www.naturalorganiclifestyle.com/unrefined-raw-sugar.html

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 02:56 PM
I think the point of the OP was how to extract the sugar from a plant and put it in a form that can be used. I may be wrong, but I don't think he was looking for an argument about the benefits of refined vs unrefined sugar.

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 03:09 PM
Chris, when I lived in Hawaii my roommate grew up in the Islands. He showed me how to make syrup from sugar cane. We did it as a novelty for parties that we had (amazing the work you will go to to impress fellow drinkers) but we never took it the final step to make sugar crystals. We crushed and pulverized the cane (commercially it goes through rolling presses) removing all of the liquid. After straining, boil it to reduce it to a thick syrup. This is where we stopped (mixed with Creme de Menthe, Amaretto or Grand Marnier to make a killer flavoring for coffee or syrup to pour over ice cream). To get it to a crystal form we would have had to boil it longer and then spread it on parchment to dry in the sun (or use a mechanical dryer). Our process took several hours - to finish it off would have taken several days. Never did beets or corn, but you have peeked my curiosity in it.

mountain1
01-23-2011, 03:16 PM
i'm fully aware, thanks. i just thought that would get him started.
in order to make sugar you just let the moisture in the molasses (made from sugercane) evaporate. then you have unfefined sugar.
same can be done with many other 'natural' sweets, such as coconut juice or maple syrup.
he had mentioned sugar beet sugar so i am simply pointing him in a more healthy direction.
i really don't think sugar is a necessary staple unless you have a sweet tooth.
we just buy 5 gal. of unprossesed local honey every year to cook and bake with.
another thing about sugar beets is these days most are now GMO.

Chris
01-23-2011, 03:17 PM
Right... I was talking about going from plant matter to sugar crystals you could store long term.

So it is just about drying syrup then? I thought it was more complex than that.

Juice, strain, boil, dry?

Chris
01-23-2011, 03:22 PM
Oh, I don't want to rehash other threads about GMO, but I'm fully in favor of GMO. Crop science will save the world. I'm fully versed in the topic, in college I majored in genetics and worked in a lab trying to isolate oil genes to increase canola oil production. It is boring mundane work (which is why I didn't end up doing it), but entirely safe for human consumption.

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 03:22 PM
Again - I never took it that far, and only used sugar cane (grows in back yards like people here grow roses) but I understand that it would take several boilings to get it to crystalline (tricky to keep it from burning) and then the drying process.

One thing I am curious about is - I remember as a kid making rock candy by hanging a string in a glass of sugar water (almost syrupy). I wonder if a similar process could be used with the boiled down syrup?

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 03:36 PM
While I've never done it - it looks like sugar beets are pretty easy. http://www.ehow.com/how_2177131_sugar-beets.html

your_comforting_company
01-23-2011, 04:08 PM
Sugar cane was crushed, then boiled and evaporated. The fellow who lets my dad hunt his land used to own a sugarcane refinery and one of my goals for this year is to learn the trade. Be looking for a post about it soon.
We used to cut the stalks and peel them and just chew it for a sweet treat, we didn't have the cauldrons and stuff to do it right. Sugarcane can be cut and crushed and the juice used as sweetener, but I'm assuming you want sugar crystals, like for table use.

I will be finding out more soon. wish I could offer more now.


Juice, strain, boil, dry?
that seems to be pretty accurate..

Chris
01-23-2011, 04:15 PM
What actually got me thinking was yesterday I made some from scratch strawberry buttercream frosting, and I was thinking as it whisked .... "I wonder, would such a treat even be possible if this was a couple hundred year ago, and or I was living off the land?"

Started ticking it off in my head, egg whites, got to have chickens, butter, gotta have a cow and kids who like chores, strawberries, in the garden, sugar.... ? It made me pause. Honey or maple syrup is fine for things like sweetening breads, or even say cakes, but to cream butter you need granulated sugar, it is a mechanical process and needs the sharp crystals to work.

your_comforting_company
01-23-2011, 04:18 PM
I think about things like that a lot and have been slowly changing our menu to not include so much of the stuff we can't get on our own.

Any syrup should be able to be dehydrated into a crystalline form, and if it becomes a solid chunk, you can always use rocks (or whatever) to crush it into crystals. If you have some maple syrup and a dehydrator, maybe you should try it?

I am gonna go look and see if we have some and give it a try myself.

edit: all we have is karo, and some gourmet flavored syrup.. I'll try to get a small bottle tomorrow.

randyt
01-23-2011, 04:31 PM
maple syrup can be boiled down to make maple sugar. it's not granulated like store bought sugar, it's more like a cake. Perhaps a cake of maple sugar could be put in a dehydrator and taken to another level and then ground.


gosh I missed the part in YCC post about the maple syrup. but syrup is boiled farther until it is thick and it's called maple sugar.

mountain1
01-23-2011, 04:35 PM
i just have to add this and then will drop the supject on GMO.
i am also very well versed on the supject. it is not good for the people and it will not save the food supply. it will only homoginize our crops to all die off at once when the right bug or disease arrives.
it sounds like you were tranied or the university that you were trained at is supported by big ag.. it's easy for monsanto to place "their" profs. in universitys.
you can eat that crap, not me and my family.

Rick
01-23-2011, 05:02 PM
It's not a bad question. Sugar has been a sticky (yeah, pun intended) point in the U.S. in the early days. The Sugar Act of 1764 and the Molasses Act of 1733 both led up to the American Revolution. They weren't the only precursors obviously but did contribute.

Some of you may remember that sugar was rationed during WWII (I bet Winnie does). In order to get by sugar beets were used. Here's a recipe you can use.

Place the beets in a large pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil.
Cook the beets until they are tender and the juice is extracted.
Drain the juice and set aside.
Boil the juice until it is 1/3 original volume.
Let cool and scrape out the crystal.
Bring the liquid to a boil again and continue to boil until it is all gone (don't burn the pan!)
Scrape out the crystals.

The sugar will be white like cane sugar but it will have a slightly beety flavor.

NOTE: I've never done this but I do have the recipe.

Chris
01-23-2011, 06:14 PM
i just have to add this and then will drop the supject on GMO.
i am also very well versed on the supject. it is not good for the people and it will not save the food supply. it will only homoginize our crops to all die off at once when the right bug or disease arrives.
it sounds like you were tranied or the university that you were trained at is supported by big ag.. it's easy for monsanto to place "their" profs. in universitys.
you can eat that crap, not me and my family.

Crop homogenization happens from a monoculture, which we could have regardless, it has nothing to do with genetic engineering, and in fact genetic engineering could help prevent future outbreaks. Every once in awhile a good food crop (hybrid, which is the result of manual genetic engineering) gets wiped out by some disease. This has been happening because of monoculture longer than the human race has known that DNA existed. The answer is not to be a scientific luddite, but simply to not plant a monoculture.

In the future scientists could quickly look for species strains of the plant that are resistant to the disease, identify the genes which create the resistance, and add those genes to the food crop. You could do the same thing with selective breeding over generations, but that takes a long time.

GMO crops now and in the future allow us to add nutrients to things like rice, to deal with malnutrition in the third world. It allows us to plant crops that result in less use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and water, all of which are good for the environment.

I would happy eat a genetically engineered food (as I likely do every day, like everyone else), and feed it to my family, and cheer when a new discovery is made.

Rick
01-23-2011, 06:28 PM
If you are so well versed on GMO then you know the name Norman Borlaug. You also know he has been modifying crops, primarily wheat, since the 1940s. He is a Nobel Prize winner and was credited with saving millions from staving to death with his genetically modified wheat. It does work and it will continue to work. Send any you won't let your family eat to me. We'll eat it.

your_comforting_company
01-23-2011, 06:38 PM
Corn is a fabricated plant.. It was originally a grass and was cross pollinated and selectively bred to be the varieties we have today.
Engineering food isn't a new technology.

http://www.campsilos.org/mod3/students/c_history.shtml

http://www.nativetech.org/cornhusk/cornhusk.html

Rick
01-23-2011, 06:40 PM
'Zactly......

themoondancer811
01-23-2011, 07:00 PM
Honey or maple syrup is fine for things like sweetening breads, or even say cakes, but to cream butter you need granulated sugar, it is a mechanical process and needs the sharp crystals to work.

I am not quite sure what your recipe was, but it made me wonder whipped honey butter would have worked? Just your typical heavy cream homemade butter with honey whipped in it. Very much like a creamed butter. From my experience, modern recipes don't work well when you are making ingredients from their original source. Old country, church cookbooks do though!

@ Rick- thank you for the wonderful recipe! I will certainly try it. If anyone else does, let us know how it turned out.

Rick
01-23-2011, 07:56 PM
I sure do agree with you on the country church cookbooks. I'm really blessed to have both my mother's and Mother-in-Law's church cookbooks. Both were put together by the ladies in their respective churches in the late 1930 and early '40s. I have both their personal cookbooks as well. While there are standard recipes I thought I'd share a few home remedies from the Good Cook's for the benefit of the Presbyterian Ladies' Aid Society of Cobden, Illinois.

For severe pain in the eyes apply cloths dipped in sassafras water. Get pith of sassafras and pour a small amount of boiled water over and let stand until like white of eggs.

For bone felon or nail or wire cuts, put wound in hot water with plenty of Carbolic Acid as hot as can be stood, use until wound is eased.

For Cholera: Blackberry Syrup - Two quarts of blackberry juice, one pound loaf sugar, one-half ounce of nutmeg, one-fourth ounce of cloves, one-half ounce of allspice. Pulverize the spices and boil for fifteen or twenty minutes. Strain and add a pint of brandy - heat and seal in bottles. (I think that sounds dandy even if you're in good shape).

Cold Cream: One gill of glycerine, one gill of cologne, one gill of alcohol, one-fourth ounce of gum of tragacinth. This will make one quart of cream. Put water on the gun over night. Shake well next morning and add the other ingredients.

Here's a question for you. Without looking it up. What is a gill in measurement?

themoondancer811
01-23-2011, 08:16 PM
Here's a question for you. Without looking it up. What is a gill in measurement?

I have no idea what a "gill" is (other than on a fish or 'sroom) but 4 cups are in a quart, so a gill would be a cup. Give me some credit Rick, I may not be the brightest but I do know basic math . LOL

I printed out your old wives recipes, wonderful sassafras ones. Such a yummy tree. I never used to have full access to the internet and having things on paper is a must have. People rely too much on the internet for info, won't do ya any good if there is no access!

We should share more of these old wives recipes!

LowKey
01-23-2011, 09:19 PM
Sassafras has been moved to the Use Cautiously list. Seems it causes cancer in laboratory animals.

Refining sugar to the white crystal stuff you have on the table is a chemical or filtering process you might have to live without.
http://www.sucrose.com/lref.html

It takes a hellacious number of sugar beets to make a significant amount of sugar. You might want to grow more edible things on your land and make do with honey and tree syrups. Unless you live where you might be able to grow sugar cane.

themoondancer811
01-23-2011, 09:31 PM
Thanks for raining on the parade, Lowkey...bahahaha ;)

LowKey
01-23-2011, 09:35 PM
Not to take this off topic but why is the word "beet" in my post a hyperlink?
Not my doing. Musta clicked something stupid on this new forum layout.

I sometimes wonder how much sassafras they actually fed that lab rat. And maybe recently the findings have been relaxed a bit, just like with saccharin.

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 09:36 PM
You might want to grow more edible things on your land and make do with honey and tree syrups. Unless you live where you might be able to grow sugar cane.

Or start including more sugar in your bulk purchases for putting up food.

Chris
01-23-2011, 09:39 PM
I am not quite sure what your recipe was, but it made me wonder whipped honey butter would have worked? Just your typical heavy cream homemade butter with honey whipped in it. Very much like a creamed butter. From my experience, modern recipes don't work well when you are making ingredients from their original source. Old country, church cookbooks do though!

@ Rick- thank you for the wonderful recipe! I will certainly try it. If anyone else does, let us know how it turned out.

Technically the process of "creaming butter" which is used in many confections, is where you whisk granulated sugar into room temperature butter. The sugar cuts little holes through the butter, perforating it, and making it light and airy, and then eventually the sugar dissolves into the water phase of the butter and it gets very delicious. With honey you'd get sweet butter, kinda like apple butter I guess, but without the perforations it wouldn't get the same texture.

That being said, I'm not a pastry chef, so maybe there would be a way.

Chris
01-23-2011, 09:40 PM
new forum feature, certain crop names are automatically linked to growing instructions.

LowKey
01-23-2011, 09:42 PM
Hoo, that could get uh, interesting after a while.

Have you tried crystallized honey or maple?

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 10:06 PM
new forum feature, certain crop names are automatically linked to growing instructions.

Awesome!!!

Rick
01-23-2011, 10:20 PM
in the United States it is defined as half a cup[/URL], or four U.S. fluid ounces, which equals 7.219 cubic inches, or 118.29 cubic cm; in Great Britain the gill is five British fluid ounces, which equals 8.669 cubic inches, one-fourth pint[URL="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461186/pint"] (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/146659/cup), or 142.07 cubic cm.

themoondancer811
01-23-2011, 11:28 PM
Technically the process of "creaming butter" which is used in many confections, is where you whisk granulated sugar into room temperature butter. The sugar cuts little holes through the butter, perforating it, and making it light and airy, and then eventually the sugar dissolves into the water phase of the butter and it gets very delicious. With honey you'd get sweet butter, kinda like apple butter I guess, but without the perforations it wouldn't get the same texture.

That being said, I'm not a pastry chef, so maybe there would be a way.
Makes sense. I try sometimes to finagle recipes by switching ingredients in such a way and usually fail epically! I have never went without sugar, I should try to bake without it for a month and see what I can come up with. If I never had access to sugar in a survival situation though, I would probably not stress about it. Although I do not know how to harvest honey from a hive either...maybe should learn before I renounce the sugar! LOL

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 11:29 PM
Makes sense. I try sometimes to finagle recipes by switching ingredients in such a way and usually fail epically! I have never went without sugar, I should try to bake without it for a month and see what I can come up with. If I never had access to sugar in a survival situation though, I would probably not stress about it. Although I do not know how to harvest honey from a hive either...maybe should learn before I renounce the sugar! LOL

Check with your county ag extension office. Some offer classes on beekeeping.

themoondancer811
01-23-2011, 11:31 PM
in the United States it is defined as half a cup[/URL], or four U.S. fluid ounces, which equals 7.219 cubic inches, or 118.29 cubic cm; in Great Britain the gill is five British fluid ounces, which equals 8.669 cubic inches, one-fourth pint[URL="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461186/pint"] (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/146659/cup), or 142.07 cubic cm.
Ok then, we have 4 ingredients in the recipe which says it will make one quart? So if it is only 4 half cups the recipe is wrong? (my brain hurts chief!)

themoondancer811
01-23-2011, 11:34 PM
Check with your county ag extension office. Some offer classes on beekeeping.

I think that is a great idea, and one I have never thought of, thanks! How much fun it would be also! :)

crashdive123
01-23-2011, 11:37 PM
I've taken a class. It's a lot of fun.

mountain1
01-24-2011, 01:15 AM
Makes sense. I try sometimes to finagle recipes by switching ingredients in such a way and usually fail epically! I have never went without sugar, I should try to bake without it for a month and see what I can come up with. If I never had access to sugar in a survival situation though, I would probably not stress about it. Although I do not know how to harvest honey from a hive either...maybe should learn before I renounce the sugar! LOL
just find a hive and chop the tree down. the trick is finding the hive.

themoondancer811
01-24-2011, 01:32 AM
just find a hive and chop the tree down. the trick is finding the hive.

ahhhh...kind of a hippy, I don't go chopping trees and ruining the life of a whole colony just because I can!! I'd hope that it can be done in a peaceful and undisruptuve way. Knowing me, I'd sing to the bees. LOL

mountain1
01-24-2011, 01:49 AM
ahhhh...kind of a hippy, I don't go chopping trees and ruining the life of a whole colony just because I can!! I'd hope that it can be done in a peaceful and undisruptuve way. Knowing me, I'd sing to the bees. LOL
good luck.
your not 'ruining' anything. they will simply find another tree..
you know; busy as a bee

your_comforting_company
01-24-2011, 05:53 AM
After quite a long search, I ran across a fellow who is a beekeeper, so I can get hands-on.. Man, I've got so many goals for this year it's not even funny! raising chickens and bees, and making sugar from cane. Who needsa TV?

You know, The main thing I've learned from all this primitive skills experiments and education; Patience is a virtue, and those who are patient find what they are looking for.. usually it finds you!

*If I were going to cut down a tree to get at bees, I'd have to set up a bee house and hope they chose it as their next home.. Not that I'd cut down a whole tree for a little honey.

Chris
01-24-2011, 08:43 AM
Well, use the rest of the tree for firewood or building something, so it isn't being wasted.

crashdive123
01-24-2011, 09:07 AM
Cutting down a tree to gain access to the hive is not a good way to harvest honey. In fact, doing so will probably destroy the hive. You need the right equipment to protect yourself and harvest it, but once you have it, it will last for a long, long time. It is relatively inexpensive. If you find a feral colony and can access it, you will have a limitless supply of honey provided you do not destroy the hive in the process. If you start a few managed hives, collection becomes much easier, and can be a pretty good source of income if needed.

Chris
01-24-2011, 11:51 AM
Any idea how far honey bees range in their foraging efforts?

My garden is full of them certain times of the year. I've dug up a yellowjacket hive on my property before, but never have seen a honey bee hive. I'm wondering what are the odds it is close by.

gryffynklm
01-24-2011, 12:00 PM
Here is a WIKKI about the foraging habits for honey bees.

It says the range is about two miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forage_(honey_bee)

Blasfemo
02-23-2011, 09:41 PM
In my quest to find a resource that can be made in my region by me and from open polination source and organic i found this - Stevia rebaudiana - its 300 times sweeter comparing wit white sugar and i have it running right now. i will hope i like the flavor this is because reports are people might not really like it in some foods but i hope because i like sweet stuff and last week there was NO SUGAR in my supermarket... and im in EU LOL