The thread about lighter knots got me to thinking. I don't know anything about cane syrup but when cane juice is cooked here we call it molasses. Is it the same stuff just a different name? Larry

Molasses is from the same parent plant (Sugar cane) but a different product made from multiple boilings of the juice extracted from the sugar cane plant.

Class III

Cane syrup is usually thin but can be thickened. Molasses is always well... thick as molasses.

Most of the 'molasses' that you see in the grocery stores is made from sugar cane, and has been treated with sulfur (I don't know why or what that accomplishes). When you are referring to molasses when speaking with older people (like me) here in NC, you are talking about sorghum molasses, which is homemade from sorghum cane (a relative of sugar cane), which is an entirely different beast.

Sorghum molasses was what my grandparents had when I was a child, during WWII, and was a daily staple of our diet. A hot, buttered, homemade biscuit, drowned in molasses was dessert and candy all rolled into one. Sugar was in very short supply during WWII, so my granddad used molasses in his coffee. If I wanted a treat during the day, my grandma would mix butter and molasses together on a saucer and I ate it with a spoon.

Since it is homemade, it is hard to find anyone that still makes it, as it is labor-intensive and most of the demand for it is from old codgers like me. I have a supplier, who still makes it, and I buy 5 or 6 quarts every Fall to get me through the coming year. It is great on anything you would put syrup on, and is a key ingredient in baked beans at my house. There is a lot to be said for things done in an old-timey fashion.

My in-laws still make cane syrup down in south Georgia every year. It is somewhat of a family affair where most of the old men of the clan spend a couple of days pressing the sugar cane, which they grow, boiling off the syrup in a large cast iron pot in the syrup shack and, finally bottling up the syrup. I was raised on this stuff and nothing else even compares to it on a stack of pancakes or a fresh cat-head biscuit.

Here is a pretty fair video showing how sugar cane is grown and the old fashioned way it was processed into syrup. I mentioned in the other thread about the mule going round and round all day. I have seen mills in South Georgia powered by riding lawn mowers geared down to their slowest speed with the steering locked into position. Uncle Dave mentions in the video about skimming the impurities off the top of the boiling juice. After days of operating a mill, a large vat of "skimmings" would be left. These would ferment, and usually accumulate a bunch of dead insects. My Daddy said that it used to be easy to tell who was "hitting the skimmins," because they would have a particularly bad hangover, and the yellow-jackets would be buzzing around them.

I can recall going on my Daddy's school bus route with him before I started school. In the fall, we would stop the bus at a neighbor's farm and all get off to drink a cup of cane juice as it came out of the press. Of course everyone used the same cup that was always hanging on a nail on a post close to the mill.
Making Cane Syrup - YouTube

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Georgia On My Mind

Molasses comes from sorghum not sugar cane. My uncle use to make it. We cut the sorghum cane, and haul it to a press.

We had mules who turned the press, I was small so I set under the log that went around and had the job of keeping the mules going and from eating the cane.

The cane was put into the press and the juice was squeezed out into large flat rectangle pans.

The syrup was heated until it turned into Molasses, and was put into gallon jars.

Then you poured it into a plate, mix in fresh butter. You take Half of a cathead biscuit and drag it through the syrup/butter mix.

To tell if you have the right mixture of molasses and butter, the biscuit would be tore in half as you drug it through the mixture.

Somewhere I have an article where some reporter drove by while we were making molasses and wrote an article about making molasses the old fashion (actually the only way). If I can find it, I'll scan and post it.

I didn't know there was any other way to eat it.
f.t.

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South Carolina-God's country

Old folks used to talk about using very thick molasses to make a sugar tit for the baby.

Look it up.

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Georgia On My Mind

Actually sorghum is one form of molasses and sugar-cane another. But ask any old Tennessee boy transplanted to Kentucky, like me, and he will strongly imply that sorghum is the only kind that matters.

It's wonderful to smell it cooking, and amazing how laborious the process is.

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Oh well, what the hell.

Thanks for the information. Larry

molasses is made from sugarcane, sugar beets, or even grapes... but not sorghum. Many times you'll hear sorghum called molasses, but really it's not. It don't really matter to me, I love both!

Kind'a funny... A guy in Indiana started making liquor from Sorghum... but, he couldn't call it rum because it isn't made from sugarcane...
we've made it for years in the Tennessee mountains and call it "sorghum rum".
Well.. if it's illegal anyway.. we can call it what WE want!

[QUOTE=1morethan8;137208908


we've made it for years in the Tennessee mountains and call it "sorghum rum".
Well.. if it's illegal anyway.. we can call it what WE want![/QUOTE]

How do you feel the next day after drinking a big bait of that? Larry

Ther's not anything better than a hot biscuit with butter and blackstrap molasses.

Guess what's for breakfast in the am.

Steen's Cane Syrup -- nectar of the sugarcane fields in south Louisiana.

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Gunner, Sabot Up!

A man has to know his limitations.

sorgum,yep that is it. like the guy said above sorgum is a different beast from cane sugar. sorgum is grown and used in a lot of animal feed, as in live stock.

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My brother is my Hero

You could say the same for blackstrap molasses.. one place to get it is a feed store.

Of course, if you're making rum you get more alcohol from the first syrup run from cane, sometimes it's called "premium". And you can use "panela"... Panela!?

You cane lovers will like this!
Process of making panela, trapiche in Colombia - YouTube

I left Arkansas many years ago, it has been along time since I have even thought about these things. I remember my 1st grade teacher said I was slower than pouring molasses in the middle of January.

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Retired Marine Gunny

One of the most fascinating things I have ever witnessed is the making of sugar from sugar cane.

While station in Hawaii I went out to the plant and fortunately ran into a gentleman who was the supervisor and he took me for a tour.

There they flood the fields with water. set the cane on fire and it draws up more liquid.

They harvest it with bulldozers that have large tines rakes in front picking up roots and all and load into trucks about the size of freight cars.

At the mill it goes through what they call the mud bath where it is cleaned and then cut into about 18 inch lengths.

Then it goes through progressively closer and closer presses until the stem comes out dry....that goes to the boiler which makes the steam which runs the engine that runs the entire mill. BIG piston, larger that a 55 gallon drum and HUGE flywheel.

The sytrup is cooked and then poured into centrifuges and spun to get the liquid out and then the sugar is taken out by a scoop that goes in and the as the centrifuge turns it scrapes the sugar out.

The mollasses are then re-boiled and run through the process again.

Last step is the cleaning of the brown sugar to make it white as we know it.

Bill,

When they burned the fields we would get the ash fallout, it was called "black snow".

My family (parents, grandparents, aunt & uncles) would ask us older kids when we were acting childish if we wanted a "sugar tit" as a way to shame us for acting that way.

Don

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Laus Deo! <><