Making Sorghum Syrup! Best Crop For A Self Sufficient Homestead!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ค. 2023
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I like how this was an 8 minute video that only gave relevant information instead of a 30 minute video that you need to skip 50% of.
Thanks
@@AaronVanbeselaere-kh7we precisely.
Going to the community sorghum syrup making day when visiting my grandparents in North Georgia is one of my cherished memories from childhood. Just so you know, you can pop the seeds like popcorn and add them to salads for a little crunch
Just an info tip / warning.
Yes, "syrup" sorghum is different from grain (animal feed) sorghum. Grain sorghum is usually called "milo", especially in central part of US, to differentiate between the two varieties.
Milo and most varieties of syrup sorghum have reddish brown seed heads. Those seeds have varying amounts of tannins. Usually the darker the color the greater the tannin content. Doesn't make for good eating by humans.
For human consumption, look for the hard to find white or tan colored seed. Some human consumption sorghum isn't the best for syrup production. Most syrup sorghum seed though ranges from good to great on using seed for food.
Difficult to source the white sorghum (use for popping!) because birds absolutely LOVE the low tannin varieties. The seed head is smaller on those varieties compared to the higher tannin animal feed milo varieties.
Plant 10-14 days after feed corn is planted in your area. Milo/sorghum really needs a warm seedbed.
Water requirements are probably 2/3 that needed for corn.
For 2 crops in Deep South, grain can be harvested in late summer but only cut stalk at knee level. Immediately after cutting fertilize and deeply water the crop. You'll get a second, smaller crop if cold weather doesn't come early. This is called "ratooning". Harvest before freezing/frost lest the nitrogen causes prussic acid buildupo
That's good stuff. Thank you for sharing that. I've grown sweet sorghum in a garden before just out of curiosity. It was okay. But now that I'm on a farm and have ambitions to grow syrup and seed. I'm interested in perhaps a combo variety. (Adding to honey for Mead production). Can you suggest a variety? Also is it better to let the stalks get to full height or cut sooner. I noticed when I left some to grow to full height they started sweating sweet syrup on the leaves that drew bees. I want to do that again as now I have a bee hive. I was wondering if it was maturity, high brix level or weather (I lived in the desert at the time). Appreciate any of your feedback. Thanks.
@@saintmichael3879 my experience with "dual purpose" anything in life is that I'm inevitably disappointed on all accounts.
Grow separate varieties.
I've found that a well stocked Indo/Pak grocery store to be a fine enough source of no varietal name white sorghum (millets too!)
Given you're in the desert I suggest a shorter variety of either type. Your wind will whip those stalks too much, I fear.
Edit as far as syrup harvest....meh, I'm not very "scientific" about that. It's one of those things that gets squeezed into the calendar (excuse the pun). You gotta decide... either quantity or time, I suppose.
Ask your AG Extension officer if they have a brix reader you can borrow.
Good luck
Thank you for the info! I'm new to this plant. Have some growing now. But not sure if seeds were white.
Been looking for an easy to grow chicken food that isn’t going to take a ton of water in this crazy Texas weather. Looks like I found it and a sugar source too. Awesome. Thanks !
Cool. You're welcome
I feed stalks and all to my chickens. Might try making syrup after watching this video.
Watching you boil down the sorghum juice reminded me of time spent in my high school's maple syrup house in New England... more than 50 years ago. 😊
That's a process I'd love to see. I have a distinct love for all the processes of making sweeteners.
Oh.
Sorghum cane syrup.
And seeds.
And cane silage.
What a great crop.
I have grown it in my garden a few times. This year I got about two pints from a 25' row. I don't have a cane press and I'm not willing to fork over the money for one given the amount of use it would get over the years, so I use water extraction. It definitely works, although the volume that has to be reduced is more. You could get a clearer product with a cleaner flavor and likely need to skim off less foam if you added a small amount of bentonite (sold for home brewing) according to package directions to the juice and kept it in the refrigerator overnight as your settling stage. Bentonite is used in fining wine and will grab a lot more suspended particles and force them to settle.
I tried the same process with cornstalks this year after I harvested my sweet corn. The yield was low, but your comment about sourness caught my attention. I don't find sorghum to be sour, but the corn stalk syrup was quite tart.
sorghum can get sour. I'm not sure if it's growing conditions or variety. we always save the seeds from sweet ones only.
@@RoseNZieg
How do you know which ones are sweet?
Molasses....Yummy. Used for sweetener during depression.
Had sorghum syrup on my pancakes when I was growing up in Michigan in the 1940's. Interesting flavor. Worth it!
Awesome
Thank, thank you, for that wonderful yet informative video. Blessings! 😊
You're welcome
Really good video my friend! Been watching lots of videos but everything is on a huge scale. Thanks for breaking it down to something more manageable. I think the wife and I are going to go on a little bigger scale. We're looking to supplement our retirement income. Will look at a larger press without getting crazy. Thanks again. Fellow Texan!
Thank you. Glad it was helpful.
I'm really thankful to have seen this video. This is my first year to try growing sorgam and your video gave some great information for me.
Cool. Glad it was helpful.
Thank you. What an informative video. I didnt know anything about that. Thank you.
You are so welcome!
Good call on sorghum! Was growing sugar cane for the same purposes and now will give this a try to since why not both haha.
Cool. Yes, why not both if you can.
Great video, thanks 👍
You're welcome
thank you so much for sharing this, you are super awesome
You’re so welcome
also vinegar...blessings
You got a new subscriber🎉🎉
Welcome to the channel
If sorghum freezes it can release prussic acid which makes cyanide gas. Don’t use it during frost season at all not even a bit
😮
@user-nl4ir7cx5r thanks for the heads up.
Sorghum syrup is great
Excellent video.
Thanks
You're welcome
Love your stuff kick on love it❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤍
Thank you
Thumbs up 👍 thanks for sharing 😊
You're welcome
Awesome video
Thank you
Great video, yep its hot here in Texas. Stay as cool as you can.. Jack
Thanks! You too!
I never know it can be done in sorghum thanks for educating
You’re welcome
Thanks! We got the press and thermometer and should be harvesting today! Hopefully it goes well!
That’s awesome! Have fun with your harvest.
Where is the link? What kind is it?
@@stupidloopinfinite4768 Links are always contained in the video description below each video above the comments section. Here they are for reference...Sugar Cane Press: amzn.to/46VWnBW
Candy Thermometer: amzn.to/44MEVOb
Oh, this looks like a great crop to feed high-protein needing quails!!
They would like it.
Thank-you!
You're welcome!
Wow. All that work for a whole cup of syrup. Don't get me wrong. This is fascinating, but I am disappointed in the amount of acreage and work needed for so little result. My uncle had a sizeable stand of maple trees in Minnesota, and he made and sold syrup, but it always was more of a side-hustle. His fuel to boil down the syrup was a five ton truckload of wood scraps from a nearby furniture factory
Very interesting video.
Thanks
I have been thinking of growing sorghum in Asia for home and chicken consumption, but never knew about the sugar in it. We learn something everyday! Thanks a lot for this important video. Regards from Canada.
You're welcome. Glad it was helpful.
thx...good video...
You're welcome
Very cool! I have drove past sorghum fields and had to google to figure out what the crop even was, and honestly it seemed it was only good for a commercial crop. So I am excited to see there is a variety with another use. Can you drop a link to buy seeds of your variety?Thanks!
We used Beyond Organic Seed and got the Rox Orange variety. www.beyondorganicseed.com/
Thank you.
You’re welcome
Thanks!
You're welcome
Thank you
You're welcome
Thank you! Do you have any videos on growing and pressing grain sorghum?
You're welcome. I do not know about pressing the grain. As far as I am aware, the cane is the only part used for syrup.
Seed heads look pretty good and full, which variety did you grow? I grew Dale last year and the canes were much thicker and about 15 feet tall, I have a few clips of it on my channel. I bought the same juicer you have in this video to make again this year. I'm growing Dale again for syrup and testing a few white seed varieties for eating the grain.
It grows great in upstate New York. Mine were over twelve feet tall and extremely swe juice
Awesome
Very cool. God bless.
❌⭕️🙏🏽♥️
You’re welcome
Should use enzymes for starch to sugar conversion.
Thanks so much for showing this. Where can I get seeds?
www.beyondorganicseed.com/ We got them at Beyond Organic Seeds
I intend to grow both sorghum and maize (in my dialect, corn could refer to both, as well as to wheat, rye, barley, oats, triticale, teff, and many other "bread grains", hence why I refuse to acquiesce to the US and Canadian English use) this year, all the way as far north as Prince George, in BC. Should I give ya a holler if it pans out well?
Heard folks talking about the importance of growing SOMETHING (cover crop-ish) to help soil life. So, taking a page from David the Good, I thought 🤔 "what can I throw in the ground that's just hanging out in storage ...?" Well, there was some sorghum😊 it's going crazy-good. So NOW, it's "what do I DO with it?!?"😅
Awesome. Now you can make some syrup.
I live in North Texas and I produce about 90 gallons of sorghum juice a year.
Awesome
replace the spigot with a hose barb and run a piece of vinyl hose to a bucket on the floor
That would be a good
mod.
I never had sorghum syrup until ordered some on Amazon, expensive as hell but I had to try it. For the price I paid I wasn't impressed, it tastes like molasses but perhaps not as strong, but I do like its thickness and its great on pan cakes. Beware, sweet sorghum gets targeted by wild hogs. If you can make your own I think its definitely worthwhile, but you will need a lot of wood to boil it down if you do use a wood stove. I love your cane juice crusher, where did you get it? Great hands on video., I really enjoyed it.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
We got the cane press on Amazon. This is the link to it....amzn.to/46VWnBW
Wow! This is so informative! I'm growing sorghum and couldn't remember why I planted them. Now I want that press! I been looking for such a device to press my lemon peels also. Will it press out the oils from the lemon peels too? Either way, I want it for my sorghum.
Glad it was helpful.
I have never tried to press a lemon peel before so I honestly cannot say.
Great stuff! What variety do you use? Do you find the stalks to be sweeter when you let them mature closer to that 12" height?
We use the Orange Rox variety. Yes, the taller (for the variety) the sweeter. However, if all the syrup is mixed together, it is hard to tell.
I planted some Mennonite Sorghum a few days ago. Hopefully I've got the time to get a harvest in. I'm right at the edge of 7b/8a in Georgia, and it has been HOT this year. If I don't get a seed harvest...eh, whatever. It will be biomass. I'm sure the microbes will love the sugar content.
You might have time to get that crop in this year. It is crazy hot.
Mennonite is the variety I grow in my garden. Harvest the canes before the first frost and process them even if they haven't fully matured. You'll get something. I'm pretty sure the optimal time to harvest for sugar is before the seeds have matured. The plants use their stored sugars in order to fill grain. I try to harvest after flowering but before the seeds really develop. For grain I have a different variety more suited for the purpose. I'm on the 6b/7a boundary, by the way, planted in early June and harvested in mid-August.
@@bobbun9630 which do you use for grains?
@@daniellemoutos7028Texicoa. It's a white-seeded variety. My seed source is Sand Hill Preservation Center if you're wondering where you can get that.
Don't even know why we still grow this. It's the one seed that's always left when we give a seed mix to our animals. Chooks won't even eat it if it's the only thing left.
And you can make Red Sorghum liquor. Watch Red Sorghum a 1987 movie by Zhang Yimou.
Could one use a juicer used for regular foods? Counter top juicer?
You can potentially use a masticating counter top juicer but you would need to soften the stalks by boiling them first
Hey I'm in Texas too just ordered some Rox Orange sorgum seeds for spring. In your opinion when is the best time to harvest how can you tell
I honestly just go by the number of days for the variety. 120 for the Rox. They will have colorful seed heads at that point.
@CountryLivingExperience oh ok I'm growing for syrup I just didn't know if there was a window for sugar content I'm guessing when those heads turn orange it's ready
Do you need to spray off the "canes" before crushing them? Crushed bug guts and sand particles worry me a bit (though the particles might be filtered/settled out in your processing).
You can if it worries you.
How do you know when it is ready to harvest? I have some I think is ready. I don't remember when I planted it, so I can't go by days. Is there a certain way to tell? thanks loved the video!
You're welcome. The stalk can be harvested before the seeds. Sorghum seeds are best harvested when they feel dry and resist denting when you press them with a fingernail.
Interesting.. I always thought the syrup was made from the grain somehow. Sounds like a good crop in that you can use most of the plant.
Do the root stocks grow back up the next year - or must it be re-sown?
I used to think that same thing.
It must be re-sown each year.
Great info! Do you think the sorghum press is necessary for a small backyard harvest? Would there be a good diy alternative?
Thanks. It is not necessary for small patches in my opinion. I am looking to greatly expand my production of sorghum though. There are videos out there that show peeling the stalks and boiling them...I have never done that though.
Cut the stalks to a length close to the height of the stock pot you will be processing in. Wash them, remove all leaves, then split them lengthwise to expose the centers. Neither peeling nor cutting out all the nodes is in any way necessary. Stack the split stalks back in the pot standing on their ends (as many as will fit), add a couple of inches of water, and steam them (covered) for about an hour. Pour off the juice. I also do a second "cook" with the stalks completely covered with water. That will extract more sugar, but at the cost of having to spend a lot more time boiling the material down. I also use some bentonite (a fining agent used in wine and sold by homebrew suppliers) to help settle out all the starches, proteins, and particulate matter before the final reduction into syrup. Done well the yield is acceptable and the result is very good quality, though I won't claim that the time and energy cost justifies it compared to just buying some sorghum syrup at the grocery store.
What's a good place to get seed from if I want to grow my own on an acre or so
We got ours from Beyond Organic Seeds.....www.beyondorganicseed.com/
Hey when you make the syrup can you add in a little sugar to help with the bitter taste. Just wondering. Have an awesome weekend.
Thank you. You could. I would add it in at the end of the process though.
@@CountryLivingExperience 🙂👍
Thank you for posting this, I've been looking for something to do a natural sweetener.
When your letting the juice settle, would it be better to use a siphon system to pull what you want out of the pan before boiling it, instead of pouring it out?
EDIT - Can you do flavor additives, blue berry juice, strawberry juice, apple juice, (insert flavor of choice)?
A siphon would work well. I had not thought of that. I have never added any juices to it but I think that would work and be a nice addition.
Glad I could give you an idea. I only thought of it, because I make mead, and when you are doing that, you need to rack mount the mead part way through brewing, and you use a siphon for that.
I think next year I will be planting some of these plants. Thanks again for sharing your experiences with the plants.
I have a 25’x 30’ plot that is getting close to harvest time. I’ve got to get a press pretty quick.
I ran one small stalk through a meat grinder and was impressed by how sweet the juice was. I let my wife taste it but she drank it all!
Yep! I need a press!
Is this the same sorghum that is used to make silage ?
I don't think so. This one is grown for it's sweeter cane juice.
Do you think I wine press could be used if the stalks were chopped into pieces?
No. The stalks are way too hard for a wine press.
Can you make syrup from the other kind of sorghum? 🤔
Some are better than others. The syrup sorghum has a higher sugar content in the stalk.
is it good for diabetic?
I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your doctor.
Too bad we can’t grow it here in the PNW
Could you make corn syrup using that press? or is corn syrup made differently?
I honestly don't know how corn syrup is made.
@@CountryLivingExperience I did a some searching, and looks like using a sugarcane press is one way of making corn syrup =]
The other method I found was to cut the stalk into little pieces and boil the pieces
IT TAKES A TON OF SORHGUM to equal a quart of liquid
Seems like it. At least it lasts a long time.
@@CountryLivingExperience Makes it worth the work...
wondering if my Champion juicer would work for juicing the stalks. Anyone have that answer?
I think it could but you will have to process the canes/stalks more by peeling off the outer bark/skin.
I've been trying for years to find this childhood snack and found so many different kinds but still can't find it - but these look about right. Are the seeds found and a little hollow, edible raw, and taste like tea when drinking water with them in your mouth?
I don’t know. We use it for the cane juice and the seeds for chicken feed.
Roughly after an hour of you posting this video I checked the link to the press and it is unavailable on Amazon.
Yikes. They sold out fast. There are some others that are very similar that I looked at. They are probably just as good.
Try this one.....amzn.to/46VWnBW
I've seen people juice sugar cane and they always run it through 2-3 times per came. Did you try to see if you could get any more juice, or just stop after the first pass of the cane through the machine?
I stopped on the first pass. Most sorghum syrup producers will do that too.
@@CountryLivingExperience do which too: run it once or more then once.
@@vonries Run it once
If you have a good press you should only have to run it through once. If your press is worn out you will have to run it through multiple times
Is a candy thermometer needed? I don't have one and have been failing at recognizing when it's done. I overcooked the last batch and it was like a hard candy.
It makes the process 1000% easier.
@@CountryLivingExperience appreciate the response. I ordered one and am looking forward to syrup and not hard candy! 🤞
So I made sorghum syrup, followed the steps, used a candy thermometer and everything seemed to go great.....fast forward a few months and the syrup developed some type of mold on it! 🤬....any idea why? Perhaps I stored it incorrectly? I put them in large Mason Jars and in our pantry..... thoughts?
I have a love and hate relationship with sweet sorghum. sweet sorghum can attract yellow jacket. tons of them. it's a pain to harvest them.
Interesting. Mine didn’t
Where did you buy the seeds?
I got them here...www.beyondorganicseed.com/
Warning don’t put your finger inside your spinning juicer.
Sorghum syrup doesn’t taste like Walmart sugar. It has a strong muddy aftertaste. Go buy some sorghum molasses and taste it before you plant a crop. 😅
Never said it did
Can I buy sugar cane presser from you?
Sure. This is the link..Sugar Cane Press: amzn.to/46VWnBW
The sugar cane press is already unavailable 4 hours after you made this video. I will keep an eye on it.
And the solar powered phone charger link doesn’t work. Hope this is helpful.
It is helpful. Thank you for checking those.
Thanks for this. I've been thinking about planting sorghum for a while but didn't take the time to research how to process it. Is there a particular variety you like and source? I googled buying sorghum seeds but was a little overwhelmed by the choices. 😬
You're welcome. We got the Rox Orange variety from Beyond Organic Seeds. www.beyondorganicseed.com/
It is sour because it contains tannins
I was not able to click on the sugar cane juicer.
I will take a look at the link.
The link works but the product is just out of stock. Try this one....amzn.to/46VWnBW
Your stalks are small. Are they at full maturity for the brand?
Poor soil. Not enough nitrogen.
Your video was very enlightening
Anything to easily increase self sufficiency
I’ve loved fresh Sugar Can Juice in the Tropics
This seems like a temperate alternative
Very impressive
Thanks for sharing this obscure info
You’re welcome