Two observations about sugar beets: 1. If you're driving on a road near the beet harvest area, be careful not to run over a beet. They're hard as rocks and large enough to cause damage to the underside of most cars; and, 2. The process of sugar refining from beets produces a stench that rivals paper mills and corn processing. I pity those who live downwind from a sugar beet mill.
@@erikiacopelli451 Yes you can eat them raw. We frequently had tourist stop by one of our fields if we happened to be out there setting water. We always pulled one out if it was late enough in the season for the plants to start storing sugar. A beet at 18% sugar is pretty sweet.
I worked at a beet sugar plant for 5 years and we packed sugar for grocery sale. Always get a kick out of watching people try to figure out which brand is better when i saw my factory package both.
Yup. Huge rolls of pre-printed paper for each customer. Bag until their order is filled then switch to the next customers roll... nothing else changed.
Do people around the area directly eat the sugar beets as a snack? I visited some south East Asia places and saw some people eating the sugar cane (for the sweet juice) and then spit out the the leftover.
I tried growing sugar beets once, I wanted to see if I could make my own sugar or at least molasses, except the deer came in every night and ate all the greens off the tops. No molasses, no sugar, no beets.
@@TheAmazeingAnarchist If you do it to scale to make $$$. A couple of tote containers isn't gonna drive you crazy if you take actual care of it. We got MAJOR pests' issues with ours but some used coffee grounds seems to be all it needed for now at least. I can always bust out the cayenne and other hot spices for even more of a "sensory overload" should they be needed. :)
I grew up in Billings, Montana that had a large sugar beet plant. It was called the Great Western Sugar Company. This was in the 60's and 70's. I never knew how complicated it was to make sugar. During certain times og the year you did not want to be down wind from that plant. It STUNK! It us still in operation to this day.
The stink is from microbes in the soil interaction with the sugar and sulphate complexes from washing, the inside of that factory smells like caramel where the sugar itself is being processed.
Yeah, when I worked in ND, I'd often drive through Sidney Montana on my way home. They have a beet plant there too. Quite the smell. Not to mention having to dodge the odd beet that falls off of the trucks hauling them lol.
If you find sugar beets buy some. It makes a wonderful cool dessert. Chop it into think strips or cubes, drop it in a basket, and pressure cook it til it’s soft and simi-translucent. Let it cool, then chill it in the freg. It’s time to enjoy.
Interesting. I wonder if sugar beets are natural or took a lot of breeding to develop. I’m surprised they don’t have any “beet flavor” before they are processed. Thanks for your comments. I grew up in Florida where a lot of sugarcane used to be grown. When I was growing up, could buy cane stalks to chew on. I don’t know of any other thing that was done with the stalks except as a sweet snack.
@@maryellerd4187 Probably similar to carrots selectively breeding has taken place, but there is organic beets available, and they do have a beet flavor and aroma, but not as strong as the small red ones. By the way, from sugar cane they also make sugar. Take the juice and dehydrate it, it becomes sucanat. Refine it a bet, it’s called turbinado. Refine even more and it becomes yellow sugar. Finally bleach it and it turns into the white sugar that everyone knows.
It is also fairly easy to make syrup from sugarbeets. Rinse and clean'em. Dice into small strips. Boil them soft in a bit of water. Take a draining bag / juicebag or whatever it is called in english, and squish the juices out of the soft plant strips. Put the juice back into a pot, and let it reduce until you have a consistency to your liking (I usually go for honey like) Put it in a jar (rinsed with boiled water first to clean it) Voila and you have a sweet syrup that last just as long as any other sugar product (more or less forever) If you have a mechanical juicer, you can press them raw and go directly to reducing.
I worked in the "lab" at a sugar beet factory... A sample of beets from each truck came in on a moving bag line and we would use razor sharp machetes to clean the dirt and outer skin off and then throw them into a pulper (think wood chipper) . The pulper would splatter a fist sized portion onto a conveyor belt and it went to the testing station where the sugar content was measured for each load. The amount farmer was paid for the truck load of beets was then based on the sugar content of the sample beets from the truck.
I did the exact same thing too! By any chance, was you working for Union Sugar in Betteravia California? Those "pulpers" were turbines, by the way. Ver very angry turbines at that! I also worked high upstairs in the section where they filter the hot sugar syrup. The place blew up in the late 80's though. Sugar dust explosion.
In the mid 80's, I was employed at "Union Sugar" in Betteravia California which is right outside Santa Maria. As the beets were being unloaded from the boxcars, there would be 50lb burlap sacks included with them. I'd open the sacks, then use a carpet knife to remove the tops and roots from the beets and then clean off as much caked-on dirt as I could. I'd weigh the beets every step of the way. Then I'd send the separate samples through a turbine extractor that pulverized them and spit out a cup of juice so the lab could sample them for their sugar content. They averaged up all the samples to get a single percentage number. That was the way they'd know how much to pay the sugar beet farmers for their crop. Then, after that particular work was all done, they hired me to work in what they called "The Blo Up Lab" where the hot refined syrup was stained though huge filters. My job was to monitor and clean those filters, and they sure were giant ones. I only quit that job because it scared me so much. A year and a half after I quit, the whole place blew up and a couple of people were killed. That could easily have been me. It was a sugar dust explosion. Back then, the air was filled with sugar dust all the time. I'd have never worked there if I knew dust could explode. The Blo Up Lab blowed up, and it could have had 24yr old me in it!.
As a young kid, I went to a sort of boarding school in a town called Assens in Denmark. Assens had a sugar beet refinery and I learned firsthand how sickening sweety and nauseating the smell from sugar beets being processed is. I can still, 35 years after, recall the stench along with how my whole body reacted to that smell!! If the wind blew over the school downwind from the refinery, nobody ventured outdoors unless they really had to, and then we used a piece of cloth to hold over our mouths and noses. It is that vile of a stench!
@@rawbacon It entirely depends on how sensitive your gagging reflex is. I wasn't saying people couldn't work there, so not sure where you are going with it...
As a child many decades ago I lived in North Dakota. The students of my school visited a sugar beet factory one day. The only thing I remember is that the factory stunk horribly. You could smell it from quite a distance. God bless the people who live in North Dakota. I no longer do.
Repent and follow Jesus my friend! Repenting doesn't mean confessing your sins to others, but to stop doing them altogether. Belief in Messiah alone is not enough to get you into heaven - Matthew 7:21-23, John 3:3, John 3:36 (ESV is the best translation for John 3:36). Contemplate how the Roman empire fulfilled the role of the beast from the sea in Revelation 13. Revelation 17 confirms that it is in fact Rome. From this we can conclude that A) Jesus is the Son of God and can predict the future or make it happen, B) The world leaders/nations/governments etc have been conspiring together for the last 3000+ years to accomplish the religion of the Israelites C) History as we know it is fake. You don't really need to speculate though because you can start a relationship with God and have proof. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. - Revelation 3:20 Revelation 6 1st Seal: White horse = Roman Empire conquering nations under Trajan 98-117 AD & Gospel spreading rapidly. 2nd Seal: Red horse, bloody civil wars with 32 different Emperors, most killed by the sword. 185-284 AD 3rd Seal: Black horse, economic despair from high taxes to pay for wars, farmers stopped growing. 200-250 AD 4th Seal: Pale horse, 1/4th of Romans died from famine, pestilence; at one point 5,000 dying per day. 250-300 AD 5th Seal: Diocletian persecuted Smyrna church era saints for ten years, blood crying out for vengeance. 303-312 AD 6th Seal: Political upheaval in the declining Roman Empire while the leaders battled each other. 313-395 AD Revelation 7 Sealing of 144,000, the saints, before trumpet war judgments, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Revelation 8 1st Trumpet: Alaric and the Goths attacked from the north, the path of hail, and set it on fire. 400-410 AD 2nd Trumpet: Genseric and the Vandals attacked the seas and coastlands, the blood of sailors in water. 425-470 AD 3rd Trumpet: Attila and the Huns scourged the Danube, Rhine & Po rivers area, dead bodies made water bitter. 451 AD 4th Trumpet: Odoacer and the Heruli caused the last Western Emperor (sun), Senate (moon) to lose power. 476 AD With the Western Roman Emperor (restrainer of 2 Thes. 2) removed; the son of perdition Popes took power. Revelation 9 Two woe judgments against the central 1/3rd and eastern 1/3rd of the Roman Empire. 612-1453 AD 5th Trumpet: Locust & scorpions point to Arabia, the rise of the Muslim army. Islam hides Gospel from Arabs. 612-762 AD 6th Trumpet: Turks released to attack Constantinople with large cannons (fire, smoke, brimstone). 1062-1453 AD Revelation 10 The little book is the printed Bible, which was needed after the Dark Ages when Scriptures were banned by Popes. Revelation 11 7th Trumpet: Martin Luther measured Roman Church; found that it’s an apostate church, not part of true temple. The two witnesses are the Scriptures and saints who proclaim the pure Gospel and testify against the antichrist Popes. Papal Church pronounced Christendom dead in 1514 AD. Silence for 3.5 years. Then Luther posted his 95 Thesis, which sparked the Protestant Reformation and brought the witnesses back to life. Millions of Catholics were saved. Revelation 12 Satan used the Roman Empire to try to wipe out the early Church, Satan was cast down as the Empire collapsed. Revelation 13 The antichrist beast Popes reigned in power 1,260 years, 538-1798, is the little horn of Daniel 7, son of perdition. The false prophet Jesuit Superior General rose to power from land (earth) of Vatican and has created many deceptions. Revelation 14 Points to great harvest during the Protestant Reformation & wrath on Catholic countries who obey antichrist Pope. Revelation 15 Overcoming saints victorious over the beast. Prelude to 7 vials and judgment on those who support Papal Rome. Revelation 16 1st Vial: The foul sore of atheism was poured out on Catholic France, leaving them with no hope, led to revolution. 2nd Vial: The French Revolution started in 1793, killed 250,000, as France had obeyed the Pope and killed saints. 3rd Vial: The French Revolution spread to rural areas of France, where Protestants had been killed in river areas. 4th Vial: The bloody Napoleonic wars shed the blood of countries who had revered and obeyed the antichrist Pope. 5th Vial: Judgment on the seat of the beast. Papal States invaded in 1798, Pope imprisoned, removed from power. 6th Vial: The Turks vast domain dried up, they were only left with Turkey. They lost control of Palestine in 1917 AD, Israel became a nation again in 1948
I used to live where sugar beets were grown (near Hamilton City CA) and I can tell you that you knew where the processing plant was by the smell. Kind of like dirty gym socks odor mixed with paper processing. (I live near papermaking factories now). As an aside, when in the military got to see sugarcane grown and harvested/processed. This was in Louisiana.
Nice to see sugar being made from Beet. I worked at a factory in England in a little village called Cantley and compared to this place the equipment was at best SteamPunk.
I worked there too for one and a half campaigns many years ago (my dad worked there for three decades until he retired). Cantley is a really old factory and I don't think the process was this complex, I don't believe there was a pre soaking stage at the beet end and I don't think the sugar end was that complex either. The pulp was dried into feed pellets that the cows nearby would eat. It's probably the next on the chopping block when there's time for another factory closure, apart from being old it has rather poor road connections compared to somewhere like Newark.
I used to work in quality assurance at a Pepsi bottler, and the "real sugar" used in some of the sodas was beet sugar. I liked to pretend that the beets were coming from Schrute Farms. We'd get it in liquid form, and we had to taste a sample of each shipment. Beet sucrose is delicious. HFCS also tastes really good.
I haven't tried beet sugar, but I've tasted both cane sugar and HFCS and I definitely prefer the taste of cane sugar. They're both sweet, but there's a subtle distinct difference in taste between the two. It might just be a case of familiarity though; I grew up with cane sugar and how it tastes. Whenever I visit the US, sweet stuff over there (which mostly uses HFCS as their sweetener) always tastes subtly "off".
@@Zaxares Might've also had to do with the batch that you tried? I've had cane sugar that didn't taste right before and then again some, that tastes really good.
I still remember the smell of the sugarfactury ten kilometers from where I lived near Groningen in the netherlands, with north westerly winds, it was the smell of autumn anounced the coming of Sinterklaas, (our santa who arrives in november.)
@@riproar11 for myself, it's because I'm glad to learn something new, that I wouldn't have known without this video, and I want to show my appreciation for the opportunity to learn something new.
@@RaeC5280 Fun fact. Most fruits have sugar that can be extracted. However sugar cane and sugar beets have higher concentrations that can be extracted. For example, apples. In some places you can buy apple sugar. I only ever saw cane suguar in the store so when a friend showed me beet sugar, agave, apple sugar and such it was very suprising to me. It is fun to learn and fun to talk about new things you learn, I am glad you learned something new and hope you continue learning.
HA! I love Imperial conversions they've done from the obvious metric measurements they were given: "A little over 2lbs of sugar" = 1kg of sugar. "22 yards high" = 20 metres high.
During World War II the Finns and the Russians had their own war, quite separate from the turmoil in the other Nordic countries and Europe. In Finland coffee was rationed, so at the front the soldiers would normally boil snow/water and add a teaspoon or two of beet sugar, when they had a "coffee break".
I visited Longmont CO for some electronics training and had a weekend to kill so I took a walk through the park that was once a sugar factory there. There's a flood plain created by the caustic beet mash that was left over from the refining process, and you can still see the sluice and bridges that were constructed to transport it away from the factory. All the metal work was done by hand.
So with the beets being approximately 18% sugar, do they taste sweet right out of the ground? Do they taste not sweet, somewhat sweet, moderately sweet, or a lot sweet? Or does their actual sweetness only come about while being processed?
They do taste sweet straight off the ground! Imagine a sweet turnip. Its not overly sugary because the sugar, or rather saccarose at that point, is contained with other biological compounds within the cells of the beet before our extraction process. But i eat plenty of "cleaned", plain cut sugarbeet straight from the conveyor as samples, so yes, i can tell you its sweet
If you get Holly Sugar it started in my home town, Holly Colorado. The company started about 1900 but moved out by 1915 or so. There are a few buildings left that were part of the original Holly Sugar. I have the ledger book from Holly Land and Sugar Company in the museum. We still use the Holly leaf emblem on the ambulance. I remember they still grew a few sugar beets here until the 70s. They trucked them west to a plant still in operation.
The plant I'm use to does it a little bit different instead of cutting them in ting strips they grinds their up into a pulp they also allow the beet to ferment a bit and there products are white and brown powdered sugar, molasses beet pulp and liquid sugar and I'm surprised you guys didn't go to being the oldest continuously running sugar plant and a main sugar provider to most large U.S and Canadian food companies
It is definitely a unique industry. As a shift supervisor in a beet plant you need to have knowledge of all kinds of skilled trades. The process is also a mind blowing, continuous flow balancing act where one falled bolt could effect 40 other steps downstream. You better understand ladder logic because it is way more difficult than your standard production line plc. My hats off to you that have made it over 20 years in operations
The leaves, or tops, get cut off before the beets are pulled into the digger. You were showing a Ropa machine which has the defoliator and digger in one machine and it looked like you showed how beets in Europe are dug. While there are some Ropa machines here in the states the beets they dig are usually taken to the receiving stations with some going direct to the factory. We have a separate defoliator and digger like a lot of farmers around our area have. Our beets get taken to a receiving station and after the loaded trucks get weighed they go to the pilers which we then unload our beets into the hopper of the piler which piles them and we go weigh our empty trucks then back to the field for another load. Some farmers haul their beets direct to the factory. After beets get piled at the receiving station a payloader fills the trailers of the rehaul semi trucks which then take them to the factory.
Food safety in the US is really good in most industries - especially for one like this where they have to process the beets all in a very short window, as the beets are still alive after being harvested, and consume the sucrose a little bit each hour until it's gone... so your equipment needs to be able to handle massive volume during harvests, and of course you work very closely with your supplier farms to make sure they can stagger their harvests so you can keep the plant running from early harvests through to the last harvests. A lot of temp workers help out during that period - one of my friends ran one of those big conveyor belts where semi trucks would be tipped up (at a steep angle) to dump the load onto - she controlled the far end of the conveyor to create giant piles of beets which were slurped into the wash plant as they were able to be. We're talking thousands of semi loads worth of beets coming over the course of a month or so I think it is around here (MN).
@@filipt9931 That is an interesting one! In the 1740s, a german scientist actually kind of discovered the first new way of extracting sugar out of these beets. Altough mentions of such a sweet beet has been found as early as year 1575. Back then, the reported sugar concentrations within the beet were on the side of 1-2% compared to todays ~18%. This research however led to building the first ever beet sugar factory in Kunern, Silesia, now known as Konary, Poland, in 1801! Napoleon actually built the second known beet sugar factory off of the scientific work and testing done by the Polish. Since the British were against the french on the war at the time, they stopped importing cane sugar to France and Napoleon subsequently started to take interest in the Polish beet sugar manufacturing process they had been working on for a while. He then, after the relative success off the Polish or/and its conjoinery sugar "factory", ordered to build hundreds of sugar beet "factories" in France. I say "factories" because their production was so low that it might aswell be called a household production by todays standards, and im not sure of the scale of each mill. Napoleon ordered a peak of 540 sugar mills to be built in 1837, and even though we dont have the sugar amount they produced at that peak, 5 years later in 1842 they had 382 mills producing 22.5 million kg of sugar. That is less than a single factory produces at their yearly campaign in any existing beet sugar plant today. Bigger plants reach multiple times that a year. Furthermore, 22.5M kg divided by 382 mills, equals to under 59 tonnes of sugar A YEAR per mill, where in comparison even the basic factories today produce around between 1200-2000 tonnes of sugar A DAY!
@@filipt9931 Actually that was in Silesia and at the time that was sort of German - belonged to Prussia. Only became polish after WWII when the whole of Poland kind of shifted to the west.
great video! really enjoyed learning about the process. but honestly, I’ve got to say, isn’t it a bit concerning how much sugar we’re producing? I mean, given all the health issues related to sugar consumption nowadays, should we really be focusing so much on mass production? just a thought!
When I was little we would go to the farms and take some beets and carve out funny faces, like all year, we live on the literal land of suger beets, the farmers find it endearing, especially if you come with one for them.😂😂
Its not very easy, but our process is not unattainable at lower amounts. Getting pure sugar crystals is very hard since you need a seed of sorts to start growing those crystals like we do in our large "kettles" of multiple cubic meters. Realistically you probaly will have a hard time producing crystals of sugar like you will find in a package, but something like sweet chips will probably be a better choice!
You can get low quality sugar fairly easily, just cut the beet into little pieces, steep them in hot water, remove the beet, filter the water to remove some impurities and then boil it away (adding a bit of sugar as a "seed" will help here). You'll be left with a bunch of sugar crystals at the bottom of the pan along with molasses and some other crap. That is essentially what happening in the factory, just with a few extra steps to produce consistent and pure white crystals.
@@willsal529 I admittedly had never seen that video until I looked it up just now. It's definitely not a "Walk the Dinosaur" parody but if you replace "beet" with "boom" and "sugar" with "shaka-laka" in your comment, keeping the sequence the same, you get the bridge to "Walk the Dinosaur." Kind of funny how that works honestly.
I don't know. I think that I'm more impressed by these mechanical harvesters (tractor) that harvest the actual beets. Once these beets are ready to do business, these bad ass tractors line up like a guy about to drag race...hit the gas and they're off. Along the way, these harvesters yank out six (6) rows of beets at a time...chop off all leaves and crowns...leaving nothing but the bulbous beets. Just like that, you're ready to do some sugar business. I'm telling you...how do those harvesters do it? How do they yank out six (6) rows at once...then somehow chop off all crowns and leaves...all while doing no damage to the beets. That's the part of the video that amazes me.
That isn't quite the way beet harvest goes. The tops get removed first then the puller/digger follows and gets them out of the ground and loads them into the trailers of the semi trucks or the boxes of the straight trucks. The loaded trucks then leave the fields and head to either a receiving station or direct to the factory where they get weighed with the load, get in line at the pilers, empty their loads, weigh empty, get their ticket with both weights, grower name and load number printed on it and head back to the field to do it all over again. The ROPA tractor has the defoiliator in front and the digger in the back. It is all in one unit. Although the ROPAs here in the US generally operate a bit different than the ones in European states. I have seen where the European ROPAs top and dig their beets, but then pile them at the ends of their fields to wait their turn to haul them to the factory/mill. Here in the US the ROPAs top them, dig them and haul them right away. Our crew has a separate defoiliator and digger. The defoiliator goes out at about sunrise, weather permitting, and gets a few rounds ahead of the digger. Then the rest of the crew go to the field and dig the beets. I drive either our semi truck with the live bottom trailer, it has a conveyor type of belt that goes from the front of the trailer to the back of trailer and then back to the front and unload the beets that way. Our belt is smooth where some have like big mud flaps spaced along the belt. And I have driven our straight truck with a box. I open the end gate and raise the front of the box to dump the beets. Some farmers have what we call baskets on a flat bed trailer. Those trucks go to the side dump part of the piler where two hooks with chains are hooked onto the right side of a basket and then that side is raised to dump the beets out on the left side and into the hopper of the piler. They do that with each basket. Usually 2 baskets on a trailer. We weigh in loaded, then go to a piler and dump our load, weigh empty and get a ticket with both weights, tare weight (the dirt shaken off of the beets as they go through the piler and gets weighed then emptied onto a tare truck that hauls the dirt to a part of the pile ground to get hauled away later) and the farmers name so we can keep track of how many loads we get from a field. Then, those of us that do not haul direct to the factory, a payloader will load the rehaul trucks that take the beets from the receiving stations to the factory. Some diggers are 6 row, our older ones were that way. And our newer diggers are 12 row. The trucks have safety pull hooks on the front now so the pull tractor can just back up to the stuck truck, hook on and pull away. The pull tractor driver can even get to where they can release the truck on the go after pulling them out of the mud.
It was less complex back then. The basic principle of cutting the beet, boiling it and getting a sweet juice out of it is still, well, a hundred years late of the relatively modern sugar production at this scale and energy conservation. This is well seen at the scale they did it in 1850s for example. Back then almost 400 mills produced a total of 22million kilograms of sugar, where nowadays thats multiple times less than a SINGLE factory is producing. Its like you making mashed potatoes for your family vs making it for the whole country of yours at once, every day, with no compromises and less energy costs and optimization of the whole process in an industrial scale, running at 24/7! Many if not almost all of modern production has its roots in far away history, but the industrial scale takes those extra years to get working efficiently and cost productively, let alone with multiple different areas of industrial manufacturing!
White sugar is the lowest grade... they also skipped over the fact it is bleached as the additional impurities does not yield a brilliant white product. Refined is just that. Additional filtration removes more impurities producing as close to pure sugar as they can get.
There isn't any, sugar is "graded" based on crystal size. The largest is granulated, next up is caster, and above that is icing which has been milled into a fine (and explosive!) powder. Larger grades than granulated tend to be dissolved back in since they're not really useful.
What’s crazy is team had to come up with the tools and processes to bring it to an industrial scale, then draw up the plans design to actually make it happen.
look at all of the processing that goes into this, yet it's one of the cheapest products that's added to everything. I wonder why diabetes is an epidemic?
@@ohsoloco5113 The processing is pretty simple, of course the scale is large because its industrial, but white sugar is not a harmful, but a natural substance in reasonable amounts. Diabetes is an issue due to brands adding sugar in extremely high doses to appeal to bigger audience who demand instant satisfaction from sweets and even normal stuff now like bread, and this is especially true in countries like the US where the added sugar is off the charts in many normal household groceries. The regulation of added sugar needs to be better, but sugar itself isnt the problem. Its like saying mayonnaise in hamburgers is the cause of obesity and its their fault for making a population fat. But realistically mayo is good and a normal ingredient IF YOU DONT eat hamburgers every day! Healthy and balanced diet is the key if you dont have allergies. The problem is that that balanced and healthy diet is getting skewed by producers who intentionally try to get you hooked up on normalising such high doses of sugars and fat in everyday products that could do very well without them!
White sugar, the basic kind for table and cooking, is just purified, concentrated and then crystallised sugar beet juice. Normally a beet sugar factory runs 3 "levels" or grades, where the leftovers of the crystallisation process are re-used, of white sugar until its not pure enough to be crystallised as white sugar within colour and opacity grading for even industrial use, and is then left in the liquid form to sell as molasses for both fodder addon and some specialty food production. These are often refined slightly through inversion so it keeps its liquidity and doesnt crystallise with time, and sold as dark and clear syrups you see on your stores shelfs. The white sugar you find in usually 1kg bags at your local market, is just centrifuged and washed off of the brown colour and other slight dense molasses to produce a perfect white sugar crystal. :)
@@TheJebbe8 and that is cool to watch the molasses being separated from the crystals Got to see the process at 2 local sugar beet factories and it was quite interesting
The next step is to purify this raw juice. In a Giant kiln, they burn limestone with Coca-Cola to produce the chemical compound Calcium Hydroxide. Also called Caffeine free Diet Coke with Lime.
As someone who runs this very process of juice purification and almost the whole factory, im impressed you are so close with being so far off haha. Any background in beet sugar manufacturing? For the uninitiated, no, we dont use coca cola or any of its parts in our process but we do sell sugar to them hah. And yes we do burn limestone to get milk of lime and therefore calcium hydroxide, to get that mixed with the raw pulp juice which will in term capture and crystallize all the imperfections from the juice and create bigger molecules to be filtered out and only leave pure sugar beet juice to be concentrated in evaporators and then crystallised and packaged!
As far as I know there’s not a significant difference health-wise. Both cane sugar and beet sugar are basically pure sucrose; it’s the same molecule just produced from different sources.
All white sugar is highly refined using chemical processes. Neither are healthy. The healthiest option is organic raw cane sugar but the should only be used in very moderate amounts.
Sugar factory explosions are a concern. Much like any mill operation. Cleanliness and maintenance is critical. If you can atomize powdered sugar correctly over an open flame you can get an idea what kind of energy can be released.
Two observations about sugar beets: 1. If you're driving on a road near the beet harvest area, be careful not to run over a beet. They're hard as rocks and large enough to cause damage to the underside of most cars; and, 2. The process of sugar refining from beets produces a stench that rivals paper mills and corn processing. I pity those who live downwind from a sugar beet mill.
can you just like take a bite outta it n eat it?
@@erikiacopelli451 it’s like a radish in texture, so yes but it’s not like an apple
@@TheRealHatsune tyvm 4 the info. Now I wanna try one lol
@@erikiacopelli451 Yes you can eat them raw. We frequently had tourist stop by one of our fields if we happened to be out there setting water. We always pulled one out if it was late enough in the season for the plants to start storing sugar. A beet at 18% sugar is pretty sweet.
Yup. I lived many years near the sugar beet refinery at Bury St Edmunds. The smell is truly awful.
I worked at a beet sugar plant for 5 years and we packed sugar for grocery sale. Always get a kick out of watching people try to figure out which brand is better when i saw my factory package both.
That is hilarious haha
Yup. Huge rolls of pre-printed paper for each customer. Bag until their order is filled then switch to the next customers roll... nothing else changed.
Pretty much everything is this way. Brand names mean little to nothing anymore
Do people around the area directly eat the sugar beets as a snack? I visited some south East Asia places and saw some people eating the sugar cane (for the sweet juice) and then spit out the the leftover.
@@johnl.7754 Not usually. The texture is something between an apple and a potato. And unprocessed they aren't very sweet.
I tried growing sugar beets once, I wanted to see if I could make my own sugar or at least molasses,
except the deer came in every night and ate all the greens off the tops.
No molasses, no sugar, no beets.
U have got a new deer friend now
Ah yes, farming. What most people think is this wondrous harmony with nature is actually a bitter war against nature itself just to get what you want.
Eat the deer. It has the sugar inside its body
@@TheAmazeingAnarchist If you do it to scale to make $$$. A couple of tote containers isn't gonna drive you crazy if you take actual care of it. We got MAJOR pests' issues with ours but some used coffee grounds seems to be all it needed for now at least. I can always bust out the cayenne and other hot spices for even more of a "sensory overload" should they be needed. :)
Shoot the deer next time, free meat and sugar
I grew up in Billings, Montana that had a large sugar beet plant. It was called the Great Western Sugar Company. This was in the 60's and 70's. I never knew how complicated it was to make sugar. During certain times og the year you did not want to be down wind from that plant. It STUNK! It us still in operation to this day.
The stinking was probably from the use of sulfur compounds to bleach the sugar
The stink is from microbes in the soil interaction with the sugar and sulphate complexes from washing, the inside of that factory smells like caramel where the sugar itself is being processed.
Yeah, when I worked in ND, I'd often drive through Sidney Montana on my way home. They have a beet plant there too. Quite the smell. Not to mention having to dodge the odd beet that falls off of the trucks hauling them lol.
Nampa, Idaho has entered the chat.
I grew up in Sidney, we had one I think but the entire town would stink sometimes.
If you find sugar beets buy some. It makes a wonderful cool dessert. Chop it into think strips or cubes, drop it in a basket, and pressure cook it til it’s soft and simi-translucent. Let it cool, then chill it in the freg. It’s time to enjoy.
Interesting. I wonder if sugar beets are natural or took a lot of breeding to develop. I’m surprised they don’t have any “beet flavor” before they are processed. Thanks for your comments. I grew up in Florida where a lot of sugarcane used to be grown. When I was growing up, could buy cane stalks to chew on. I don’t know of any other thing that was done with the stalks except as a sweet snack.
@@maryellerd4187 Probably similar to carrots selectively breeding has taken place, but there is organic beets available, and they do have a beet flavor and aroma, but not as strong as the small red ones. By the way, from sugar cane they also make sugar. Take the juice and dehydrate it, it becomes sucanat. Refine it a bet, it’s called turbinado. Refine even more and it becomes yellow sugar. Finally bleach it and it turns into the white sugar that everyone knows.
And yes I also have enjoyed cane stacks as a child. Fun and tasty snack in hot summer afternoons.
It is also fairly easy to make syrup from sugarbeets.
Rinse and clean'em. Dice into small strips.
Boil them soft in a bit of water.
Take a draining bag / juicebag or whatever it is called in english, and squish the juices out of the soft plant strips.
Put the juice back into a pot, and let it reduce until you have a consistency to your liking (I usually go for honey like)
Put it in a jar (rinsed with boiled water first to clean it)
Voila and you have a sweet syrup that last just as long as any other sugar product (more or less forever)
If you have a mechanical juicer, you can press them raw and go directly to reducing.
*F R E G*
I worked in the "lab" at a sugar beet factory... A sample of beets from each truck came in on a moving bag line and we would use razor sharp machetes to clean the dirt and outer skin off and then throw them into a pulper (think wood chipper) . The pulper would splatter a fist sized portion onto a conveyor belt and it went to the testing station where the sugar content was measured for each load. The amount farmer was paid for the truck load of beets was then based on the sugar content of the sample beets from the truck.
I did the exact same thing too! By any chance, was you working for Union Sugar in Betteravia California? Those "pulpers" were turbines, by the way. Ver very angry turbines at that! I also worked high upstairs in the section where they filter the hot sugar syrup. The place blew up in the late 80's though. Sugar dust explosion.
@@BeeFunKnee ... I worked in SoCal.
@@geedee2420 I lived in Eagle Rock.
In the mid 80's, I was employed at "Union Sugar" in Betteravia California which is right outside Santa Maria. As the beets were being unloaded from the boxcars, there would be 50lb burlap sacks included with them. I'd open the sacks, then use a carpet knife to remove the tops and roots from the beets and then clean off as much caked-on dirt as I could. I'd weigh the beets every step of the way. Then I'd send the separate samples through a turbine extractor that pulverized them and spit out a cup of juice so the lab could sample them for their sugar content. They averaged up all the samples to get a single percentage number. That was the way they'd know how much to pay the sugar beet farmers for their crop. Then, after that particular work was all done, they hired me to work in what they called "The Blo Up Lab" where the hot refined syrup was stained though huge filters. My job was to monitor and clean those filters, and they sure were giant ones. I only quit that job because it scared me so much. A year and a half after I quit, the whole place blew up and a couple of people were killed. That could easily have been me. It was a sugar dust explosion. Back then, the air was filled with sugar dust all the time. I'd have never worked there if I knew dust could explode. The Blo Up Lab blowed up, and it could have had 24yr old me in it!.
As a young kid, I went to a sort of boarding school in a town called Assens in Denmark. Assens had a sugar beet refinery and I learned firsthand how sickening sweety and nauseating the smell from sugar beets being processed is. I can still, 35 years after, recall the stench along with how my whole body reacted to that smell!! If the wind blew over the school downwind from the refinery, nobody ventured outdoors unless they really had to, and then we used a piece of cloth to hold over our mouths and noses. It is that vile of a stench!
Yet people work there and handle the smell just fine right?
@@rawbacon It entirely depends on how sensitive your gagging reflex is. I wasn't saying people couldn't work there, so not sure where you are going with it...
Smells like burnt beets to me. So bad!
As a child many decades ago I lived in North Dakota. The students of my school visited a sugar beet factory one day. The only thing I remember is that the factory stunk horribly. You could smell it from quite a distance. God bless the people who live in North Dakota. I no longer do.
I grew up within 100 meters from sugar beet refinery. I hated that smell each winter. Now I kinda miss it. It became nostalgic.
Fun fact: this plant is in Germany and the brand is 'South sugar'
Not sure what’s more fascinating, the process from A to Z or the scale of the operation.
So fun
@@mtnx7 Harvesting and processing cost effective in Germany creates these extreme Harvesting and Processing Scales.
Repent and follow Jesus my friend! Repenting doesn't mean confessing your sins to others, but to stop doing them altogether. Belief in Messiah alone is not enough to get you into heaven - Matthew 7:21-23, John 3:3, John 3:36 (ESV is the best translation for John 3:36). Contemplate how the Roman empire fulfilled the role of the beast from the sea in Revelation 13. Revelation 17 confirms that it is in fact Rome. From this we can conclude that A) Jesus is the Son of God and can predict the future or make it happen, B) The world leaders/nations/governments etc have been conspiring together for the last 3000+ years to accomplish the religion of the Israelites C) History as we know it is fake. You don't really need to speculate though because you can start a relationship with God and have proof. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. - Revelation 3:20
Revelation 6 1st Seal: White horse = Roman Empire conquering nations under Trajan 98-117 AD & Gospel spreading rapidly. 2nd Seal: Red horse, bloody civil wars with 32 different Emperors, most killed by the sword. 185-284 AD 3rd Seal: Black horse, economic despair from high taxes to pay for wars, farmers stopped growing. 200-250 AD 4th Seal: Pale horse, 1/4th of Romans died from famine, pestilence; at one point 5,000 dying per day. 250-300 AD 5th Seal: Diocletian persecuted Smyrna church era saints for ten years, blood crying out for vengeance. 303-312 AD 6th Seal: Political upheaval in the declining Roman Empire while the leaders battled each other. 313-395 AD
Revelation 7 Sealing of 144,000, the saints, before trumpet war judgments, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
Revelation 8 1st Trumpet: Alaric and the Goths attacked from the north, the path of hail, and set it on fire. 400-410 AD 2nd Trumpet: Genseric and the Vandals attacked the seas and coastlands, the blood of sailors in water. 425-470 AD 3rd Trumpet: Attila and the Huns scourged the Danube, Rhine & Po rivers area, dead bodies made water bitter. 451 AD 4th Trumpet: Odoacer and the Heruli caused the last Western Emperor (sun), Senate (moon) to lose power. 476 AD With the Western Roman Emperor (restrainer of 2 Thes. 2) removed; the son of perdition Popes took power.
Revelation 9 Two woe judgments against the central 1/3rd and eastern 1/3rd of the Roman Empire. 612-1453 AD 5th Trumpet: Locust & scorpions point to Arabia, the rise of the Muslim army. Islam hides Gospel from Arabs. 612-762 AD 6th Trumpet: Turks released to attack Constantinople with large cannons (fire, smoke, brimstone). 1062-1453 AD
Revelation 10 The little book is the printed Bible, which was needed after the Dark Ages when Scriptures were banned by Popes.
Revelation 11 7th Trumpet: Martin Luther measured Roman Church; found that it’s an apostate church, not part of true temple. The two witnesses are the Scriptures and saints who proclaim the pure Gospel and testify against the antichrist Popes. Papal Church pronounced Christendom dead in 1514 AD. Silence for 3.5 years. Then Luther posted his 95 Thesis, which sparked the Protestant Reformation and brought the witnesses back to life. Millions of Catholics were saved.
Revelation 12 Satan used the Roman Empire to try to wipe out the early Church, Satan was cast down as the Empire collapsed.
Revelation 13 The antichrist beast Popes reigned in power 1,260 years, 538-1798, is the little horn of Daniel 7, son of perdition. The false prophet Jesuit Superior General rose to power from land (earth) of Vatican and has created many deceptions.
Revelation 14 Points to great harvest during the Protestant Reformation & wrath on Catholic countries who obey antichrist Pope.
Revelation 15 Overcoming saints victorious over the beast. Prelude to 7 vials and judgment on those who support Papal Rome.
Revelation 16 1st Vial: The foul sore of atheism was poured out on Catholic France, leaving them with no hope, led to revolution. 2nd Vial: The French Revolution started in 1793, killed 250,000, as France had obeyed the Pope and killed saints. 3rd Vial: The French Revolution spread to rural areas of France, where Protestants had been killed in river areas. 4th Vial: The bloody Napoleonic wars shed the blood of countries who had revered and obeyed the antichrist Pope. 5th Vial: Judgment on the seat of the beast. Papal States invaded in 1798, Pope imprisoned, removed from power. 6th Vial: The Turks vast domain dried up, they were only left with Turkey. They lost control of Palestine in 1917 AD, Israel became a nation again in 1948
What a fun fact
I used to live where sugar beets were grown (near Hamilton City CA) and I can tell you that you knew where the processing plant was by the smell. Kind of like dirty gym socks odor mixed with paper processing. (I live near papermaking factories now).
As an aside, when in the military got to see sugarcane grown and harvested/processed. This was in Louisiana.
Nice to see sugar being made from Beet. I worked at a factory in England in a little village called Cantley and compared to this place the equipment was at best SteamPunk.
Greetings from Great Yarmouth :)
i can imagine what Cantley was like lol
I worked there too for one and a half campaigns many years ago (my dad worked there for three decades until he retired).
Cantley is a really old factory and I don't think the process was this complex, I don't believe there was a pre soaking stage at the beet end and I don't think the sugar end was that complex either. The pulp was dried into feed pellets that the cows nearby would eat. It's probably the next on the chopping block when there's time for another factory closure, apart from being old it has rather poor road connections compared to somewhere like Newark.
My dad use to say he stole a lot of Sugar Beets as a kid near Santa Ana, CA, so probably around from that late 1950s to early 60s.
I used to work in quality assurance at a Pepsi bottler, and the "real sugar" used in some of the sodas was beet sugar. I liked to pretend that the beets were coming from Schrute Farms. We'd get it in liquid form, and we had to taste a sample of each shipment. Beet sucrose is delicious. HFCS also tastes really good.
I haven't tried beet sugar, but I've tasted both cane sugar and HFCS and I definitely prefer the taste of cane sugar. They're both sweet, but there's a subtle distinct difference in taste between the two. It might just be a case of familiarity though; I grew up with cane sugar and how it tastes. Whenever I visit the US, sweet stuff over there (which mostly uses HFCS as their sweetener) always tastes subtly "off".
@@Zaxares Might've also had to do with the batch that you tried?
I've had cane sugar that didn't taste right before and then again some, that tastes really good.
I still remember the smell of the sugarfactury ten kilometers from where I lived near Groningen in the netherlands, with north westerly winds, it was the smell of autumn anounced the coming of Sinterklaas, (our santa who arrives in november.)
Very much the same! I nnow live100 meters away from a beet sugar plant
In Ireland, the beat fields are opened up to cattle, who eat the plants above the surface and leave the beats themselves.
I didn't know sugar could come from beets! It is so amazing and clever that people came up with this whole process. Love watching these shows.
That's why they call it sugar beets. lol And there's sugar cane.
Sugar is made from several different sources. There is traditional unrefined varieties like palmariya sugar and coconut sugar
Why do people feel the need to advertise on the internet that they don't know something? Sugar and other industries were taught in basic school.
@@riproar11 for myself, it's because I'm glad to learn something new, that I wouldn't have known without this video, and I want to show my appreciation for the opportunity to learn something new.
@@RaeC5280 Fun fact. Most fruits have sugar that can be extracted. However sugar cane and sugar beets have higher concentrations that can be extracted.
For example, apples. In some places you can buy apple sugar.
I only ever saw cane suguar in the store so when a friend showed me beet sugar, agave, apple sugar and such it was very suprising to me.
It is fun to learn and fun to talk about new things you learn, I am glad you learned something new and hope you continue learning.
HA! I love Imperial conversions they've done from the obvious metric measurements they were given: "A little over 2lbs of sugar" = 1kg of sugar. "22 yards high" = 20 metres high.
During World War II the Finns and the Russians had their own war, quite separate from the turmoil in the other Nordic countries and Europe. In Finland coffee was rationed, so at the front the soldiers would normally boil snow/water and add a teaspoon or two of beet sugar, when they had a "coffee break".
About 4o years ago we went to a sugar beet plant to watch how sugar was produced. This took me right back
How It's Made is the best show ever that I will never hate in fact I worship it. :D
Haaaaaaaaa!! Me too.
why worship anything but God?
@@bjornegan6421 Why worship god?
I visited Longmont CO for some electronics training and had a weekend to kill so I took a walk through the park that was once a sugar factory there. There's a flood plain created by the caustic beet mash that was left over from the refining process, and you can still see the sluice and bridges that were constructed to transport it away from the factory. All the metal work was done by hand.
I live in Longmont. Plant is still there. I think they want to redevelop it into condos now.
So with the beets being approximately 18% sugar, do they taste sweet right out of the ground? Do they taste not sweet, somewhat sweet, moderately sweet, or a lot sweet?
Or does their actual sweetness only come about while being processed?
They do taste sweet straight off the ground! Imagine a sweet turnip. Its not overly sugary because the sugar, or rather saccarose at that point, is contained with other biological compounds within the cells of the beet before our extraction process. But i eat plenty of "cleaned", plain cut sugarbeet straight from the conveyor as samples, so yes, i can tell you its sweet
If you get Holly Sugar it started in my home town, Holly Colorado. The company started about 1900 but moved out by 1915 or so. There are a few buildings left that were part of the original Holly Sugar. I have the ledger book from Holly Land and Sugar Company in the museum. We still use the Holly leaf emblem on the ambulance. I remember they still grew a few sugar beets here until the 70s. They trucked them west to a plant still in operation.
The plant I'm use to does it a little bit different instead of cutting them in ting strips they grinds their up into a pulp they also allow the beet to ferment a bit and there products are white and brown powdered sugar, molasses beet pulp and liquid sugar and I'm surprised you guys didn't go to being the oldest continuously running sugar plant and a main sugar provider to most large U.S and Canadian food companies
they probably asked and got a 'no'
Sounds like, not a white granulated sugar plant like we see explained here. The process is kinda different in both
It is definitely a unique industry. As a shift supervisor in a beet plant you need to have knowledge of all kinds of skilled trades. The process is also a mind blowing, continuous flow balancing act where one falled bolt could effect 40 other steps downstream. You better understand ladder logic because it is way more difficult than your standard production line plc. My hats off to you that have made it over 20 years in operations
The leaves, or tops, get cut off before the beets are pulled into the digger.
You were showing a Ropa machine which has the defoliator and digger in one machine and it looked like you showed how beets in Europe are dug. While there are some Ropa machines here in the states the beets they dig are usually taken to the receiving stations with some going direct to the factory.
We have a separate defoliator and digger like a lot of farmers around our area have.
Our beets get taken to a receiving station and after the loaded trucks get weighed they go to the pilers which we then unload our beets into the hopper of the piler which piles them and we go weigh our empty trucks then back to the field for another load. Some farmers haul their beets direct to the factory.
After beets get piled at the receiving station a payloader fills the trailers of the rehaul semi trucks which then take them to the factory.
so sugar is essentially a vegetable :) .. it must be healthy then
History for the past 40 years: *Weeeeeell....*
@@YACHI0000 40 years? its been a considerable problem for about 500 years
It is but too much isn’t good.
I wish!🤣
@@catherinecat6182 I mean media wise.
|Syrup (Molasses)
|Brown sugar
|washed sugar
|refined sugar
I'm a Laboratory Analyst at somewhere here in Philippines and to be honest this is more sanitized processed than what we do here
Food safety in the US is really good in most industries - especially for one like this where they have to process the beets all in a very short window, as the beets are still alive after being harvested, and consume the sucrose a little bit each hour until it's gone... so your equipment needs to be able to handle massive volume during harvests, and of course you work very closely with your supplier farms to make sure they can stagger their harvests so you can keep the plant running from early harvests through to the last harvests. A lot of temp workers help out during that period - one of my friends ran one of those big conveyor belts where semi trucks would be tipped up (at a steep angle) to dump the load onto - she controlled the far end of the conveyor to create giant piles of beets which were slurped into the wash plant as they were able to be. We're talking thousands of semi loads worth of beets coming over the course of a month or so I think it is around here (MN).
@@chouseificationthe sugar mill shown in the video is in germany, as indicated by all the german labeling everywhere in the video...
@@reappermen that would explain why it's such an absolutely tiny Factory
@@chouseificationGermany actually produces more sugar beet than the US does.
I thought Philippines would use cane?
so cool they chose a german production site!
Would be better if they chose a Polish production site, because if I'm not mistaken, the first country to make sugar from beets was Poland
@@filipt9931 ok
@@filipt9931 That is an interesting one! In the 1740s, a german scientist actually kind of discovered the first new way of extracting sugar out of these beets. Altough mentions of such a sweet beet has been found as early as year 1575. Back then, the reported sugar concentrations within the beet were on the side of 1-2% compared to todays ~18%. This research however led to building the first ever beet sugar factory in Kunern, Silesia, now known as Konary, Poland, in 1801!
Napoleon actually built the second known beet sugar factory off of the scientific work and testing done by the Polish. Since the British were against the french on the war at the time, they stopped importing cane sugar to France and Napoleon subsequently started to take interest in the Polish beet sugar manufacturing process they had been working on for a while. He then, after the relative success off the Polish or/and its conjoinery sugar "factory", ordered to build hundreds of sugar beet "factories" in France.
I say "factories" because their production was so low that it might aswell be called a household production by todays standards, and im not sure of the scale of each mill. Napoleon ordered a peak of 540 sugar mills to be built in 1837, and even though we dont have the sugar amount they produced at that peak, 5 years later in 1842 they had 382 mills producing 22.5 million kg of sugar. That is less than a single factory produces at their yearly campaign in any existing beet sugar plant today. Bigger plants reach multiple times that a year. Furthermore, 22.5M kg divided by 382 mills, equals to under 59 tonnes of sugar A YEAR per mill, where in comparison even the basic factories today produce around between 1200-2000 tonnes of sugar A DAY!
@@filipt9931 Actually that was in Silesia and at the time that was sort of German - belonged to Prussia. Only became polish after WWII when the whole of Poland kind of shifted to the west.
I live in northern Minnesota. One of our main exports is sugar beets.
I wonder "How it's made" is being made.
Thanks!
cool to see where it comes from
great video! really enjoyed learning about the process. but honestly, I’ve got to say, isn’t it a bit concerning how much sugar we’re producing? I mean, given all the health issues related to sugar consumption nowadays, should we really be focusing so much on mass production? just a thought!
When I was little we would go to the farms and take some beets and carve out funny faces, like all year, we live on the literal land of suger beets, the farmers find it endearing, especially if you come with one for them.😂😂
Oh yeah, when you drive around you will always smell the stench og the Mills, it is disgusting!
Very complicated process to make sure
It was fun to see the European version
Sugar Beats sounds like an RMB artist.
the german factories are always the nicest
These beets fall off overloaded trucks in the fall. It’s tempting to glean them and see if I could refine some sugar at some level.
Its not very easy, but our process is not unattainable at lower amounts. Getting pure sugar crystals is very hard since you need a seed of sorts to start growing those crystals like we do in our large "kettles" of multiple cubic meters. Realistically you probaly will have a hard time producing crystals of sugar like you will find in a package, but something like sweet chips will probably be a better choice!
You can get low quality sugar fairly easily, just cut the beet into little pieces, steep them in hot water, remove the beet, filter the water to remove some impurities and then boil it away (adding a bit of sugar as a "seed" will help here). You'll be left with a bunch of sugar crystals at the bottom of the pan along with molasses and some other crap. That is essentially what happening in the factory, just with a few extra steps to produce consistent and pure white crystals.
Have used cane sugar and beet sugar. Definitely prefer the taste of cane
Most of the sugar made is beet sugar not sugar cane
Wrong
@@trevorgross4455 yes ur wrong
true, Russiand and France are world leaders
Mmm sugary vegetable. *homer drooling*
Great work 🥳 Thaaank you 💜
"Beet, beet, sugar beet beet,
Sugar beet
Sugar beet be-et..."
I wonder if the factory smells like dirt but a hint of sweetness from the beets. 🤔
Smells like wet farts after eating a greasy cake.
@@alicebonnet4607 I- 💀 okay then
@@daianajohnson3196 I think that's a pretty accurate estimation.
Smells like alcohol
it smells like money.
Have beet, make you strong.
“I always wondered how they were made”
BEET BEET SUGAR BEET SUGAR BEET BEET
Is that a "Walk the Dinosaur" reference?
@@dinohall2595is the sesame street sugar beet video a reference to "walk the dinosaur"?
@@willsal529 I admittedly had never seen that video until I looked it up just now. It's definitely not a "Walk the Dinosaur" parody but if you replace "beet" with "boom" and "sugar" with "shaka-laka" in your comment, keeping the sequence the same, you get the bridge to "Walk the Dinosaur." Kind of funny how that works honestly.
I live in Washington zone 6 what mounth is perfect to planting that seeds....
it also uses Calcium?
Great video and great information
I'm so happy there's alternatives to that white processed poison sugar sold in super markets
Love your aspertine do ya
@@trevorgross4455 whaaat.. is there nothing good anymore 😄😄
I like to go up to the tower and camp in Strike at Karkand @2:13
I miss BF2 :(
*"IT'S THE MOTHERLOAD!"*
-Hummingbirdy, prolly
I don't know. I think that I'm more impressed by these mechanical harvesters (tractor) that harvest the actual beets.
Once these beets are ready to do business, these bad ass tractors line up like a guy about to drag race...hit the gas and they're off. Along the way, these harvesters yank out six (6) rows of beets at a time...chop off all leaves and crowns...leaving nothing but the bulbous beets. Just like that, you're ready to do some sugar business.
I'm telling you...how do those harvesters do it? How do they yank out six (6) rows at once...then somehow chop off all crowns and leaves...all while doing no damage to the beets.
That's the part of the video that amazes me.
That isn't quite the way beet harvest goes.
The tops get removed first then the puller/digger follows and gets them out of the ground and loads them into the trailers of the semi trucks or the boxes of the straight trucks.
The loaded trucks then leave the fields and head to either a receiving station or direct to the factory where they get weighed with the load, get in line at the pilers, empty their loads, weigh empty, get their ticket with both weights, grower name and load number printed on it and head back to the field to do it all over again.
The ROPA tractor has the defoiliator in front and the digger in the back. It is all in one unit. Although the ROPAs here in the US generally operate a bit different than the ones in European states. I have seen where the European ROPAs top and dig their beets, but then pile them at the ends of their fields to wait their turn to haul them to the factory/mill. Here in the US the ROPAs top them, dig them and haul them right away.
Our crew has a separate defoiliator and digger. The defoiliator goes out at about sunrise, weather permitting, and gets a few rounds ahead of the digger. Then the rest of the crew go to the field and dig the beets. I drive either our semi truck with the live bottom trailer, it has a conveyor type of belt that goes from the front of the trailer to the back of trailer and then back to the front and unload the beets that way. Our belt is smooth where some have like big mud flaps spaced along the belt. And I have driven our straight truck with a box. I open the end gate and raise the front of the box to dump the beets.
Some farmers have what we call baskets on a flat bed trailer. Those trucks go to the side dump part of the piler where two hooks with chains are hooked onto the right side of a basket and then that side is raised to dump the beets out on the left side and into the hopper of the piler. They do that with each basket. Usually 2 baskets on a trailer.
We weigh in loaded, then go to a piler and dump our load, weigh empty and get a ticket with both weights, tare weight (the dirt shaken off of the beets as they go through the piler and gets weighed then emptied onto a tare truck that hauls the dirt to a part of the pile ground to get hauled away later) and the farmers name so we can keep track of how many loads we get from a field.
Then, those of us that do not haul direct to the factory, a payloader will load the rehaul trucks that take the beets from the receiving stations to the factory.
Some diggers are 6 row, our older ones were that way. And our newer diggers are 12 row.
The trucks have safety pull hooks on the front now so the pull tractor can just back up to the stuck truck, hook on and pull away. The pull tractor driver can even get to where they can release the truck on the go after pulling them out of the mud.
How could such a complex process have existed over 200 yrs ago? The first factory opened in Germany.
It was less complex back then. The basic principle of cutting the beet, boiling it and getting a sweet juice out of it is still, well, a hundred years late of the relatively modern sugar production at this scale and energy conservation. This is well seen at the scale they did it in 1850s for example. Back then almost 400 mills produced a total of 22million kilograms of sugar, where nowadays thats multiple times less than a SINGLE factory is producing. Its like you making mashed potatoes for your family vs making it for the whole country of yours at once, every day, with no compromises and less energy costs and optimization of the whole process in an industrial scale, running at 24/7!
Many if not almost all of modern production has its roots in far away history, but the industrial scale takes those extra years to get working efficiently and cost productively, let alone with multiple different areas of industrial manufacturing!
can we eat it or it only for making sugar???
Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica.
Michael!!
What are you doing?
Is a sugar beet sweet if you eat it ?
Northwestern Minnesota American Crystal Sugar.
I love sugar beets we grow them to eat them! Lol
The smell of Amalgamated Sugar comes back strong
Enjoyed the video
So what’s the difference in “refined sugar” and “white sugar” exactly?
White sugar is the lowest grade... they also skipped over the fact it is bleached as the additional impurities does not yield a brilliant white product. Refined is just that. Additional filtration removes more impurities producing as close to pure sugar as they can get.
There isn't any, sugar is "graded" based on crystal size. The largest is granulated, next up is caster, and above that is icing which has been milled into a fine (and explosive!) powder. Larger grades than granulated tend to be dissolved back in since they're not really useful.
Seems cleaner than cane sugar
BEARS. BEETS. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
Can sugar beet be grown in sandy soil?
Sugar beet sugar is the god tier of sugar.
In what way, exactly? It may be disgusting, but I think it actually exists.
Same process to sugar cane
I love sugar beets!
What’s crazy is team had to come up with the tools and processes to bring it to an industrial scale, then draw up the plans design to actually make it happen.
Probably it’s a process that is developed over hundreds of years of improvement (reducing waste and employees)
look at all of the processing that goes into this, yet it's one of the cheapest products that's added to everything. I wonder why diabetes is an epidemic?
@@ohsoloco5113 thanks Debbie downer.
@@ohsoloco5113 The processing is pretty simple, of course the scale is large because its industrial, but white sugar is not a harmful, but a natural substance in reasonable amounts. Diabetes is an issue due to brands adding sugar in extremely high doses to appeal to bigger audience who demand instant satisfaction from sweets and even normal stuff now like bread, and this is especially true in countries like the US where the added sugar is off the charts in many normal household groceries. The regulation of added sugar needs to be better, but sugar itself isnt the problem. Its like saying mayonnaise in hamburgers is the cause of obesity and its their fault for making a population fat. But realistically mayo is good and a normal ingredient IF YOU DONT eat hamburgers every day! Healthy and balanced diet is the key if you dont have allergies. The problem is that that balanced and healthy diet is getting skewed by producers who intentionally try to get you hooked up on normalising such high doses of sugars and fat in everyday products that could do very well without them!
Hello
Anyone tell me if there can be a smaller version of this suger machinery this look too expensive I’m thinking of starting one myself
Sugar beets are able to grow in more areas thus reducing the cost of beet sugar...
The cost to raise sugar beets is considerably higher than sugar cane. In addition they are an incredibly fragile plant.
@@ShainAndrews economy of Scale.
Now I know
Couldn’t this channel go to Crystal sugar in Minnesota instead of across the pond to show this process?
Who cares.
good
Does anyone know where to find Sugarbeet seeds?
I see beets headed to be turned into sugar every fall and winter the beet trucks stage in my town and head to the farms.
I always thought that beet sugar was the more popular one since it's the main type where I live
Now I have to wonder what the difference in white and refined sugars. My guess would only be that first extraction gets to be called white.
Crystal size. White sugar is larger crystals, refined sugar is also called powdered sugar.
@@michaelleue7594 Now you are really trying to confuse things saying powdered, when that should be a powder, not crystals.
Imagine this, instead of guessing you can do your own research.
White sugar, the basic kind for table and cooking, is just purified, concentrated and then crystallised sugar beet juice. Normally a beet sugar factory runs 3 "levels" or grades, where the leftovers of the crystallisation process are re-used, of white sugar until its not pure enough to be crystallised as white sugar within colour and opacity grading for even industrial use, and is then left in the liquid form to sell as molasses for both fodder addon and some specialty food production. These are often refined slightly through inversion so it keeps its liquidity and doesnt crystallise with time, and sold as dark and clear syrups you see on your stores shelfs.
The white sugar you find in usually 1kg bags at your local market, is just centrifuged and washed off of the brown colour and other slight dense molasses to produce a perfect white sugar crystal. :)
@@TheJebbe8 and that is cool to watch the molasses being separated from the crystals
Got to see the process at 2 local sugar beet factories and it was quite interesting
It's 3am in the morning I need to wake up for work at 7am but my brain says i need to search this up because its important.
Ariel
Beet beet sugar beet beet sugar beet beet sugar beeeeeeeeeeeeet
with all that processing, I'll stick honey in my coffee instead
Interesting
Huh they sell these near me. Gonna try making wine with some champagne yeast
The next step is to purify this raw juice. In a Giant kiln, they burn limestone with Coca-Cola to produce the chemical compound Calcium Hydroxide. Also called Caffeine free Diet Coke with Lime.
As someone who runs this very process of juice purification and almost the whole factory, im impressed you are so close with being so far off haha. Any background in beet sugar manufacturing? For the uninitiated, no, we dont use coca cola or any of its parts in our process but we do sell sugar to them hah. And yes we do burn limestone to get milk of lime and therefore calcium hydroxide, to get that mixed with the raw pulp juice which will in term capture and crystallize all the imperfections from the juice and create bigger molecules to be filtered out and only leave pure sugar beet juice to be concentrated in evaporators and then crystallised and packaged!
Which sugar is healthy to consume ? Sugarcane or sugar beet ?
As far as I know there’s not a significant difference health-wise. Both cane sugar and beet sugar are basically pure sucrose; it’s the same molecule just produced from different sources.
All white sugar is highly refined using chemical processes. Neither are healthy.
The healthiest option is organic raw cane sugar but the should only be used in very moderate amounts.
aslong it is not fructose syrup you are save aslong as you doen´t overdo it
Sugar beets are hard to pass
사탕수수로만 설탕을 만드는 줄 알았는데 suger beet로도 설탕을 만드는 것은 처음 알았습니다
It's called read the lable.
something inside says it's dangerous to work with sugar
Sugar factory explosions are a concern. Much like any mill operation. Cleanliness and maintenance is critical. If you can atomize powdered sugar correctly over an open flame you can get an idea what kind of energy can be released.
Sweet beets
So that's why sugar is addicting, they mix it with coke 😂
BEET BEET SUGAR BEET BEET SUGAR BEET SUGAR BEET BEET!!!!!
raw juice
mmmm, lime milk and raw juice
and also thin juice
What do they mean they mix limdstone & “coke” to the mix 3:09
The fuel coke made by baking coal to remove impurities.