🥄 The syrup that was squeezed, not tapped

Maple syrup comes from sap tapped out of a tree in early spring. Sorghum syrup comes from juice crushed out of a stalk in the fall, and the plant is a grass. The University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service’s growers’ guide names it exactly: “The name ‘sweet sorghum’ is used to identify varieties of sorghum, Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, that are sweet and juicy. Sweet sorghum is grown for syrup or forage, whereas some other sorghums, such as kafirs and milos, are grown for grain.” One species, three completely different jobs — a sweetener, an animal feed, a grain — settled by which variety somebody chose to plant.

Basis: University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, AGR-122, “Production of Sweet Sorghum for Syrup in Kentucky” (Morris J. Bitzer): “The name ‘sweet sorghum’ is used to identify varieties of sorghum, Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, that are sweet and juicy. Sweet sorghum is grown for syrup or forage, whereas some other sorghums, such as kafirs and milos, are grown for grain.”

The jar is usually mislabelled, too. Ask for the stuff in most of the country and somebody will hand you a jar of “sorghum molasses.” The same Kentucky guide will not let that pass: “The term ‘sorghum molasses’ is a colloquial expression incorrectly applied to sorghum syrup. Molasses is a by-product of the sugar crystallization from sugarcane juice.” Molasses is what is left over after sugar has been taken out of cane juice. Sorghum syrup is the whole juice, boiled down with nothing removed. They are not the same food, and one of them has been wearing the other’s name for a very long time.

Basis: University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, AGR-122: “The term ‘sorghum molasses’ is a colloquial expression incorrectly applied to sorghum syrup. Molasses is a by-product of the sugar crystallization from sugarcane juice.”

Follow the juice. The stalks go through a roller mill — “Under normal conditions, an efficient mill will deliver 45 to 50 pounds of juice from 100 pounds of clean stalks,” says the companion guide, and the mill “should be strong enough to apply from 50 to 100 tons of pressure on the stalks.” What runs out is not the colour you are picturing. The guide calls it “the raw, pea-green juice.” Green. It is then boiled in a long shallow pan, and somebody has to stand over it the whole time, because “the boiling juice must be continuously skimmed to produce high quality syrup.” It comes off when it is ready and not before: “Remove the syrup from the evaporator when it reaches 226° to 230°F (108° to 110°C).” Green juice in one end of the pan; amber syrup out the other.

Basis: University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, AGR-123, “Harvesting, Processing, and Marketing Sweet Sorghum for Syrup” (Morris J. Bitzer and J. D. Fox): “Under normal conditions, an efficient mill will deliver 45 to 50 pounds of juice from 100 pounds of clean stalks.”; “A mill should be strong enough to apply from 50 to 100 tons of pressure on the stalks.”; “As the raw, pea-green juice runs from the mill, it should be strained through a wire screen into a juice box.”; “Regardless of the evaporation method used, the boiling juice must be continuously skimmed to produce high quality syrup.”; “Remove the syrup from the evaporator when it reaches 226° to 230°F (108° to 110°C) or when it reaches a density of 78° to 80° Brix with a syrup hydrometer or sugar refractometer.”

Two numbers from the guide show how much work sits behind one jar. First the exchange rate: “It takes from 6 to 12 gallons of raw juice to make one gallon of sorghum syrup.” Then the clock: “Because the processing season is short (fewer than 60 days),” everything — cutting, stripping, milling, boiling, canning — has to happen inside one narrow stretch of autumn, after the sugar has come up in the stalks and before the frost gets them. A sorghum mill is not a factory that runs all year. It is a few weeks, once a year, and then it stops. (What that means for the size of the crop is a separate question, and the guide does not answer it here.)

Basis: University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, AGR-123: “It takes from 6 to 12 gallons of raw juice to make one gallon of sorghum syrup. The finished syrup will weigh about 11.5 pounds per gallon.”; “Because the processing season is short (fewer than 60 days) and the amount of syrup produced depends on the quantity of juice extracted, it is imperative to have reliable and efficient milling equipment.”

It used to be everywhere. “Sweet sorghum syrup has been produced in the United States since colonial days,” the Kentucky guide says, and “Some sweet sorghum syrup has at one time or another been produced in every one of the contiguous 48 states.” Every one. Then look at what happened to a single state’s numbers: “The first statistical record of sorghum syrup produced in Kentucky was in 1899 when 21,982 acres were grown and 1,277,206 gal of syrup were produced.” After that it fell and kept falling — “From 1937-1946, average sweet sorghum acreage in Kentucky was 13,000 acres,” then about 4,000 acres a year through the 1950s, then 2,000 by 1960. “This downward trend continued until 1972, when sugar prices greatly increased,” the guide says, and then: “From fewer than 500 acres in 1972, acreage has steadily increased to over 3000 acres in 1994.” A food does not have to vanish in order to almost vanish.

Basis: University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, AGR-122: “Sweet sorghum syrup has been produced in the United States since colonial days. Some sweet sorghum syrup has at one time or another been produced in every one of the contiguous 48 states.”; “The first statistical record of sorghum syrup produced in Kentucky was in 1899 when 21,982 acres were grown and 1,277,206 gal of syrup were produced. From 1937-1946, average sweet sorghum acreage in Kentucky was 13,000 acres with a syrup production of 875,000 gal at an average value of $1.50/gal. During the years 1949-1958, only 4,000 acres were grown annually and by 1960, acreage had decreased to 2,000 acres.”; “This downward trend continued until 1972, when sugar prices greatly increased.”; “From fewer than 500 acres in 1972, acreage has steadily increased to over 3000 acres in 1994.” The acreage figures are the publication’s; they are not current-year statistics.