Deep into the third hour of making sorghum syrup, Gene Brown gave his verdict on the process.
“We had seven people out here, and we’ll get four quarts if we’re fortunate,” he said. “And we’ll slowly die of starvation.”
It would be a sweet end. Brown, 73, makes sorghum syrup on his property in Muscadine, a Cleburne County community not far from the Georgia line. He learned how after his retirement more than 15 years ago. Today, he enlisted his wife, brother, daughter, grandchildren and a few friends for a few hours to produce a batch.
Brown’s wife Martha said they start getting calls in June from friends who request a quart. But Brown says he loses money on the process and doesn’t cook up that much.
The work started this morning, as Brown’s brother Ralph and others began feeding cane stalks into a gas powered mill, which squeezed the stalks to produce the white juice that will serve as the basis for the syrup. Brown raises cane – literally – on his farm over about three to four months. Before being milled, the stalks are stripped in an often time-consuming process. It takes about seven gallons of juice to produce a gallon of syrup, he said.
The juice is then fed through pipes onto a wood-fired metal pan to cook. The pan is heated beneath from a brick oven, and the juice snakes through the maze-like pan past baffles where it bubbles. Every few minutes, Brown instructed someone close by to throw another few logs into the oven, filling the air with steam and the pan with bubbling, frothy juice.
Then Brown, his 13-year-old grandson Avery McWhorter, and his daughter Carrie began skimming the cooking juice, removing green residue that collects on top. Over the next hour, the juice continued to bubble and turn a dark brown in color.
By the time the syrup thickens at the far end of the pan, it has gone through four different strains. Then it’s on to the breakfast table, or as an ingredient in cookies, peanut brittle, pecan pies and other treats.
“It’s a good way to go broke,” Brown said. “There’s no way I can break even. I just mainly make it for myself and friends. But I leave it up to my wife who gets it.”
Source: A sweet time at the state line: Cooking sorghum syrup | AL.com