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| Making molasses (Winter 2006) |
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The ritual of molasses making has been in my family for more than 100 years
By Jim Grace
It takes a long time to make molasses the old-fashioned way. But my family is accustomed to taking the time, because we have been making molasses for generations. My great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents all made molasses, and now my wife and I make molasses with our kids.
The process of making molasses, also called sorghum, is simple and used widely in the world to produce a high-quality, nutritious, easy-to-store sweetener. It is well suited to a small acreage, limited machinery, and a workforce of family and friends.
In the United States, molasses production tends to be a small-scale enterprise practiced by families such as ours. About 50 million gallons were made in the U.S. annually during the years following World War I, but dropped to 2 million or less in the 1950s. By 1960, the USDA stopped keeping production estimates.
Although molasses making is a simple process, it is neither easy nor fast. Cane, or sorgo, is planted in the spring about the same time as corn. Sorgo seed varieties suggest their hopeful future, with such names as Sugar Drip, Honey, and Blue Ribbon. Like other farm crops, the growing cane must be tended, weeded, and receive adequate moisture to produce sweet, juicy stalks as harvest time nears.
Stripping stalks
As the trees begin to color in late September, we regularly check the cane for maturity. When the seeds start to firm up, the stalks are ready. To prepare the cane, we first strip the leaves from the stalks. The kids strip the lower leaves with a board lathe modified into a dull knife, while taller workers strip the upper leaves and cut the seed heads off with a corn knife. We have watched our children grow - too quickly, in my opinion - from stripping just a couple of lower leaves, to topping the stalks all by themselves.
After the leaves and seed heads are removed, we cut the cane off near the base, and stack the stalks onto a wagon. We always cut wedges of stalk and chew the pith to sample the juice. From its moisture and sweetness, we predict the quality of the final product. Molasses making day is a great social event, and may explain why rural folks still go to all the trouble of continuing the tradition. Friends and family work side by side from sun-up to sundown.
We start the day by squeezing the juice from the cane, and it requires real horsepower. Unlike our ancestors using a team of horses to power the press, we use the horsepower of a tractor and a belt pulley. The high pressure of the press crushes the stalks and forces out the juice, which drains into a bucket. The juice is unappealing - a watery, sticky green liquid with quite a few stalk parts floating in it. Bucket after bucket of juice is collected. We strain it by pouring it through a cotton feed sack and into the cooking pan. Our pan is big; it will hold 100 gallons of juice. When the pan is nearly full, it’s time to start cooking down the juice.
Timeless tending
Cooking, or evaporating the juice into molasses, can’t be hurried. All day long, we take turns tending the fire under the pan, trying to keep the juice cooking at a rolling boil. At the same time, we remove the “skimmings” - impurities and bitters that float to the surface of the boiling juice. For skimming, we use hand-made tools that have been passed down from generation to generation. It is sobering to imagine the same tools in our forefathers’ hands as they made molasses, scores of years before us.
While we’re cooking the juice, we visit, reminiscence, tell jokes and wryly criticize our siblings’ skimming techniques. We debate the taste and quality of the different years of molasses like vintages of wine. The air fills with steam and everyone notices a light, sticky film coating their hair as well as their clothing.
Critical timing
Like a good movie or a spellbinding novel, the cooking process leads to a sudden climax. The time to remove the pan of nearly finished molasses from the fire is critical to the success of the entire year’s work. Take it off a few minutes too soon and the molasses remains thin and does not store well. Remove it too late and the molasses cools thick enough to bend spoon handles when you try to scoop it out. Remove it at just the right time and the molasses cools to a translucent, golden brown syrup that flows slowly from the jar, then holds its position briefly before melting mouth-wateringly into a hot, buttered biscuit.
Every molasses maker has his own way of judging when the molasses is done. Some look for the boiling bubbles to break the size of quarters. Others withdraw a stirrer and look for the syrup-drip to thin out to a hair. Some say it is a special color only they can see. A few folks say a candy thermometer works unerringly, but old timers laugh and call that cheating. The call is made, and the pan of molasses, now one tenth the volume of the original juice, is lifted off the fire. When we pour the sweet, foamy, amber syrup into jars each fall, it is the culmination of a season of growing, tending, and processing. It also gives us the opportunity to work together on a project that connects us with growing our own food, and with the family molasses makers who came before us.
Old-timers depended on molasses, not just as a food but also in a variety of home remedies. Mix molasses with some pepper to cure hiccups, or blend molasses with water to encourage roses to bloom. Today, we make molasses because it continues to be a fun activity for our family. We hope to preserve the tradition for many more generations to come.
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