Harvesting Louisiana Purple Sugar Cane (Part II: Processing into Pure Cane Syrup)

In YESTERDAY'S POST we talked about our Louisiana Purple Sugarcane - both growing it and harvesting the first crop from our garden.  After cutting it, we put the cane in a wagon and hauled it to the back yard where we started processing it.  The first thing we did was to strip all of the leaves off of it.

As we finished, we dropped the purple sugarcane in a stack on the ground.

We used a rag to scrub the sugarcane clean.  There is a build-up of a black smut-like substance that must be cleaned off.  We don't want that or any dirt to get into our final product.

Once cleaned, we then use a machete to begin chopping the cane into two-inch long pieces.

We are going to be processing our sugarcane into pure cane syrup.  We also cut chunks into slivers that we chewed.  It was so sweet!  I can remember chewing cut up cane as a young boy.  It brought back good memories.  The more we cut, the more our pot began to fill up.

Before we knew it, we had 3 big pots full of cut up sugarcane ready to be processed into syrup.

I put the cane into our crawfish boiling pot, filled with water to cover and then lit the butane burner underneath the pot.

Pretty soon, there was sweet smelling steam emanating from our pot.  It boiled.  And boiled.  And boiled some more.

After about 3 hours, I pulled the basket of cut up cane out of the water and let it drain real good back into the pot.  By this point all of the sweetness has boiled out of the cane cubes and is now contained in the water as sugarcane juice.  The cut up cane will be trench composted into the garden.

We kept boiling the water/sugarcane juice as we watched the LSU football game and then went to vote in the election.  I'd say it boiled for another 2 hours while the liquid reduced due to evaporation.  I also skimmed foam off the top repeatedly.

Finally what was left in the pot was syrup.  I poured it through a fine sieve to filter out any pieces of cane and other particles.

After 5 + hours of boiling, not counting the time spent harvesting and chopping, we had a little less than a quart of homemade sugarcane syrup.  Okay, I'll admit it, from an economical standpoint, that is not a very efficient conversion.  It is much cheaper to just drive to the store and buy some Steen's Pure Cane Syrup.  But, I will also say (I'm biased, I know) that this homemade sugarcane syrup is delicious!  I love Steen's, but I think ours has a better flavor.

Meanwhile, we have more immature sugarcane growing in the garden that will be ready for harvest a little later.  I also planted two more stalks in the garden soil to keep our sugarcane crop producing next year.

It was a fun experiment to see if we could make our own syrup and we found that we could.  It was just a lot of work and time to do it and was a good lesson on economies of scale!