Sorghum Syrup WITHOUT A Press Or Juicer

hi guys it's Bren with kindred acres homestead and so today we're actually gonna talk about two-in-one plants and why I love them so much but in particular we're going to talk about one that I'm going to be harvesting today which is sorghum so the reason I love those two-in-one plants for example a beet or a radish is a great example of a two-in-one plant where you get the beet root but you also get the greens to eat while the beet root is growing so I love planting stuff like that that you get multiple purposes and multiple uses out of it sorghum is one of those that I love to plant because of that reason so sorghum is actually in the grain family it grows really tall kind of like corn and there's many different varieties of sorghum we have two different types growing we have the African white sorghum and we also have the red sorghum growing and today we're actually gonna be harvesting our African white sorghum some of our stocks actually got very impressive in height about ten and a half feet which on average they say they grow between nine and ten feet so we got lucky with some really tall stalks here and I'm gonna take you over and show you the stocks of sorghum the stuff that's left behind we've already harvested some and so we're gonna show you what that looks like and why we love the two-in-one sorghum so much and simply because not only do you get the grain out of it but you also get the sugarcane to process for syrups and molasses and the grain can be used to grind down for flour to make pancakes and waffles or you can pop it like a popping corn or you can feed your chickens with it so it's a really great high-protein grain really super easy to grow and they're very tall and not bushy like so it's really not a big space issue hype yes but with wise you can grow plenty of other plants below it and it's not gonna take up too much room in your garden so it would be great to grow up whole beans or anything to climbing type plants around it just as you would with the corn so let's go on over and take a look at the different grain heads that we've got and learn how to process that they came to make sorghum syrup and sorghum molasses okay so just to show you a little close-up of the sorghum I'm going to show you one first that's not quite ready so this green here if you look really close it does have the green hats but they're not quite popping open and they don't have much of that red color to it but then when you look at this one you can see more of the red color and you could see the actual hole is popping open in the grain is exposed and this is about when you want to get them you can get a look you can let them go a little bit longer than that but right about now is when the birds are gonna start coming in and trying to take it so either put some pantyhose over it like some sort of netting or something to protect it or you can take it like this at this point it's still a viable seed and it will pop for you and you can still grind them down like that so we're gonna go ahead and harvest the ones and then just to show you a little bit of what they look like before they've even gotten to that stage of maturity we've got one let's see right here so that's what it looks like when they're first just getting ready to pop out so they're just kind of bunched up in there and it kind of looks like a corn stalk grouse very much like corn and they're just kind of bunched up in there and that's a very young one not not at all ready so we're not gonna take that one today and so sorghum grows just like corn and it's a grass and in the grass family and it doesn't require a whole lot so just your basic compost it does get very tall so maybe some support if you live in a very windy area we've had ours kind of blow a little bit over a couple times but they manage to be okay so just something something to consider if you pack them in closer that would also help we kind of spread ours apart we had a bunch planted in here but the chickens kind of pulled him up before they got to maturity and we were out of seed so this is all the seed we have left this year is really about seed saving for us okay so today we actually have Sara here with us who's our work exchanger she's come into kindred acres to give us a hand and to learn what she can and so today she's actually going to go ahead and cut the sorghum down for us and so we're just gonna cut it about an inch below the base and we'll just take the whole stock down and for this you're gonna need some pretty big loppers we're using just a branch cutter tool because the stalks are very thick and hard to get through so regular pair of shears or scissors probably won't do it for you about an inch above the ground and you can just toss them on the ground there and we'll get this okay we'll go ahead and continue that [Music] okay so now that we have the sorghum cut down what Sarah is going to do now is go ahead and cut the grain head off and we're gonna save that because we're gonna go ahead and dry those and grind them to make waffles out of them so you just want to cut them as close to the top as possible and just store them in a bag for now later on you can choose to either lay them out on say even a trampoline or you know if you have a table in your garage and you want to lay them out there or you can ohi's leave a little bit more of a stem tie them up and just hang them to dry depending on how many stalks of sorghum you're growing and how much space you have if you're just doing it as a hobbyist for fun I like this year is more about the fun for us but if you're planning on doing it for actual grain to sustain you you're gonna have a lot so the hanging method probably be best for you all right so thank you now once you have that cut we're gonna go ahead and get ready to process the stocks for syrup okay so for the next part what we're gonna do is just pull all the leaves off of the stalks and just set them aside that can go into your compost whatever you choose to do with that wanna do the hand love pull the leaves off the stock go for it [Music] okay so for the next part what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut the stalks off into sections so you just want to cut the knuckle out so she's going to cut above and below the knuckle the knuckle just gets tossed into the compost and the remaining piece goes into your stack [Music] okay guys so now we have our stalks cut knuckles out they were they're boiling now in the pots and we have just a basically a big stockpot and we're gonna just keep letting this boil on for now on high until it gets to a full boil and then I'll turn it to medium medium high and it'll take you know about an hour or two every now and then what you want to do is just kind of pull one of the the pieces out and just chomp down on the end a little bit to see if it still tastes sweet if it has any flavor at all put it back in and just let it continue to boil until basically the stocks are flavorless once they're flavorless then you'll go ahead and pull all the stalks out and just continue to on medium heat medium to medium-high depending on your stove and your altitude you will continue to boil the water down until it gets to either a syrup or if you want to go a little bit further you can boil it down until it's a nice amber molasses so it just depends on what your final goal is so we're just gonna go ahead and let this boil and we'll be back to show you the end result [Music] okay so we've been boiling our cans for about an hour now and so I went ahead and scoop them out and I'm letting them cool off to the touch and now that they're cool enough you're just going to come with a paring knife or you know just a knife carefully please be careful and now that they've boiled for about an hour it makes it a little bit easier so you just kind of get in there and just pull and start peeling the stalks killing the Canes and so once you get them peels I mean you don't have to do it all but the more you do the more sugar you're going to release and that's the whole point is you want the sugar so it takes just a few minutes honestly it's not a long process to just yoga canes pop them back into your pot and just let them continue to boil a little bit longer so it takes maybe five minutes to do the peeling process you get kind of quick at it and and we like I said you don't need to do all but the more you do the better because you want as much of the exposed cane as possible because that's where all the flavor is the sugar so if you could just go ahead and PL B's you have a couple of people in the house [Music] [Music] okay guys so we're done boiling up and so I've already strained it so basically right at the end I went ahead and pulled our leftover canes out of the pot and I got myself a little strainer and set it here and strained it out and what we're left with is a little over two cups of syrup now it's not gonna be thick at this stage cause it's still hot it will thicken up how's it cools but we tasted it and it's delicious it's sweet perfect coloring and now to make a molasses out of it you would have just continued boiling this down a little bit further until it thickens to a deep deep amber color very thick molasses and so I'm guessing if we were to boil this down to a molasses we'd be down to about one and a half cups or so but we wanted a serum so we've got a syrup here and so this is you know it's a long process but honestly the most time-consuming part is processing the Canes but the rest I mean if you have and I will add here though that I suggest doing this outside because it is a long process to be boiling for that long and it's going to raise the heat in your the temperature in your house and it's going to create on a steam so outside is probably better so if you can just go ahead and set an outside fire pit and do this over the fire outside then really you could be doing other garden stuff while it's boiling down to your syrup you can be planting the seeds tending your garden whatever else you want to do so it's not like you have to be standing over the pot the whole time so sure the process takes time but really the only hands-on portion of it is mainly the beginning portion of processing the Canes and then from there it's just a matter of boiling it down and at the end straining it and that's really it so it's very delicious the fun project and you made your own sorghum syrup for your waffles and pancakes so it's just you know a little novelty thing that we like to do at the end of the growing season enjoy and I hope you guys give it a go and leave some comments below if you've tried this method if it worked for you what tips you might want to add to it and your thoughts of the delicious sorghum syrup so thanks for watching and we'll talk to you

Channel: Kindred Acres

Views: 29,426

Keywords: Tags 0, sorghum, syrup, molasses, homestead, grain, processing, garden, food forest, horticulture, permiculture, polyculture, hugel, sustainable, homesteading, gardening, grow, foodforest, food scape, foodscape, edible, process, woodchips, wood chips, BTE, back to eden, lasagna, grains, cover crop, cover, chicken, fodder, feed, farm, sugar, press, cane, juice, how-to, how to, how

Id: vZeTfbfWyx8

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018