Oh sugar, another ethical question.

[Green Aura]

You'll still need to buy sugar for wine making though. Honey is part invert sugar which the yeast can't use, so you need to use a lot more and end up with really sweet wine.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I was just curious because I wondered whether brown sugar and molasses was a lot easier to make and could therefore be done on a cottage industry scale, I think I may have read something about in John Seymour's book. The sugar I bought was clearly hand bagged, it just had a handwritten label on it.

It is possible to make crude sugar in a domestic kitchen, certainly from cane. I have seen sugar cane being grown in Catalonia, so I guess there may be a fair bit about.

Do a search on "jaggery" which is the Indian raw sugar and you will find a fair bit online about how this is done, but the most difficult bit is crushing the juice out. The kind of mill used for grape crushing might work. If not, the inventive use of a car jack does.

Molasses is actually the residue from making refined sugar. I don't know how this could be done easily at home.

[contadina]

Now't but grapes goes into my wine, but I appreciate that country wines require sugar to aid fermentation.

[contadino]

I was just curious because I wondered whether brown sugar and molasses was a lot easier to make and could therefore be done on a cottage industry scale, I think I may have read something about in John Seymour's book. The sugar I bought was clearly hand bagged, it just had a handwritten label on it.

It is possible to make crude sugar in a domestic kitchen, certainly from cane. I have seen sugar cane being grown in Catalonia, so I guess there may be a fair bit about.

Do a search on "jaggery" which is the Indian raw sugar and you will find a fair bit online about how this is done, but the most difficult bit is crushing the juice out. The kind of mill used for grape crushing might work. If not, the inventive use of a car jack does.

Molasses is actually the residue from making refined sugar. I don't know how this could be done easily at home.

There's a section on making sugar in 5 Acres, I recall. I've also seen a segment in a TV programme (where they used a small stainless steel press - the corkscrew type) to free the juice. Unfortunately, I can't remember which programme it was.

Now't but grapes goes into my wine

Who's wine? It's mine until it finds its way into your glass.

[jim]

I did read that beet sugar can't all be fermented if used in homebrew wine or beer. This means your brew will end up sweeter (yuk) and less alcoholic (shame).

Silver spoon, being beet sugar, is therefore not fit for purpose. As well as the other downers associated with mononculture, agribusiness etc.

Love and Peace
Jim

[MKG]

Ahaaaaa!!! A couple of red herrings.

Honey is resistant (not very, though) to fermentation. This has nothing to do with its main sugars being glucose and fructose (i.e. invert sugar) because the first thing yeast does to sucrose is to invert it to glucose and fructose. Yeast really loves invert sugar. The problem lies in the almost total lack of acidity in honey and the fact that it contains other sugars (e.g. maltose) in small amounts which are non-fermentable by yeast. Add the acid and some water, and honey cheerfully turns into mead, but it will NEVER be completely dry.

Refined beet sugar is almost 100% chemically identical to refined cane sugar - it will ferment just as easily. There is an ongoing discussion that the 0.05% difference in chemical make-up between the two is discernible to the average taste-bud, and that argument is raging amongst home bakers rather than home brewers.

[ina]

There is an ongoing discussion that the 0.05% difference in chemical make-up between the two is discernible to the average taste-bud

Not to my taste buds... I've used both in the past (for wine making as well as baking!) - there's no difference.

You can make dark syrup from sugar beet. My parents had to do it themselves in the last wars; they used the wash butts for that (our house must have been one of the last that had one built in the cellar - in 1964! - my mum didn't believe in those newfangled washing machines...); clean and chop loads of sugar beet; boil with water for a long time; strain and press through oat straw (they stressed it had to be oat!); keep boiling until the liquid turns dark and syrupy. And then, the kids were allowed to scrape out the butt! Very popular with them, as you can imagine...

We still have this dark syrup in Germany; it's a very popular spread, especially with Quark. A bit like a cross between golden syrup and treacle. And essential for various spicy cakes and biscuit recipes for Christmas.

[gdb]

http://www.britishsugar.co.uk/RVEb96551 ... ne%20Sugar

This is a link to British Sugar and they have, apparently, lots of organic sugar in different types.

(Course, whether or not it's actually grown in Britain I'm not sure.... But it might be worth looking into?)

[ina]

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately they don't tell you how it's produced... Except for the one that they explicitly call cane sugar! But all the other stuff might be cane sugar, too.

[rockchick]

Having read all that, I'm still not sure what sort of sugar to favour. Although, not sure that buying multinational produce that is coincidentally produced locally is really the same as a 'local' producer who in my mind only supplies a local market.

Sugar beet production was featured on Jimmys Farming Heroes a couple of months back. I don't remember them actually discussing the growing but focussed on the processing. Was really very interesting am trying to recall the details. I think it went something like starting by washing the beet (water recycled) then the soil removed was sold as topsoil and any stones as aggregate. Beet was a large percentage water (again recycled) and after sugar extraced any remainging fibres were converted to some kind of animal feed. Excess heat and carbon dioxide from the plant were piped to a nearby large scale green house growing tomatoes. Can't remember where it was based, have a feeling it was over towards Norfolk.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Having read all that, I'm still not sure what sort of sugar to favour. Although, not sure that buying multinational produce that is coincidentally produced locally is really the same as a 'local' producer who in my mind only supplies a local market.

Sugar beet production was featured on Jimmys Farming Heroes a couple of months back. I don't remember them actually discussing the growing but focussed on the processing. Was really very interesting am trying to recall the details. I think it went something like starting by washing the beet (water recycled) then the soil removed was sold as topsoil and any stones as aggregate. Beet was a large percentage water (again recycled) and after sugar extraced any remainging fibres were converted to some kind of animal feed. Excess heat and carbon dioxide from the plant were piped to a nearby large scale green house growing tomatoes. Can't remember where it was based, have a feeling it was over towards Norfolk.

To be honest, I don't see why sugar beet could not be as benign as any other properly managed crop: careful rotations, local processing, maximum use of the plant as you describe.

Mostly, I think beet sugar is suffering from a PR problem. "Pure, white & deadly" and all that. Plus the trade is mostly in the hands of large companies (quite often the remnents of state monopolies), so that must be bad thing.

However, there is the ever present taint of explotation, certainly (for me) when cane sugar from the Caribs is marketed as anything but fairtrade. Why don't T***o and the rest come clean and label the bulk of what they sell as an "Evil & Explotative Bastard" range, because, for me, that is the implication of the absence of a fairtrade mark.

Personally, I would always score local, or at least European, production above organic or fairtrade from further afield. At least in Europe there are laws in place to punish explotation of workforce (notice I didn't say "prevent") and the term organic has some meaning beyond that which the supermarkets wish it to have.

Happily there are some European producers of tropical cane sugar and bananas, Réunion & Martinique, which are fully fledged départements of La Belle France (take a close look at a euro note - they're on there), to be precise, and though I appreciate that it is stretching the definition of "local" a little I still try and buy these.

[ina]

Mostly, I think beet sugar is suffering from a PR problem. "Pure, white & deadly" and all that.

But beet sugar isn't white to start out with, either - you are right, it's the processing and the PR that's at fault here. I think mainly it's because, as it was given massive subsidies, farmers tended to grow it too exclusively wherever they got away with it - and that was the problem...

[Ellendra]

Molasses can be made from sorghum at home, which is an easily grown relative of corn. It does require a press to get the juice out of the stalks, but its very similar to a wine press. Then just evaporate off the excess water.

Don't forget maple syrup, which can be gotten from any variety of maple tree, not just sugar maples.

[growingthings]

I live just up the road from a huge Sugar Beet Factory - in Cantley, Norfolk.

We are in the throws of the Beet season right now, the factory is only actively producing sugar crystals for five months of the year. And you know about it as there is always the prevading smell of peanuts i the air (don't ask why peanuts- thats just what it smells like!)

The beet factory has been there since 1912, and while I appreciate that British Sugar are a super large agri-business. They do provide an awful lot of work for the already struggling farmers in this area, which is apart from the tourism, is the only other major sector in this area.

The factory itself, is totally selfsufficient in energy, and provides beet nuts (cattle feed) and topsoils. Also providing LimeX45, the lime soil conditioner needed to regulate the acidity levels - this is actually - before you all recoil in horror - a soil association licenced product, so not quite so hideously damaging as you first think.

(spot the woman who had to learn about local industry at school!)

I think that even though there are obvious down sides to this scale of production (like those damn lorries rumbling through my village!), at least they are trying to improve the situation a little.

thats all I know myself, but I'm sure you could find out more - if you were so inclined.

Lorna x

[Stonehead]

Oh dear, the usual internet myths and Chinese whispers...

Sugar beet is actually grown as part of arable crop rotations, and is particularly valuable to farmers as it's a break crop between wheat, barley, peas and other cereals/pulse. (A break crop being a secondary one that is physiologically different to the main crop and so breaks the pattern of pests, weeds, etc, which actually means less pest/disease control is needed.)

Beet is also valuable as a means of returning vegetable matter to the soil. This is because the leaf matter is cut by the harvester and dropped to the ground while the beet is lifted. The leaves are then ploughed in. Beet leaves are also used as animal fodder, reducing the need to grow other crops for this purpose.

However, like other areas of the farming industry, beet farming is contracting fast.

The most recent figures I've seen (Farmers Weekly) were that around 4,750 farmers would be contracted to produce sugar beet in 2009. That's a huge contraction from more than 10,000 in 1990.

Prices are also well down, £24 per tonne when it used to be around £40 per tonne. But costs, particularly fuel and fertiliser, are up while bad weather for the past two years have pushed yields down.

And prices are dictated by British Sugar, which has a monopoly and is the sole buyer of the British beet crop.

Would you prefer to buy Fair Trade cane sugar and help cane growers in Malawi? (British Sugar sources Fair Trade sugar from Malawi.) Or buy British beet sugar so that a few more British farmers can stay in business? (And isn't it about time there were Fair Trade products that provided a decent return to British farmers and small producers?)

Organic sugar beet production ran from 2001-2003. The 2004 organic crop was processed as a standard crop and no organic contracts have been made since (as far as I can find out). British Sugar said at the time that there was too little demand for there to be a viable market.

As for beet sugar not fully fermenting out, not true. I grow mangels—a close relative of the sugar beet—and they make a very fine and very strong ale. The sugars do indeed fully ferment out, creating an ale with a strength of 6.8%.

Oh, and beet sugar is only produced for five months of the year because it's a seasonal crop. The "campaign" runs from September to Christmas, when sugar levels are at their highest in the beets. At the same time, farmers have to beat the hardest frosts as beets are damaged by freezing temperatures. (My mangels have to come up now.)

Apologies for dropping in like that, but I do wish people would check their facts first.