Our experiment with sugar beets has concluded. These Lovecraftian beasts were what our crop looked like on harvest.
So we're not doing that again ( for now). When studying the crop on line earlier, ( see my Feb. 10 post ) the roots looked so smooth, uniform, tidy, and big. Since this was an experiment, I only planted about twenty seeds. Germination was not that great, and ended up with a dozen plants.
I did water the plants occasionally this past summer, and weeded them, but I'm generally trying to find food sources that can handle minimal inputs and management. During the summer, the tops looked vigorous and large, much larger than regular beets. No clue why the roots got so gnarly and feral looking. The soil had fairly good tilth and organic content.
These guys needed more peeling, cutting, and trimming than I had thought, but that was not the clincher. I just didn't get that much sugar for the effort. Running through a food processor to shred, throwing in a pot to boil a bit and then straining the water though cheesecloth, and then cooking down to a syrupy consistency, it was a fair bit of work to do at small scale, for not much reward.
Taste was ok. You could tell it was not your regular sugar, but I got no strong added taste, and when used to sweeten my last batch of granola, could detect no hint of earthy beet taste.
Did my technique need improvement? Could I have gotten a lot more sugar out with a tweak to my process? Maybe so, but for now, I think I'll stick to the maple syrup we tap and cook down. And of course, as with most of us, I could eat less sugar.
Thank you for this! I've always wondered if home-made sugar/syrup from sugar beets was possible. Beets and sugar beets grow well here. Side note: we saw many "sugar beet dumps" (where the beets are gathered in a b i i i g heap before hauling to the sugar factory), on an October trip through Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska this year. There are still a few working sugar beet to sugar factories in this area and a defunct factory about half a mile from our house (which is 1903 former beet worker housing). I'd be very interested to know how much sugar you got from 12 beets.
ReplyDeleteWe tapped a box-elder and a black walnut for sap one winter and got about 2 Tablespoons of (tasty) syrup after it was all cooked down.
Good wishes to you and yours for 2023! I enjoy your blog.
SW
Hi SW; Thanks for visiting. Truth be told, I only processed the three largest beets, since they were so much work. I got about 3/4 cup of syrup from these three, so say about 1/4 cup per. The rest went in the compost bin.
DeleteI've never tapped walnut, but about half of my syrup is from box elder, and it tastes just fine.