Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1886-08-16
A9ritaltmral department,
HOW SUGAR is MADE.


The process of "sugar making" in
its essentials is simple enough mat
ter of cookery. The first care of
the producer is to get all the sugar
possible out of the cane or grass or
root, either by squeezing out the
juice or washing out the sugar; the
sugar-maple saves the sugar-maker
this trouble, delivering the sap ready
for the boiler. The juice is then
cleared of its impurities, as coffee is
cleared by the white of an egg, or
water is filtered thro' charcoal it is
then boiled, to evaporate as much Of
the water, as possible, and crystalline
solid sugar; it is then cooled, and
the molasses dried off, leaving the
soft dark sugars, in which each crys-
tai has it's thin coating of molasses,
or dried by a centrifugal machine, as
clothes are dried in the whirling dri-
err, whence the water flies out, or
further clarified and left to crystal
lize in white loaves, which are sawed
or crushed or ground or powdered
into several varieties of fine white
sugar. Most of these earlier proc
esses are performed on the planta-
ton, but in many cases they are re-
peated and the sugar carried through
the final process in the great refner-
les. "Refining" is, IN fact, little
more than a finer repetition of the
process of ''making," and to do these
simple things on great scale and
in the best way is the sole purpose
of those enormous beehIves of indus
try.
The sugar-maker' first aim is to
get from the cane as much of its per-
centage of juice as it can be induced
to give up. The juice is enclosed in
little cells of lignose, or woody fibre,
which make the other tenth of the
canes weight. There are three ways
of extracting the juice-by crushing,
by soaking out the sugar by the
process of 'diffusing," or by COM
bination of crushing and of macera-
ton in water. Crushing or grinding
the cane is process in use from ear
ly times, as seen in primitive sugar
mills of the East, which consisted of
the followed stump of tree, within
which is grinding pestle worked by
oxen treading their round, driven
from the arm of the bar by one man
while another feeds in pieces of cane,
one by one, and takes out the crush
ed remains. A mill almost as print
tive as this is still in use IN Arkan-
sas.
The sugar-house on a great planta-
ton is a large, high building, in the
centre of the farm, to which roads Of
tramways lead from all directions
AS load of cane Games up, it is fec
upon an endless belt or railway, which
carries it up slowly to the crushing
mill, an affair of simple construction
but of enormous power. The crush
ers are great rollers of cast-iron, il
pairs or triplets, sometimes one set
sometimes more working at pres
sure of from fifty to eighty pound
to the square inch, and so arrange'
to give slightly before any extrao1
binary strain. There are all sort
of opinions as TO whether it is bette
to crush rapidly or slowly, and t
crush once only OF to repeat the opel
alton with increasing pressures. TIL
juice flows from the crushers in on
direction, the residual cane, now know
as ''begass," is carried off in anott
Ell by an endless belt, to be use
either for dressing for the cane field
OF as fuel in the heating processe.
which the juice is next to undergo
One of the great Improvements 4
modern sugar-making has been tt
development of furnaces which o,
most of their fuel from the begass.-
R. r. Booker, IN Ha1per's Magt
zine.