Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1886-06-18
How Sugar is Made.

The process of "sugar-making," in its
essentials, is simple enough matter 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
through charcoal: it is then boiled, to
evaporate as much of the water as posi-
BILE, and crystalline the solid sugar; it is
then cooled, and the molasses drained
off, leaving the soft dark sugars, In
which each crystal has its thin coating of
molasses, or dried by centrifugal ma
chine, as clothes are dried in the whirl-
ing drier, whence the water flies out, or
further clarified and left to crystalline in
white loaSes, which are sawed or crushed
or ground or powdered into the several
varieties of fine white sugar. Most of
! these earlier processes are performed on
| the plantations, but in many cases they
are repeated, and the sugar carried
through the final process in the great re-
fineries. "Refning" is, in fact, little
more than finer repetition of the pro-
cesses of making" and to do these sim
pie things on great scale and in the
best way is the sole purpose of those
enormous beehives of industry.
The sugar makers first aim is to get
from the cane as much of its percentage
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 diffusion" or by O
combination of crushing and of macera-
ton in water. Crushing or grinding the
cane is process in use from the earliest
times, as is seen in the primitive sugar
mills of the east, which consist of the
followed stump of a tree, within which
is q grinding postal worked by oxen
treading their round, driven from the
arm of the bar by one man, while anothe,
feeds in pieces of cane, one by one, ano
takes out the crushed remains. A mil
almost as primitive as this is still in us
The sugar-house on a great plantation
is large, high building in the centre o
the farm, to which roads or tramway
lead from all directions. AS load o
cane comes up, it is fed upon an endles
belt or railway, which carries it up slowl
to the crushing MILL an affair of simpl
construction bat of enormous power
The crushers are great rollers of cast
iron, in pairs or triplets, sometimes on
( set, sometimes more, working at pres
sure of from fifty to eighty pounds to tn
. square inch, and so arranged as to Civ
I slightly before any extraordinary strair
I There are all sorts of opinions as t
,, whether it is be- ter to crush rapidly
i slowly, and to crush once only or to re
/ peat the operation with increasing pres
I sures. The juice flows from the crushel
! in one direction; the residual cane, no
:, known as 'begass,' is carried off
! another by an endless belt, to be use
either for dressing for the cane fields
! as fuel in the heating processes whic
the juice is next to undergo. One of tt
great improvements in modern suga
: making has been the development
furnaces which get most of their fu
from the begass ..-Harper's.