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During syrup making, the
juice and nascent syrup are exposed to various
metals. This essay
discusses the incorporation of these metals into
the syrup and why that may be important.
Regulations concerning exposure of food to certain
metals are referenced.
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This brief entry provides brix values for several sugar-cane cultivars that are used for syrup production. Brix is essentially a measurement of the sugar content of juice and thus higher values predict less time and energy to reduce juice to syrup. (Thanks to Charles Deese and Ken Christison for use of each's refractometer.) |
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Many sugar-cane cultivars are
used to produce syrup in South Georgia and North
Florida. Syrups
produced from the three cultivars generally
recommended by the extension services (C.P.
36-111, C.P. 52-48, and C.P. 67-500) are compared
in this essay.
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Sucrose
is the least soluble of the three predominant
sugars in syrup.
Enzymatic hydrolysis of sucrose into the
invert sugars, glucose and fructose, is therefore
one means of preventing crystallization in syrup.
Modern well-defined commercial preparations
of invertase take the guesswork out of using this
enzyme.In this essay,
some experiments using invertase under field
conditions are described.
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This part of Southern
Matters focuses on sugar cane, but because of the
similarities in syrup making from sorghum and
sugar cane, some sorghum producers might read
these essays too. Thus, this very
brief commentary mentions points, clarifying I
hope, of interest to sorghum producers.
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This page is divided into
two parts. In the first part, the basic outline
for construction
of an evaporator is laid out. In the second
part, photographs of a skimming trough that may
be built onto the sides of the evaporator are shown.
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Vertical mills are sufficient
for most small-scale syrup producers and they are
more abundant and less expensive than horizontal
mills. This calculator
provides target RPMs for various mills.
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Establishing the target RPM (above) is the first step in a design for mechanization of an animal-powered vertical cane mill. The second step, provided by this calculator, is to determine the torque requirement.
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This calculator returns the power requirement for mechanization of an animal-powered vertical cane mill. Required inputs are the mill RPM and the desired torque, both values being provided by the calculators above. |
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The three calculators above provide a black-box approach to mechanizing a vertical mill. The data linked here provide the basic information that one might use to engineer his or her own solution. The mill used is shown in the last calculator, above, and the powertrain layout, here. (Many thanks to Joe Faragasso and Ralph Anderson for assistance.)
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