Sorghum syrup making family sticks together 
Brown Brothers’ Boyhood Memories Rekindled

by John Howle

Rich, sorghum syrup does a great job of holding a hot, buttered biscuit together, but for a group of brothers, the syrup has been the bond that holds a family together.

The Brown Brothers who make syrup consist of Winford, Silas, Ralph, and Gene; and when they were growing up on a rural farm in northeast Alabama, their father made syrup. Gene’s interest in syrup making was rekindled by stories from his father-in-law, the late Gaines Smith, when Smith would recount his boyhood syrup making. "When Mr. Smith’s health began to fail, I planted a small patch of sorghum that turned out only a pickup load, and I had it cooked at my neighbor’s, Reo 

Benefield’s, house thinking this would bring back fond memories and cheer up Mr. Smith," says Gene. "That pickup load only produced a few gallons of syrup, but it did wonders for my father-in-law’s spirits."

Gene Brown examines the seed head of the sorghum to be processed into syrup.

The second year, Brown built a cooker and furnace on his farm in Muscadine and produced 14 ½ gallons from sorghum cane harvested off his property. For the past eight years, Gene has involved his brothers, as well as Harold Davis, the juicer operator, in an operation that produces over 100 gallons of syrup per year.

Starting in late September when the seed head of the sorghum stalk turns to a rich, golden color, the brothers meet at Gene’s place for the annual sorghum cooking. Before the furnace gets fired up, however, the Browns will sample the quality of a few stalks by running a few canes through the juicer even before they harvest the crop. This gives them a chance to ensure that the syrup is mature enough to produce a quality product. "We taste the juice coming out of the juicer," says Winford. "The sweeter it tastes, the more syrup the juice will yield."

The cane is gathered by cutting the stalks with machetes or sometimes the use of a corn binder which 

cuts and ties bundles of stalks together. Silas and Ralph then take over the job of stripping the leaves and cutting the seed heads off the stalks, which prepares the cane for juicing.

Gene uses a Chattanooga 13 juicer which was formerly powered by a mule walking in revolutions around the mill pulling a long, boom pole. The Brown Brothers have modified a riding lawn mower by tying the handles in a stationary position to serve the same purpose as a mule.

Davis’s job is operating the juicer, which is a contraption with two tubes that looks like a couple of vertical steam rollers which are used for squeezing the juice out of the canes. Canes are fed into the large end of the juicer, and the squeezed juice flows into
55-gallon drums covered with burlap straining bags. The juice then flows from the barrels to the cooking pan by underground PVC piping. Since the juicer is on a higher elevation than the cooking pan, gravity pushes the liquid through the pipes and forces it into the pan through a faucet.

Winford’s job is keeping the furnace fed with dry pine wood. "Pine burns quicker than hardwood, and 

that makes it easier to adjust the heat," says Winford. "It uses the same principle that was used for cooking with stoves before we had gas and electric ovens."

Winford Brown adds pine to the firebox to keep the cooker at the correct temperature.

Gene Brown, the master cooker, is in charge of keeping the syrup cooking at a steady, even pace. "When the syrup is at the final stage of cooking, it is at a temperature of about 240 degrees, says Gene. "The syrup must be kept below 254 degrees Fahrenheit or it will scorch."

The syrup is formed by an evaporation process when the juice enters the pan. As the wood fire in the furnace heats the pan, the juice travels through a maze of slots. As the juice is heated, a green foam forms at the top. These green skimmings are dipped off into a bucket and discarded.

"The syrup is already in the juice we take from the cane," says Winford, Cleburne County Farmer’s Federation board member. "The cooking process just takes the water and skimmings out, leaving the concentrated syrup."

It takes around seven gallons of juice to equal one gallon of syrup. "On average, once the juice hits the 

pan, it takes an hour and 20 minutes to come out of the pan as syrup," says Winford. While the syrup is cooking, the brothers take turns straining the green skimmings or chlorophyll off the cooking juice. When the water and chlorophyll have been removed during the cooking process, the syrup leaves the pan through a slot and is strained through cheese cloth and held in a reservoir. The container has a faucet that allows individual jars to be filled.

Gene plants the sorghum at different time intervals so the entire crop doesn’t mature at the same time. "By staggering the planting dates, we have a chance to gather the cane and make syrup over a longer period of time," says Gene. "This keeps us from having to prepare the whole crop at once."

All the brothers agree that the stages leading up to the cooking of the syrup are the most labor intensive. "There’s more work in cutting, stripping, and removing the seed heads than cooking," says Winford, the eldest brother. "But I love the smell of syrup as it’s being cooked, the comradeship with my brothers, and the closeness we get each year in September and October."

The majority of syrup is sold word of mouth. The remaining jars are sold through the local feed mill and farmer’s market in Atlanta, Georgia. "We’re kinda like the famous ice cream company," said Gene. "We eat all we can and sell the rest."