Production of sugar from beets. What types of root vegetables are used to make a sweet product?

Production of sugar from sugar beets at home

Different methods for making beet sugar at home from scratch: from preparing raw materials to obtaining syrup. Recipes for natural Russian products for a healthy lifestyle are now available to everyone.

Beet sugar: from the depths of history to today

It so happened historically that sugar made from cane was most widely used. Such a product was very expensive, because the main territories where plantations were grown were far beyond the borders of civilized Europe and wild Rus', and, therefore, transportation costs played a significant part in the cost of the sweet substance. The only available alternative was, perhaps, honey. However, already in the 16th century, thanks to the scientific research of Andreas Sigismund Margrave and a certain French botanist Achard, another method of extracting sugar from sugar beets became known to the world. According to its properties, sugar obtained in this way not only makes it possible for it to be widely used by the population, but also has a number of advantages over its cane counterpart, namely: it has lower calorie content and contains the maximum amount of micro- and macroelements, since it does not require refining.

In Russia, due to the above-mentioned reasons, beet sugar has become more widespread.

The factory receives raw materials - beets. It is thoroughly washed in a special washing shop and cut into uniform chips. At the next stage, this mass is fed into tanks, where it is filled with hot water. Under the influence of water, the sugar contained in it and some other substances are separated from the chips, which, when oxidized, give the juice a dark brown color. To obtain maximum yield from the raw material, water leaching is carried out several times. Production waste - repeatedly soaked shavings are sent to feed livestock.

At the next stage, the resulting juice is cleaned of impurities, first heated to 80 ° C - this allows you to get rid of protein substances, and then treated in sealed tanks with lime milk, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Unwanted impurities at this stage precipitate, which remains in the tanks after subsequent evaporation of the juice. Evaporation produces a sweet syrup, which is then filtered and thickened in special containers. The output is granulated sugar with molasses, which is then separated from sugar crystals in centrifuges.

Beet sugar has a darker color than cane sugar, so it is finally washed with water and dried.

Making sugar from beets at home

You can now replace store-bought sugar with real Russian products: refined beetroot and sweet syrup.

Refined beetroot

Wash and peel the beets. Then cut it into thin rings and place it in a clay pot. Immerse the container in the oven to steam, without allowing our workpiece to burn. Look into the pot from time to time - the beets should become soft. Then pour the beet slices onto a baking sheet and place them back in the oven. Now the beets should dry. For longer storage and improvement of the general properties of our beets, then it is better to lightly fry the dried rings in a frying pan. Just a little - it will also improve the smell somewhat.

For consumption, all you have to do is grind these slices into flour, so they can be used to replace store-bought sugar in cooking.

For tea, you will need to roll these whole slices a little in flour and fry them in butter. Tasty and healthy.

Making syrup: first method

Peel the roots and heads and rinse the beets without peeling the skin. Place the washed root vegetables in dense rows in a pan with already boiling water. Watch the fire. The beets should be boiled in boiling water. After 1 hour, remove the root vegetables from the pan, wait for them to cool and remove the skins.

Cut the beets into thin slices no thicker than 1 mm. Once crushed in this way, place it under a press to obtain juice, after wrapping it in a clean canvas bag. Place the squeezed mass back into the pan, add hot water at the rate of half the volume of root vegetables. This blank is for the second spin. Let it sit for half an hour, and then strain the liquid into the container where you collected the juice from the first extraction. Place the evaporated cakes back into the canvas bag and repeat the squeezing process. Heat the collected juice to 70-80°C, and then strain through gauze folded several times.

The last stage is evaporation. The juice must be evaporated until it is completely thickened in a low enamel basin or other flat vessel.

Obtaining syrup: second method

Prepare the beets for cooking, as in the first method, now removing a thin layer of skin. It is necessary to steam in an autoclave for about an hour maintaining a pressure of 1.5 atm. If you don’t have an autoclave, you can use a boiler, which should have a grate at the bottom, but it will take more time.

Having received soft beets, they are crushed and passed through a press twice. The strained juice is then evaporated, as in the first method.

Store the syrup in a cool place, protected from direct sunlight, like any preserved food.

In cooking for baking, the proportion of syrup to flour is approximately 0.75-1: 1. For making jam, the ratio of syrup to berries by weight is 2: 1.

There are many sweet tooths in the world, and a product such as sugar is almost indispensable in the preparation of various cakes, pastries, cookies and candies. Many craftsmen try to make all the necessary ingredients at home to be sure of the naturalness of the product. You can also make your own sugar at home.

What is sugar?

Sugar is a food product that is obtained from special varieties of cane or beets. It is used in all industries related to the production of dessert treats. Sugar is also used as a preservative and additive in the preparation of semi-finished products and various products.

Despite a number of beneficial properties, excessive consumption of this product can lead to illness. One of these is diabetes. Making sugar is a labor-intensive process and is carried out mainly in large enterprises, but craftsmen make a small amount of homemade product.

Sugar industry

To produce the product in industrial conditions, varieties are used. It is usually purchased from farmers in the fall, when it reaches the peak of maturity and has acquired enough essential microelements. Before starting the process, the raw materials are examined and the amount of sucrose contained is measured.

Next, the beets are washed and cut into small pieces in special machines. To extract sugar from the product, the cut pieces are passed through water at a temperature of 70 degrees. The resulting solution is purified and evaporated, resulting in molasses. It, in turn, is crystallized in a special apparatus and transferred to a centrifuge, where the grains are separated from the remains of the thick syrup.

The output is wet sugar, which still needs to be dried. Next, it is packed into bags and sent to a warehouse.

Raw materials

To make homemade sugar, you need to prepare raw materials. In the regions of Russia and European countries it is easiest to obtain. When purchasing, you need to inspect the root crop, it must be clean, without rot or deep damage. The beets are cleaned from the apical residual leaves and washed thoroughly.

In warm tropical countries, sugar is as common a product as in Russia and Europe. It is obtained from cane, which is also grown on an industrial scale.

Cooking at home

In its usual state, sugar is sand or refined cubes. A sweet product can obtain such a structure only in industrial conditions, when the crystallization process takes place in special machines. Homemade sugar most closely resembles molasses or thick syrup. It can be added to tea or when making any confectionery product.

For the process you need to prepare two enamel pans, several pieces of gauze and a press. As the latter, you can use any container into which you can collect water for weight.

First way

The washed and peeled beets are placed in a pan of boiling water. The root vegetable needs to be cooked for about 1 hour. After this period, the water is drained and the beets are allowed to cool. After which the peel is thinly removed and all the pulp is finely chopped. The finished product is placed in a gauze cloth, folded several times, and placed in a container under a press. The resulting juice is poured into a separate container.

After some time, the remaining cake is again placed in the pan and filled with water. The volume of liquid should be half the volume of beets. The water must be heated. Infuse the grated root vegetable this way for 45 minutes, then place it in a colander over a container where the juice is collected.

Place the beets again in gauze and place under the press. The newly separated liquid is mixed with that already obtained and filtered. Next, as in large production, it is necessary to evaporate excess moisture. To do this, place the pan with the juice on the fire and evaporate to a thick syrup. This homemade sugar recipe is the most common and simple.

Second way

The beets must be washed and the outer skin removed. Next, the fruits are placed in a pressure cooker. There, the root crop should simmer under a pressure of 1.5 atmospheres for about 60-80 minutes. After the beets have cooled, they must be chopped and placed in a gauze cloth under a press.

As a result, the resulting liquid is filtered and put to evaporation. The process continues until the liquid acquires the consistency of honey. This sugar can be poured into sterilized jars and stored for the winter. It is used like a regular product, adding it to teas and various foods when cooking.

Properties

Sugar is the so-called sucrose, which is found in many vegetables and fruits. In small doses, this product has a beneficial effect on the human body, stimulating blood circulation in the brain and spinal cord. But do not forget that excessive consumption of sweets such as cakes, candies, chocolate and the like can lead to diseases.

Many people think that white sugar is made from sugar cane. However, 30% of the world's white sugar is made from sugar beets. Sugar cane grows only in tropical climates, while the more frost-hardy sugar beets can be grown in colder regions and less fertile soils.

To get 1 kg of sugar you need 7 sugar beet roots. Common processed products are molasses or molasses and beet pulp. Sugar beets are processed into various types of sugar. Lower grades are pre-processed to become white sugar.

Like many other crops, sugar beets are planted in the spring and harvested in the fall. Combine harvesters can process 6 rows at a time. They rip the beets out of the ground, cutting off the foliage and tops, leaving only the bulbous root. These roots usually weigh about 900 g each and only 18% of this weight is sucrose or sugar.

A loader loads the collected beets into trucks. It has a sieve with which one third of the soil is removed during loading. When the trucks arrive at the sugar refinery, they unload the beets, as well as the remaining soil and stones, onto a conveyor belt that takes them to the wash.

First they are directed into a rotating drum. Under the water jets, the root crops rub against each other and the earth falls off. The water flow carries the floating beets out of the drum. The stones sink to the bottom and are collected in separator buckets located at the edges. A screw conveyor carries the beets onto a conveyor belt, which delivers them to a factory where they will be made into sugar.

At the factory, cutting machines cut incoming beets into shavings or small strips. A conveyor carries these chips to a large tank of hot water, where they soak for a few minutes. Here the cell membranes of the beets begin to open, thereby preparing the next process - drawing out sucrose. Beet chips are fed to the bottom of a 20-meter extractor tower. A shaft rotating inside this tower slowly lifts the chips up, and a stream of hot water flows down. As a result, sucrose is drawn out and sugar water, called raw juice, is formed.

The next step is to purify this raw juice. In a giant drying kiln, limestone and coal are burned to create a complex chemical compound - calcium hydroxide, also called milk of lime, or slaked lime. It is added several times to the raw juice, and the shavings, from which the sucrose has already been extracted, are compressed and sold for livestock feed.

Carbon dioxide and juice mixture are added to the lime milk. This absorbs one-third of the impurities, which are then filtered out.

The unprocessed juice became a golden sugar solution and is now called clarified juice. This purified juice is then subjected to a 6-step evaporation process, which turns it into a thick syrup.

From here the syrup enters the 4-phase crystallization system. During the first phase, the syrup is heated and seed crystals are added to it. These are tiny sugar crystals obtained separately, using a complex process of cooling and evaporation. As the water in the juice evaporates, about half of the sucrose crystallizes around these seed crystals. A centrifugal separator then separates crystals called refined sugar from the remaining syrup.

The syrup goes through this process three more times, each time producing lower grade sugar. At the factory, the two lowest grades are dissolved and crystallized again.

The two highest grades of sugar go to the dryers. On the way there, they pass through a mechanical sieve that separates out the larger crystals. They also dissolve and undergo a crystallization process. In the end, two types of beet sugar are obtained, which remain in the silo until packaging to be sold as refined and white sugar. No, thanks. Personally, I'm already sweet.

A little-known fact is that such a familiar product in our everyday lives as sugar has a thousand-year history. The inventors of the sweet white powder were Indians, who made it from sugar cane. Our ancestors found a product suitable for this in their latitudes - beets. Industrial sugar production is a complex process, and few people know how to make homemade sugar. In fact, it is quite simple and anyone can do it.

How to make sugar at home?

To do this you will need:

Beet tubers;
- plate;
- pot.

Of course, every housewife has this in her kitchen.

Here's what you need to do:

1) Peel the beets from the roots and rinse thoroughly. Do not remove the skin.

2) Boil the beets. Place clean tubers in a saucepan with boiling water, gradually increasing the heat. Boiling should continue for an hour. After this, the beet tubers are taken out, cooled and the skins are peeled.

3) Grind the beets. Peeled beets must be thoroughly chopped.

4) Get juice. The chopped vegetable should be placed in a bag and placed under a press. The juice is collected in a separate container.

How to get concentrated beet juice?

After pressing, the beets need to be squeezed out and put back in the pan, add water and boil for another half hour;
- then strain again and pour the liquid into the first container and squeeze again;
- All the resulting liquid must be heated and filtered.

How to get molasses?

1) It is necessary to evaporate the syrup over a fire until it reaches a consistency similar to molasses. It turns out about a kilogram of syrup with 5 kg of tubers.

2) Freeze the molasses and cut it into pieces. This molasses can easily replace sugar.

What can be made from sugar?

You can add homemade sugar to tea;
- use for baking;
- add to compote.

If you want to get the usual crumbly sugar, then it is prepared by crystallizing molasses.

How to make sand from syrup?

The syrup contains approximately 70% dry matter. The syrup is best crystallized in the cold.

1) Place the syrup in the freezer.

2) After this, you need to grind it to the desired consistency, and you will get the desired sugar.

Of course, homemade sugar will be significantly different from the one you are used to seeing in the store, but it is in no way inferior in taste. Now you know how to make sugar at home!

You can see more details about how sugar is made in this video:

Many modern people are accustomed to drinking sweet tea and adding sweets to cakes, pastries, and cereals. At the same time, some people think about how to make sugar, what is needed for this and how difficult it is. How is sugar made from beets and cane? When producing this product on an industrial scale, you cannot do without complex equipment, but at home everything can be done much easier. But such a process is undoubtedly very labor-intensive. Few people produce sugar on their own when it can be bought in the store. However, it's still worth a try. It is better to choose beets as a raw material, since cane is more expensive and difficult to prepare for extracting the necessary substances at home. Previously, special devices were used for these purposes, with the help of which it was possible to knead the raw materials by passing the stems between the rollers. Cane is also less available than sugar beets.

How is sugar made from beets? Experts assure that there are several ways to produce a high-quality product. The simplest of them is drying. Sugar beets must be washed, cut into thin circles and placed in a clay pot or cast iron, then add a little water and put in the oven to simmer at a temperature of about 90 degrees for 40 minutes. The vegetable should become soft, but not boiled. In the old days, housewives simmered beets in a Russian oven. Next, you need to remove the circles from the pot and place them on a baking sheet. Beets need to be dried at a temperature of about 50 degrees. This process can take quite a long time. You can speed it up by drying the raw materials in a special electric dryer. This device provides forced ventilation. Its use allows you to save not only time, but also energy, which is very important for most families.

Dried rounds can be ground into flour and added to various dishes. If you need to sweeten your tea, it is permissible to dip whole pieces of beets into the drink. The above method of preparing sugar is very popular among fans of natural food. How is sugar made from beets and beet syrup? It turns out that this is also possible at home. First, you need to wash the vegetables and put them in a deep saucepan and add water. It is recommended to boil the beets for an hour, then drain the water, cool the semi-finished product, peel it and cut it into thin strips, then squeeze out the juice. To do this, you can use gauze or a special press. The collected liquid must be poured into a saucepan and evaporated over low heat. If done correctly, the consistency of the syrup should resemble molasses. To store sugar for future use, you need to evaporate the syrup thoroughly so that it does not ferment during long-term storage.

How is sugar made from beets without pre-cooking? To do this, you need to peel the root vegetables, cut them into thin strips, place them in a saucepan, pour boiling water over them, cover with a lid and let it brew for an hour. Only after this will it be possible to drain the water, squeeze the juice out of the beets and begin evaporation. After the syrup becomes viscous and thick, you can pour it into jars or make real sugar from it. To do this, the product must be sharply cooled so that the crystallization process occurs. For these purposes, it is best to use special metal forms with partitions. The syrup needs to be poured into the cells of the molds, and then put in a cool place. After crystallization, the sugar should be knocked out and stored in pieces or ground. For these purposes, you can use a coffee grinder or mortar. Some housewives prefer to make lump sugar and crush it immediately before use.

How do you make sugar from beets using special equipment? If you want or need to produce sugar yourself regularly, it is best to purchase a special tank with a grate. This will help save time and your own efforts. Such tanks are also equipped with taps at the bottom of the tank. The grill is necessary to ensure that the beets do not come into contact with the bottom of the pan. Preparing syrup in such vats is very simple. You need to pour some water on the bottom. The liquid should reach the level of the grate. Plant materials should be placed on a sieve and steamed for the required time. Next, you need to drain the liquid by opening the tap, pass the beets through the press and pour the juice into the tank. Evaporating liquid in such a large pan is very convenient. At the end of the process, you can drain the syrup through the tap directly into metal molds or special jars. Molds should only be used if crystallization is required.

Homemade beet sugar has certain disadvantages. In this case, there is no refining process and the product is obtained with a specific smell. Not everyone likes it when sugar smells like beets. It is quite difficult to get rid of such an aroma, but you can muffle it by adding a little citric acid to the syrup. Some housewives prefer to pass the liquid through a carbon filter, and only then begin evaporation. Carbon cleaners are commercially available. If you plan to make sugar regularly, it makes sense to purchase a filter or make one yourself. The refining process is quite complex and it is simply impossible to do it at home. That is why homemade sugar differs from industrially produced sugar not only in smell, but also in its rather dark shade.