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The art of cooling
The group gathered for the cane boil on Jimmy Hagood’s ACE Basin property keep watch over the boiling sugarcane and cool the hot, amber liquid by scooping it periodically with a specially designed bucket.
Photo by Mic Smith
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Cut and gather
The process of making sugarcane syrup began with a machete-wielding crew who cut the sugarcane stalks and loaded them onto a trailer to haul to the mill. At work in the fields are (left to right) Richard Harrison, Jared Rentz and Ben Ferguson.
Photo by Mic Smith
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Sweet stuff
By feeding sugarcane stalks through a refurbished the Chattanooga Plow Company mill, Ben Ferguson (left) and Jared Rentz squeeze gallons of liquid from the harvested stalks and let it pour into a bucket. The juice makes its way into an 80-gallon, cast-iron kettle for the boiling process.
Photo by Mic Smith
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Family affair
Jimmy Hagood (second from right) recruits friends and family to pitch in and learn the complex process of creating sugarcane syrup. With Hagood are (left to right) his nephews Banks and Alex Hagood, David Maybank III, Ben Ferguson, and Jimmy Hagood’s son, Andrew.
Photo by Mic Smith
Years ago, when sugar was harder to come by, Southern farms would harvest fields of sugarcane stalks, extract the nectar and boil it down for hours, until the magical moment when the fire’s cumulative heat produced a syrup to savor and save for later.
Over the past decade, Jimmy Hagood, an authority on barbecue and Lowcountry culinary traditions, has joined his uncle David Maybank in resurrecting the process of making syrup from sugarcane crops at Lavington, the family’s homestead in the ACE Basin. “Anytime you cook something for five hours, it’s got to be good,” says Hagood, who jars and sells the distinct syrup as part of his specialty-product line, Food for the Southern Soul.
They’ve had considerable help from Ben Ferguson, who has worked for the family for 37 years and who grew up in the Southern cane-boiling tradition. With each fall harvest, the men have refined their methods through research, trial and error, though they must keep the process somewhat fluid, because there are so many variables that can impact the outcome.
The boiling can be especially tricky to navigate to achieve the desired thickness and sweetness without taking a batch too far. “I think we’ve made every mistake you could make,” Ferguson admits.
They stick with it regardless, and Hagood has ramped up production with the purchase of a more efficient mill. He also sought to engage younger generations of the family by inviting them to help make a batch during last year’s November holidays. He plugged it as “Cane Cooking School,” and, as it turned out, everyone learned from the experience.
From the fields to the mill
It’s the Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving as Ferguson and two other machete-wielding men slice tops off harvested sugarcane, then toss the stalks onto a trailer. They will need about 600 to 700 stalks to produce enough juice to fill the 80-gallon pot that’s set up a short drive away for the next morning’s boil.
In previous years, they would start earlier in the day, so they had enough time to juice the cane, but this year, a newly acquired antique mill should speed things up by allowing them to press more stalks at a time. “We’ve experimented with it, but it’s the first time we’ve put it to the test,” Ferguson says.
In fact, this family batch is really a dress rehearsal for the next week, when they will make more syrup and mill hundreds of gallons of juice for Charleston’s High Wire Distillery to turn into rhum agricole, a French-styled rum that starts with sugarcane juice rather than molasses.
Hagood meets the crew with his 10-year-old daughter, Catherine. She’s the only kid in the mix today, though cousins and friends will be on the scene tomorrow. Dressed in camo with her spunky spaniel, June, in tow, Catherine’s ready to pitch in and curious about the machinery once it’s assembled.
“Mad scientist” mechanic John Cooksey has refurbished the Chattanooga Plow Company mill—model No. 44—and painted it green to match the larger 1941 Model H John Deere tractor that will power the mill, a job given to mules in earlier eras.
“What is that?” Catherine asks her dad, pointing to the extended belt that will link the tractor to the mill, which sits on the platform of a separate trailer.
Hagood explains how one end of the belt hooks to the tractor while the other wraps around a wheel on the mill, making a continuous loop that will drive the mill once the tractor starts. Soon the apparatus is rumbling, and the crew starts feeding stalks through the mill’s roller drums. They try up to four and five at a time, then settle on three stalks, which is still more than they’ve been able to press simultaneously in the past.
The No. 44 mill has lived up to its promise and is also producing more liquid per stalk than other mills they have used. “It’s really squeezing just about every ounce of juice out of it,” Hagood says as he snaps some photos.
A frothy, greenish stream flows down a PVC half-pipe into a bucket. The juice is strained and pumped through a hose to the 80-gallon, cast-iron kettle, where it will stay in the overnight cool until they ignite the hearth below it in the morning.
Hagood smiles. “How about the way this is working out?”
Catherine asks if she can stick her finger into the juice for a taste. “Mmmmm,” she hums in approval before jumping on the trailer to help rake up flattened cane stalks.
Heating things up
The spark for this exploration of Southern foodways actually came from the world travels of Hagood’s uncle. When Maybank visited Salvador, Brazil, he was intrigued to see vendors milling sugarcane stalks on street corners, where they sold the juice on ice like Coca-Cola. He acquired a small mill of his own on a sailing stop in Salvador in the 1990s, and each year, he would press fresh cane juice during the family’s Thanksgiving gathering at Lavington.
All the kids have tasted the juice, but most have not had the chance to help make the syrup.
“With the past few years, we’ve been hearing about it, but this is the first time we’ve gotten to see it,” says Banks Hagood, one of Jimmy’s nephews.
Banks, 20, and his brother, Alex, 24, are among the first to arrive Wednesday morning for the boiling. They have worked for their uncle Jimmy in the past at his warehouse and on his barbecue rigs, and they are quick to pitch in with the “cleaning process”—skimming off impurities that rise to the top as the cane juice starts to heat up.
There’s an art to cleaning and controlling the liquid’s temperature so it progresses at the right pace. “If it gets to boiling before we clean it properly, that’s when it gets dirty,” says Jimmy Hagood.
The group will feed the brick hearth below the kettle with pine logs to gradually heat the liquid from roughly 45 degrees to well over 200. Ferguson ignited the fire at 8 a.m., and because things seem to be progressing slowly, they estimate that this batch will take at least five, maybe six hours or more to finish. Timing seems to be affected by a variety of factors, including weather conditions like air temperature and humidity.
For every 10 gallons of cane juice, they expect to produce about one gallon of syrup. In comparison, as much as 50 gallons of tree sap or more might be needed to produce one gallon of maple syrup in the Northeast.
Maybank arrives on the scene by mid-morning with the growing swirl of family and guests. The patriarch says the real trick to boiling down sugarcane juice is knowing at what point in the evaporation process to remove the liquid from the heat. Cook it too long, and it might crystallize. Take it off too early, and you might wind up with a watery syrup. “Everybody who comes has their own opinion about whether it’s ready to come off.”
This group has the benefit of newer tools to help in the decision-making process: a hydrometer to measure viscosity—or thickness and flow—and a refractometer to measure the sugar concentration.
Maybank grabs a squeeze bottle of sugarcane syrup from a past batch to show what they want to achieve. “Let me have your finger, and you can taste what it’s all about.” He shares a few drops. The consistency seems thinner than corn syrup or maple syrup, but with an intense, earthy flavor.
“It takes some getting used to,” Maybank admits. “It goes real good on corn bread. I have some on my oatmeal every morning, and hominy grits, it improves a lot.”
Hagood and his sister-in-law Elizabeth both have recipes for Raising Cane cocktails, and she likes to use it in homemade granola, too.
The defining moment
By 11:30 a.m., the solution has reached a steamy, rolling boil, and over the next hour, the color loses its green and darkens into a deep amber. Kids and adults alike come over to look as the crew scoops through the bubbles with a metal bucket poked with holes. Streams drip through the bottom and back into the kettle, helping to cool things down, so the temperature stays consistent once it exceeds 200 degrees.
Ferguson estimates that it might take until 2:30 p.m. before they are done, and he walks over to the mill to show newcomers the juicing setup. Others tend the kettle, but after 1 p.m., the deciding moment sneaks up on everyone as the bubbles shrink in size and suddenly disappear.
Hagood grabs the hydrometer to check the thickness of a sample, but, in the blink of an eye, the boil sinks into an unexpected goo at the bottom of the kettle. He calls for Ferguson, who rushes back over and scoops the results over into a metal container draped with a sheet to cool.
A line forms to scoop up the velvety reduction with apple slices, and it appears to be a lip-smacking crowd pleaser. However, Hagood’s not sure what he can do with it once it cools down. “We made caramel today,” he says with wry resignation. “It’s not cane syrup.”
“That’s one mistake we hadn’t made yet,” Ferguson admits a few moments later as the flurry dies down. No doubt, they will dissect what went wrong over future kettles of syrup. Maybank, however, doesn’t see it as a failure. In fact, the taste reminds him of an old-fashioned Mary Jane candy.
“It didn’t work like it was supposed to,” he tells his nephew Jimmy with consolation, “but it was even better.”
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Get More
Learn about Jimmy Hagood’s handcrafted cane syrup and line of specialty products—including barbecue sauces, grits and rice—at FoodfortheSouthernSoul.com. Syrup produced this fall can be ordered online.