Making Sorghum Molasses

By: Patsy Box Johnson

Sorgham Molasses Mill

I can remember the taste of sorghum molasses that was served with hot, homemade biscuits and freshly churned butter, when I was a child.

We lived on a farm in Fayette County, Alabama. Daddy, Quint and Billy would plant sugar cane in their fields. When it got time to harvest it they would cut and load it on a wagon and carry it to Mr. Ed Mayfield’s sorghum mill. The sorghum mill consisted of a brick kiln and was fired by building a log fire under it. The cooking pan had a copper bottom which fitted the top of the furnace.

Mr. Mayfield would feed the cane stalks into a crusher. The crusher was two big steel rollers in a frame. The poser for crushing the juice out of the stalks was a mule hitched to a long shaft that was connected to the crusher. The mule pulled this shaft around and around, which turned the steel rollers.

The juice ran from the crusher down troughs into a cooking vat, where it cooked until the water was cooked out of it. The juice was real green looking and mama would get us a cup full to drink. As the juice cooked, a skim would form and had to be skimmed off. One or more men would skim the molasses and put the skim into a skimming hole. This was a pit that was dug beside the furnace.

When the first cooking of molasses was done, a stopper was pulled out of the vat and the thick molasses ran down a trough into a pot. It was dipped out and put in to gallon buckets. The aroma from the molasses smelled so good!

Just before sundown, we were ready to go home. Our buckets of molasses were loaded on the wagon. When we got home Mama and Daddy would put the buckets of molasses in a corner of a room or stacked up in our closet.

I have never tasted better molasses than what Mr. Ed Mayfield made.

*Notes on how to make Sorghum came from a Good Ole Days issue.