Hi.
I've got my first skirret crown growing now so hopefully I can have some roots for sugar making in a couple of years. I read a blog from a New Zealand homesteader who was making DIY sugar from sugar beet. She put the chopped the pieces of washed beet in a Steam Juicer to extract the juice. This may be the way to get a clean juice out of the Skirret. I've just bought a Steam juicer after reading about the cool things they can do. Look them up as they might prove useful. Crystallised sugar might be the way for skirret as they have high sucrose levels. I did attempt to make sugar from beet a few years ago but got a bit too technical and did some CO2 bubbling through the sugar solution, which I had added milk of lime. All in all, a bit of a faff for the cup of sugar produced! I have successfully made birch syrup, which is delicious, but it took nearly 100 litres of sap for half a litre of syrup. I'm hoping skirret might be a good bet for a useful amount of sugar compared to input effort. The problem with Sugar Beet is the production of seed. You can't really produce it at home. There are some complicated methods that the commercial growers use for seed production. If anyone knows of a strain of Sugar Beet that can successfully produce seed at home (in the second year), that would be ace. I tried and failed, as did a friend. Good luck with the Skirret sugar. Jim.
