Making sorghum syrup

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The core of making sorghum syrup is pretty simple.  Sweet sorghum produces a juice in its stalks that is around 15 or so percent sugar.  A mix of sucrose, fructose and glucose.  Squeeze the juice out and boil it down and you get sorghum syrup.  By law it needs to be a minimum of 74 brix (sort of percent) sugar.  At Empire Syrups we press, treat with lime and preheat to remove contaminants prior to boiling.  Traditionally the juice is boiled in a batch over a fire but we use maple syrup evaporators to have a bit more control and to make the process continuous.  

We produce a variety of different kinds of sorghum syrup.  Our 'Fingerlakes style' is mid-harvest syrup that is a balance of sweet and aromatic, much milder than molasses.  We also produce 'last call' which is the last batch of the season that we finish in a batch pan.  It is darker and stronger more caramel than our regular syrup.  Finally we make 'ice' which we produce from stalks that have gone through the first frost (think 'ice wine') and this syrup is more golden, less dark that our Fingerlakes style.  Both 'Last Call' and 'Ice' are limited in supply.