[Granville-Hough] 10 Aug 2009 - Sorghum Syrup

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

  Sorghum Syrup, the Long Sweetening for Moonshiners.

We lived at just about the northern edge of the climate where you could 
grow sugar cane, and we had special techniques for handling the plant 
through the winter and for growing it. We knew all about sugar cane and 
making molasses. We also knew that, way back, people in our community 
grew sorghum, and that, further to the north, people still made syrup 
from sorghum. It had a tang quite different from regular molasses. I 
liked that taste and decided I wanted to grow some. I believe the year 
was 1940, so I got the seed and planted about 1/8 of an acre. It grew 
beautifully and headed out in early August, so we knew it was time to 
harvest it and make it into sorghum syrup. We began to get our 
molasses-making equipment together when Mr. Billy Walker, who also had 
eaten sorghum in his youth, offered to make it up into syrup for 1/10, 
one container of each 10. He simply hankered for some old-fashioned 
sorghum. We took the truckloads of sorghum stalks over to Mr. Walker’s 
and helped him grind the stalks and cook the syrup. It was as good as 
any sorghum I ever tasted before or since. I had some almost daily until 
I left home for college in 1941. But the rest of my family did not like 
sorghum as much as I, so they still had some on hand when 
sugar-rationing began in WW II. Suddenly one day some Merry Hell 
moonshiners appeared, asking if we still had sorghum syrup. My brothers 
were glad to sell the entire supply to them. I have always wondered if 
moonshine made with sorghum syrup tasted differently, but I never 
learned.