Spirit From Sugar Cane Juice

[rumfarmer]

Does anyone have any experience making a distilled spirit directly from crushed sugar cane? This is the way Cachaca is made in Brazil, and I am curious how much sugar cane would be required assuming 14-16 Brix on the cane juice itself. It is my understanding that the weight of sugar cane is at least 50% juice, if not more.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[carychleborad]

Does anyone have any experience making a distilled spirit directly from crushed sugar cane? This is the way Cachaca is made in Brazil, and I am curious how much sugar cane would be required assuming 14-16 Brix on the cane juice itself. It is my understanding that the weight of sugar cane is at least 50% juice, if not more.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What you would be making is rum and there is lots of information on that. 12 brix would yield ~8% alcohol so how much juice you need depends upon how much rum you want to make and at what concentration you want to bottle it at.

-C

[Cane Farmer]

Does anyone have any experience making a distilled spirit directly from crushed sugar cane? This is the way Cachaca is made in Brazil, and I am curious how much sugar cane would be required assuming 14-16 Brix on the cane juice itself. It is my understanding that the weight of sugar cane is at least 50% juice, if not more.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

18 to 20 brix is pretty easy to achieve if the cane is ripe. By this I mean that the cane is harvested in the fall or winter and that the cane is properly topped. No need to leave the growing point and top leaves to dilute the juice. Your 80 moisture probably is fairly accurate. The problem is having the proper equipment in order to maximize extraction. My small 3 roll cane mill can do about 20% extraction of juice by weight on the first expressed juice. If the bagasse is put back through the cane mill, a total of 30% or so can be realized. Other modifications I'm sure will increase total extraction such as a shredder, all adding to equipment cost. So, assuming a 30% extraction, 2000 lb of millable cane should yeild 600 lbs of juice or 85 gallons of juice at 18 to 20 brix which should yeild a wine with around a 12% alcohol potential. This should convert to about 10 gal of 200 proof ethanol, theoretical maximum. Remember, in a production sugar cane mill making sugar, the bagasse leaves the mill after total extraction at about 55% moisture. They maximize sucrose extraction by adding back water to help release the last bit of sugar.

Hope this helps.

[Beauport Bob]

Cane Farmer, interesting, and I would like to learn more myself. In fact, very much more. Thanks.

But I would like to ask carychleborad..12 brix begets 8% abv? Seems a bit high. Where did that come from, for beverage spirits I mean? I want in on that!

[rumfarmer]

18 to 20 brix is pretty easy to achieve if the cane is ripe. By this I mean that the cane is harvested in the fall or winter and that the cane is properly topped. No need to leave the growing point and top leaves to dilute the juice. Your 80 moisture probably is fairly accurate. The problem is having the proper equipment in order to maximize extraction. My small 3 roll cane mill can do about 20% extraction of juice by weight on the first expressed juice. If the bagasse is put back through the cane mill, a total of 30% or so can be realized. Other modifications I'm sure will increase total extraction such as a shredder, all adding to equipment cost. So, assuming a 30% extraction, 2000 lb of millable cane should yeild 600 lbs of juice or 85 gallons of juice at 18 to 20 brix which should yeild a wine with around a 12% alcohol potential. This should convert to about 10 gal of 200 proof ethanol, theoretical maximum. Remember, in a production sugar cane mill making sugar, the bagasse leaves the mill after total extraction at about 55% moisture. They maximize sucrose extraction by adding back water to help release the last bit of sugar.

Hope this helps.

Thanks so much for your information. You have obviously had a good deal of experience in this area. My extraction yields are much, much higher than yours, but I might just have a better mill than you do. I have assumed 50% extraction, but I will err on your estimate now.

Harvest time in Hawaii is less important than other areas, as our climate is pretty consistent year round. Increasing sucrose is mostly done by reducing water and fertilizer in the last 30 days prior to harvest, but I do attempt to harvest at a time that maximizes the sugar content. I am assuming low brix due to the uncertainty in some new cane I am growing. I have tested brix as high as 23 in my fields before.

My main question to the group is really more about the difficulty in actually creating a rum produced directly from the juice. I own my own fields, so harvesting and distilling quickly is not the issue. I am mostly concerned about creating a consistent product. Have you made rum directly from juice before?

Mahalo.

P.S. Where is your cane farm?

[cowdery]

I'm not a distiller but this doesn't seem very complicated. Distillation is all about separating alcohol and water. The lower the concentration of alcohol in the fermentate, the more energy it takes to remove it. That's all I see as a difference between starting with cane juice or starting with molasses. I don't see why consistency would be an issue either. Do you have any experience with fermentation and distillation? To my simple mind, a sugar-and-water solution is a sugar-and-water solution, isn't it?

[rumfarmer]

I'm not a distiller but this doesn't seem very complicated. Distillation is all about separating alcohol and water. The lower the concentration of alcohol in the fermentate, the more energy it takes to remove it. That's all I see as a difference between starting with cane juice or starting with molasses. I don't see why consistency would be an issue either. Do you have any experience with fermentation and distillation? To my simple mind, a sugar-and-water solution is a sugar-and-water solution, isn't it?

My constancy concerns have mostly to do with anyone that has distilled this way and run into issues managing things like uncontrolled fermentation from natural yeasts and bacterias that live in the cane and will be swimming in the juice after it is crushed. As the leftover waste product of refined sugar, molasses will never have anything like this. I do not have experience with distilling at all, so I am trying very hard to uncover as much about what I don't know as possible. The Brazilians make cachaca by allowing some of the natural fermentation to occur during the process, but natural fermentation would probably not be very consistent, in my estimation. Hoping someone has tried this and can give me their 2 cents.

[rumfarmer]

Cane Farmer, interesting, and I would like to learn more myself. In fact, very much more. Thanks.

But I would like to ask carychleborad..12 brix begets 8% abv? Seems a bit high. Where did that come from, for beverage spirits I mean? I want in on that!

email me at info@manulelecane.com

[Copperstill]

Does anyone have any experience making a distilled spirit directly from crushed sugar cane? This is the way Cachaca is made in Brazil, and I am curious how much sugar cane would be required assuming 14-16 Brix on the cane juice itself. It is my understanding that the weight of sugar cane is at least 50% juice, if not more.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

give me a call I'd be happy to share what I can.

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