How to Make Sugar From Beets

Sugar beets or sugar cane is where virtually all granulated sugar comes from. So if you want to have sugar after Armageddon then you are going to have to have a sugar cane crop or a sugar beet crop to produce your own.

Sugar cane produces more sugar than the beets do but beets are going to be the best option for most people due to where they can be grown. So sugar beet seed is going to be something you will always want to have around.

But this article is on how to extract the sugar from beets so let's get down to the nitty-gritty. How to grow them is for another article.

Sugar beets are the only type of beet that sugar can be extracted from because they contain a large amount of sucrose. Cooking the beet juice causes it to thicken. As it cools, it crystallizes and forms sugar.

The first step is to clean the beets of dirt and remove their green parts. Cut them into thin slices or pieces, the smaller the better.

Place the beet pieces into a pan and cover them with water. Boil the water and continue to cook on until the beet juice is extracted which will take about an hour. Remove the beets. At this point you have a few options. Eat the beets. Feed the beets to livestock or crush the beets to extract even more sugar from them.

Now continue to cook the beet sugar water on a low heat stirring frequently, until it becomes a thick dark beet sugar syrup similar to honey or molasses. Then take off of heat.

Wait for the dark beet sugar syrup to cool a little bit and then transfer to a storage container. The beet sugar syrup will slowly and gradually crystallize just like honey does.

As the sugar gradually crystallizes you should periodically remove it from the container and then break, crush, or pound it into small beet sugar crystals.