How It's Made: Beet Sugar

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[greenhaloxbox]

I worked at a beet sugar plant for 5 years and we packed sugar for grocery sale. Always get a kick out of watching people try to figure out which brand is better when i saw my factory package both.

[billr]

Two observations about sugar beets: 1. If you're driving on a road near the beet harvest area, be careful not to run over a beet. They're hard as rocks and large enough to cause damage to the underside of most cars; and, 2. The process of sugar refining from beets produces a stench that rivals paper mills and corn processing. I pity those who live downwind from a sugar beet mill.

[mugsymegaton]

I tried growing sugar beets once, I wanted to see if I could make my own sugar or at least molasses,
except the deer came in every night and ate all the greens off the tops.
No molasses, no sugar, no beets.

[williamjones]

I grew up in Billings, Montana that had a large sugar beet plant. It was called the Great Western Sugar Company. This was in the 60's and 70's. I never knew how complicated it was to make sugar. During certain times og the year you did not want to be down wind from that plant. It STUNK! It is still in operation to this day.

[iteerrex]

If you find sugar beets buy some. It makes a wonderful cool dessert. Chop it into think strips or cubes, drop it in a basket, and pressure cook it til it’s soft and simi-translucent. Let it cool, then chill it in the freg. It’s time to enjoy.

[geedee]

I worked in the "lab" at a sugar beet factory... A sample of beets from each truck came in on a moving bag line and we would use razor sharp machetes to clean the dirt and outer skin off and then throw them into a pulper (think wood chipper) . The pulper would splatter a fist sized portion onto a conveyor belt and it went to the testing station where the sugar content was measured for each load. The amount farmer was paid for the truck load of beets was then based on the sugar content of the sample beets from the truck.

[BeeFunKnee]

In the mid 80's, I was employed at "Union Sugar" in Betteravia California which is right outside Santa Maria. As the beets were being unloaded from the boxcars, there would be 50lb burlap sacks included with them. I'd open the sacks, then use a carpet knife to remove the tops and roots from the beets and then clean off as much caked-on dirt as I could. I'd weigh the beets every step of the way. Then I'd send the separate samples through a turbine extractor that pulverized them and spit out a cup of juice so the lab could sample them for their sugar content. They averaged up all the samples to get a single percentage number. That was the way they'd know how much to pay the sugar beet farmers for their crop. Then, after that particular work was all done, they hired me to work in what they called "The Blo Up Lab" where the hot refined syrup was stained though huge filters. My job was to monitor and clean those filters, and they sure were giant ones. I only quit that job because it scared me so much. A year and a half after I quit, the whole place blew up and a couple of people were killed. That could easily have been me. It was a sugar dust explosion. Back then, the air was filled with sugar dust all the time. I'd have never worked there if I knew dust could explode. The Blo Up Lab blowed up, and it could have had 24yr old me in it!.

[abaddon]

As a young kid, I went to a sort of boarding school in a town called Assens in Denmark. Assens had a sugar beet refinery and I learned firsthand how sickening sweety and nauseating the smell from sugar beets being processed is. I can still, 35 years after, recall the stench along with how my whole body reacted to that smell!! If the wind blew over the school downwind from the refinery, nobody ventured outdoors unless they really had to, and then we used a piece of cloth to hold over our mouths and noses. It is that vile of a stench!

[greatPretender]

Fun fact: this plant is in Germany and the brand is 'South sugar'

[petuniasevan]

I used to live where sugar beets were grown (near Hamilton City CA) and I can tell you that you knew where the processing plant was by the smell. Kind of like dirty gym socks odor mixed with paper processing. (I live near papermaking factories now).
As an aside, when in the military got to see sugarcane grown and harvested/processed. This was in Louisiana.

[hawketc]

Nice to see sugar being made from Beet. I worked at a factory in England in a little village called Cantley and compared to this place the equipment was at best SteamPunk.

[tymz-r-achangin]

So with the beets being approximately 18% sugar, do they taste sweet right out of the ground? Do they taste not sweet, somewhat sweet, moderately sweet, or a lot sweet?
Or does their actual sweetness only come about while being processed?

[ShutTheMuckUp]

I used to work in quality assurance at a Pepsi bottler, and the "real sugar" used in some of the sodas was beet sugar. I liked to pretend that the beets were coming from Schrute Farms. We'd get it in liquid form, and we had to taste a sample of each shipment. Beet sucrose is delicious. HFCS also tastes really good.

[punishedfoxo]

In Ireland, the beat fields are opened up to cattle, who eat the plants above the surface and leave the beats themselves.

[klaasdeboer]

I still remember the smell of the sugarfactury ten kilometers from where I lived near Groningen in the netherlands, with north westerly winds, it was the smell of autumn anounced the coming of Sinterklaas, (our santa who arrives in november.)

[CaseNumber]

My dad use to say he stole a lot of Sugar Beets as a kid near Santa Ana, CA, so probably around from that late 1950s to early 60s.

[hoilst]

HA! I love Imperial conversions they've done from the obvious metric measurements they were given: "A little over 2lbs of sugar" = 1kg of sugar. "22 yards high" = 20 metres high.

[trevorgross]

It is definitely a unique industry. As a shift supervisor in a beet plant you need to have knowledge of all kinds of skilled trades. The process is also a mind blowing, continuous flow balancing act where one falled bolt could effect 40 other steps downstream. You better understand ladder logic because it is way more difficult than your standard production line plc. My hats off to you that have made it over 20 years in operations

[desd]

About 4o years ago we went to a sugar beet plant to watch how sugar was produced. This took me right back

[topgear]

How It's Made is the best show ever that I will never hate in fact I worship it. :D