According to the climate of Guangdong, Fujian and Taiwan Province, sugarcane is planted in February and harvested in September. 1 1 and February are the time when the sugar factory starts. Sichuan is also a major sugar-producing province in China, but due to the slightly cold climate, the planting period of sugarcane has to be postponed to March and April. Sugar production is generally called winter sugar before the Spring Festival and spring sugar after the Spring Festival. Sugarcane can also be planted in Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang, but the geography is slightly inferior to the first four provinces. In Song Dynasty, Taiwan Province Province had not yet entered the country, so the sugar industry was mainly concentrated in Sichuan, Fujian and Guangdong.
However, the sugar factory only starts for two to three months a year, and the time is very short. If we set up a farm and use employees from Changchuan to produce sugar, the cost will be very high (as it is now, so sugar factories all run sideline businesses and reduce fixed employees). Therefore, sugar production in China is jointly produced by small-scale farmers, or rich households employ temporary workers to produce sugar, and the single output is very small. Therefore, I assume that the government will invest in the construction of sugar-making equipment and raise cattle and horses to form a large-scale official enterprise. The manpower source is the neighboring garrison, which will be stationed in the sugar field for two months, and the income from selling sugar will be enough to raise thousands of soldiers. There are still ten months in a year for training, and the cattle, mules and horses raised can be used by the troops on weekdays. Personally, it is a feasible method.
Let's briefly explain the methods of sugar production from sugarcane before the industrial revolution: sugarcane cultivation includes so-called "spring seed", "autumn seed" and "perennial root". "Spring planting", as the name implies, is the sugarcane planted in spring, which can be harvested in the coming year; After the first harvest, the roots of sugarcane are left in the soil (leaving the head) and allowed to sprout and grow, which is called "perennial root", which is equivalent to "spring seed" and can be harvested after one year; As for "autumn planting", it is sugarcane planted in July 7- 10/0. If you can't get it then, it will definitely be delayed for about one and a half years.
In ancient times, sugarcane was difficult to harvest. After all, it is artificial harvesting, and then it is "harvesting" (removing unnecessary leaves, dirt, roots, beards, etc. ), then tied up and transported to the sugar factory by ox cart. After the sugarcane is harvested and transported to the factory, it is slightly cleaned (to remove the untreated soil attached to the sugarcane), and then sent to the "stone car" (press) for pressing. The stone cart consists of two cylindrical stone mills made of granite, which are pulled by cattle. Sugarcane is crushed by the two cylindrical stone mills to obtain sugarcane juice and produce bagasse. In the handicraft era, the squeezing was not thorough, only once, and it was impossible to squeeze all the sugar juice out of the sugarcane pith, which wasted a lot of useful resources. Moderately increasing the press times can increase the output. However, in the era of animal power, I am afraid that the subsequent rolling will use a heavier stone mill, so the number of cows to be pulled will probably be a little more. According to the literature (the history of sugar industry in Taiwan Province Province), a stone car consisting of two stone mills needs 12 to 13 cows to pull and grind. If you use a heavier stone car, you need more cows.
After the sugar cane juice is heated, lime is added to purify it, so that impurities are precipitated and clear sugar cane juice is obtained, which is called "clear juice". Then boil the clean juice into soup, and when it sticks to your hands, stir it with a wooden stick while cooling (generally speaking, it is manual stirring, but it should not be difficult to make a beast mixer. After all, even a stone mill can do it. Will it be difficult to turn a stone mill into a stick? ), so that the syrup is evenly crystallized into particles, that is, brown sugar commonly known as brown sugar or brown sugar. Impurity foam (a kind of molasses) will be produced during cooking, which can be fished out with a wooden spoon, cooled and precipitated and used as pig feed or wine making.
Generally speaking, if the double-grinding-disc car makes brown sugar by animal power and manpower (12 cows, 18 sugar cooks), it can process about 5000 kilograms of sugar cane every day, and it can be boiled into brown sugar on the same day. This does not include the time required for harvesting, pre-cleaning and transportation, which is a matter for sugarcane farmers.
In the Tang and Song Dynasties, the big crystal of sucrose-rock sugar was invented. The earliest description of the production technology of rock sugar is the Sugar Frost Spectrum written by Wang Zhuo, a native of Suining in the Southern Song Dynasty, which describes the rock sugar produced in Suining, Guanghan, Neijiang and other five counties in Sichuan, with Suining as the crown, such as amber jade. When Su Dongpo crossed Jinshan Temple, he wrote a poem and gave it to Suining monks for praise. There is a saying that "amber is recommended for ice trays, as beautiful as icing". At that time, the process of making icing in Suining was roughly as follows: 10 to10/month. First, sugar cane juice was made into sand sugar. Then the sugar is melted, and the melted syrup is poured into a lacquer jar with bamboo tips. After the Spring Festival, syrup began to crystallize. In May, the number of crystals stopped increasing. At this time, the refined crystals will be taken out and dried in the hot sun, which is the icing. At that time, this kind of icing was the top grade in purple, and the bottom grade in plain English, which is different from today's rock sugar.
Before the Ming Dynasty, China only had this kind of brown sugar or the aforementioned rock sugar. The so-called white sugar is not white, but slightly lighter than brown sugar, and the refining process is quite time-consuming and expensive. "Quannan Magazine" has the following record: "Cook brown sugar with sugarcane juice and make it white. Chop the duck eggs and stir to float the dregs. The method is to put brown sugar into a pot, melt it with water, then boil the pot, boil the sugar water, and the floating foam rises, and skim it off. After the salted duck eggs are broken, they are put into the sugar water and stirred, and many impurities are wrapped inside, and the impurities will be reduced after skimming. In this way, keep boiling, then boiling and skimming until no froth rises.
The real sugar refining technology was not discovered by accident until the middle of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty. According to the description in "Heavenly Creations", it is like this: "Take the grass out of the hole and pour it into the yellow mud water, in which the black mud is put into the jar and slides into white frost. The top floor is five inches thick and unusually white. It's called western sugar, and the bottom layer is slightly yellowish brown. " In fact, the practice is to take out the big, complete and unclean particles in brown sugar, put them into a funnel-shaped clay pot, and pour yellow mud water repeatedly to let the black residue flow out along the hole, so that the sugar on the upper layer naturally turns white, and the whiter the upper layer, it is white sugar. So in this way, you can put the upper layer of white sugar, the middle layer of yellow sugar and the lower layer of brown sugar (this kind of brown sugar is not much better than unrefined brown sugar, but it is a little lighter in color and can barely be graded).
As for the black residue, called molasses, it can be used to make wine. After filtration, the brewed wine is mixed with rice wine brewed from rice, which can be used as both drinking and cooking wine. The ratio of rice wine to rice wine is about six rice wine and four molasses wine.
The mud precipitated from sugarcane juice with lime is called "filter mud", which contains a lot of organic matter and high nutrients and is an excellent fertilizer. Bagasse is the residual waste in the process of sugarcane pressing. In order to save fuel expenditure, sugar factories recycle it and dry it as firewood to cook sugar. Sugarcane branches and bark are also the main fuel sources. Sugar fuel basically needs no external demand. In fact, excess bagasse is often used as compost because there are too many bagasse. However, bagasse can be used for pulping, or even made into bagasse board, and can be used as a partition for building materials.