From SUGAR CANE to BROWN SUGAR and RUM at REEF BAY and Annaberg SUGAR Factories
The SUGAR CANE is harvested and trimmed. The tops and leaves are dried for cattle feed. Note how Danes “recycled” all the wastes of the I 8th and 1 9th Century sugar making process!
CRUSHERS
The stem of the cane is crushed, either at the windmill (Annaberg), the horsemill (Annaberg and Reef Bay) or at the steam mill (Reef Bay). The crushers work like the wringer on a modern washing machine. The cane juice is collected in a tray and piped to the coppers, huge iron pots lined with copper.
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BOILING BENCH with 5 COPPERS
The cane juice is boiled first in the largest copper over a hot fire (the magas is used as fuel). Much of the water vaporizes. The boiling process is repeated 4 more times. In the last and smallest copper, only boiling fluid sugar remains.
Impurities in the juice are skimmed off the first copper and mixed with crushed lime to make mortar. Otherwise scum, sediment and drippings from the crystallizing pan and hogsheads, and water used to wash the coppers are all funneled into a fermentation tank to form an alcohol solution.
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CRYSTALLIZING PAN
The boiling fluid sugar is ladled into shadow pans and allowed to cool and solidify. Dripping from this pan, as noted above, are dumped into the fermentation tank
FERMENTATION TANK
Here the sugar solution ferments and changes into an alcoholic solution.