Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

I know most of the rum makers here use feed grade blackstrap molasses, with the exception of Divey.

I have been trying to read up on making rum prior to my first attempt. One thread on Home Distiller described a test between food grade blackstrap molasses and fancy molasses.

Up till then, I had not heard about fancy molasses and tried to find out more. Ad that only lead to a confusing description of molasses vs treacle vs golden syrup.

From what I can gather, the terminology is part of the problem. Searching the Internet seemed to reveal that black treacle is the UK equivalent of blackstrap molasses. And, light treacle is actually golden syrup, which is created by boiling cane juice to create the syrup like consistency. And this description (boiled cane juice) is what the Americans describe as fancy molasses.

Can anyone confirm or refute this?

Blackstrap is an American term for feed molasses, fancy is food grade , the others are what they are ;-)

Im confused, what do you want to know?. Like crow said, the others are what they are. Do you want to know what they are in other contries terms?, why?. Thats the main prob with HD, most are yanks and its confuses the hell out of aussies lol. Backstrap molasses here is stock feed and the good stuff is more refinded like the stuff divey and others got.

Thanks for the reply. Not quite sure that is exactly correct. On HD, the post showed both molasses used, and both blackstrap and fancy used were food grade.

We can get food grade blackstrap here in health food stores, but they are not cheap. And from memory, the molasses Divey was using was food grade blackstrap.

The term blackstrap merely refers to the residue remaining after the sugar syrup obtained from raw materials has been boiled a third time to crystallize as much sucrose as possible. This is also high in vitamin B6 and minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium and manganese). And, while it is a component of cattle feed, it is also used as a dietary supplement.

So, as for my question. I am still trying to confirm whether the initial post terms could be corroborated. You can only trust web research to an extent, I was hoping whether any members on the forum could confirm or refute what I found on the net.

Yes, in the US blackstrap is food grade. People use it in cooking beans, cookies, bbq sauce, etc. I have used feed grade blackstrap molasses and is was nasty, so I buy my molasses in bulk food stores. I use(20L wash) 1 1/2 US gallons fancy molasses, and 1 liter jar of blackstrap. The blackstrap gives a little bite to it. If I could only use blackstrap I would, but in my area it's just not available in bulk.

Beerswimmer,
Thanks! Next question then has to be the definition of fancy molasses. Where does that come in? Again, obviously food grade in the US, a molasses with a higher sugar content? Ie not the final sugar extraction?


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It's to do with the strike eg: how much sugar has been extracted

The easiest way I could explain fancy molasses is molasses that has over 65% sugar. It's also not very bitter because of it. Blackstrap is pretty bitter and usually 64% or less sugar.

Beerswimmer,
Thanks. As I suspected, fancy = molasses where not as much sugar has been extracted (as per crows comments).

Think I need to pick up some bulk food grade blackstrap.


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Newb question ... where do I get feed (Blackstrap) molasses?

Is this it?

http://www.thefarmstore.com.au/catalogs ... q=molasses

Any stockfeed store or rural supplies mob mate :handgestures-thumbupleft: Most of the time you have to supply your own bucket or drum,or in Mac's case IBC :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:

Cheers.

Galah wrote:Newb question ... where do I get feed (Blackstrap) molasses?

Is this it?

http://www.thefarmstore.com.au/catalogs ... q=molasses

Beware, those are supplements for adding to molasses :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cheers. Well I won't be using them then.

Hi, this is a bit late for this thread, but. I spent over 10 years running sugar mills and Blackstrap molasses as everyone refers to it is the molasses produced from a raw sugar mill, this is used for many things including stock feed and is what you get from most feed suppliers in Australia, it is produced when the sugar mill can no longer crystalise any further sugar from the liquor. Liquor is the concentrated syrup which is collected from the sugar cane juice. This molasses is around 50% fermentable sugars, sucrose, fructose and glucose, balance is a small amount of water and all of the insoluble things from the sugar cane juice including minerals.

Food grade molasses in Australia is only produced at White sugar refineries, there are only four of these left in Australia. One is in Mackay, one in Bundaberg, one in Harwood and one in Melbourne. At a refinery the raw sugar, that is produced by a sugar mill, is melted and refined sugar (read hot filtered through activated carbon) and via crystalisation in large vacuum pans and white sugar is produced, this leaves the small amount of molasses, which was in the raw sugar as a coating on the outside of raw sugar and it is quite concentrated in its final form. It generally has a lower level of actual sucrose (white sugar) and most of the sugar is fructose and glucose.

I hope this does not confuse everyone too much, but this is where they both come from.

John,
Many thanks for the reply. And it most definitely in not too late :)

However, if you will indulge me, more questions arise.

1) you mention that the food grade blackstrap comes from the 4 white sugar refineries remaining in Australia. So where does the feed grade stuff come from?

2) apart from the source, is there much difference between food and feed grade molasses?

3) how does molasses differ from other products like treacle, golden syrup?

Many thanks for any help rendered

Hi, feed or standard molasses is produced by every raw sugar mill in Australia, so that includes around 21 mills, all but the three mills in northern NSW are in Qld. The average sugar mill will produced 50,000 tonnes of molasses, could make a lot of EtOH (ethanol).

The difference between feed grade and food grade is that the food grade is produced after the melted raw sugar has been hot filtered through large activated carbon filters to removed some of the minerals and it is then run through a DAFF clarifier, (dissolved air floatation) system, the heavier minerals do not make it through.

Also as these plants run at very high sugar recovery levels the level of sucrose is much lower in food grade mol.

Golden syrup has been inverted so it has little sucrose and mostly glucose and fructose.

I do not know about treacle.

@John Power, this is great stuff, thanks for these contributions. Love an insider's knowledge.

Thank you John :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Many thanks for the insight. :)