Corn Stalks Syrup

[230gr]

I was doing some reading of how many uses the Iroquois found for the corn (maze) plant for food, cooking and construction. Anyway, what struck me was that they made a sweet syrup from the corn stocks. So I started checking out corn stock syrup and found that is was commercially produced around the colonial period. Part of this information was taken from Indian Corn by James B. McNair who was the Assistant Curator of Botany, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago in 1930.

Corn Stalks Syrup
Most of the different plants of the grass family have hollow stems, but there are three notable exceptions: sorghum, sugar cane, and corn. All three contain cane sugar. The Aztecs in Mexico made use of the corn plant for sugar, in the same manner as sugar cane is now used. When the ear of corn is ripe enough to be used for canning, the stock juice contains 9 to 11 % cane sugar. If the stalks stand in the field twenty days after the removal of the ears, the amount of sugar in the stalk increases to 13 to 17 % and is considered the proper stage for syrup-making for maximum sugar content.

Cornstalk syrup is clear, reddish amber in color, with a pleasant flavor and manufactured by nearly the same process as sorghum syrup. As produced, it is not a table syrup but an excellent cooking syrup considered equal to the best grades of sorghum and cane molasses. To substitute for molasses, corn stalk juice uses a mill designed with a couple of rollers which crush and squeeze the stalks with dozens of tons of pressure per square inch similar to the sugar-cane mills in the West Indies.

Connecticut alcohol producers harvested the green corn stalks and squeezed the juice from them, boiled down repeatedly to produce syrup as thick as molasses. The same equipment used for producing maple syrup will do the job for cornstalk syrup.  It takes about 8 gallons of juice to produce a gallon of syrup. By fermenting syrup then running it through a pot still two or three times, the distilled spirit strong enough proof for rum and could not be distinguished by the taste from new West India rum.

[TWP]

230gr

I wonder how hard it would be to find a corn field and ask the farmer for permission to harvest some of his stalks after harvest?

I know most ag operations want to plow the stalks back into the soil, but I certainly could not use even a small fraction of an acre of corn stalks.

[230gr]

ask the farmer for permission to harvest some of his stalks after harvest?
want to plow the stalks back into the soil
 
If you could find a table corn producer who would be harvesting green corn stocks, I doubt that he would care too much and, if he did want the stalks beck, you could return the crushed extracted ones.

[TWP]

Not sure about "green" stalks as the corn may be left to ripen on the stalk.  Do commercial growers pick green and let it ripen in storage?

We have some larger corn patches in town, but they are "feed" corn.  I don't know how much sugar the stalks would have and some of these patches are planted strictly for Halloween mazes.  They don't bother to harvest, just plow it all in.  The profit from visitors walking the maze is more than enough to cover cultivation, seed, water and plowing...

[230gr]

Corn grown for animal feed or corn meal are left on the stock to ripen and dry completely. The stock would be dead and probably have no sugar left.

You need "green" stalks that were been picked for roasting ears or to be processed for canned table corn when the kernels are in the “milk” stage. Their stocks are still green and full of sugar. Harvesting the roasting ears would be the prime use for growing the corn but extracting the juice would be a bonus and you could still strip the green leaves for animal fodder.  The Indians used green corn stocks in their pit cooking to impart a sweetness to the cooking meat.

[TWP]

That makes sense.  We might be able to get the stalks which are removed to make the "maze", which is done just before Halloween.  The stalks might be too dry by then (late October), but we might be able to talk the farmer into making the maze earlier, while the stalks still have some sugar.

I don't know of any sugar (sweet) corn growers here, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.  Thanks for the advice.