The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

Half an hour later, Yang and Yue each held a ceramic bowl filled with green-yellow sugarcane juice. Although there were still some impurities that had not been filtered out, the two little guys didn't care. They drank it in small sips while watching the adults fiddling with the objects in front of them.

After the people outside helped to move the stone wheel to the backyard, they said goodbye and went back. Heifu, his brother Zhong, and their aunt's son Yan, the three of them, plus the newly bought black donkey, began to tinker with the stone wheel.

"This thing was made by my sister-in-law according to the wooden wheel used to squeeze mulberry juice at the county engineer's home. It was enlarged two or three times, making it more durable and allowing more juice to be squeezed each time."

Yunmeng Lake is one of the original places of origin of sugarcane. The officials of Nanjun also inherited the customs of the Chu nobles. Every autumn and winter, they would squeeze some sugarcane juice.

As the song in Chuci goes: "When cooking turtles and lambs, there is some sugarcane juice." Sugarcane juice is mainly used as a seasoning for making turtles and lambs. It is limited to wealthy families and the quantity is not large. It is unprecedented for a family like Heifu to have more than ten or twenty acres of land and to collect hundreds of kilograms of sugarcane and hide them in the cellar, intending to squeeze them all.

But the family had no objection. In the past two years, Heifu had been tinkering with many things mysteriously, and he could always bring them surprises. Besides, the family is not what it used to be. Heifu alone has more than 100,000 yuan in money. It is no big deal to tinker with some food when he has free time and money.

The operating principle of the stone wheel is as simple as its appearance. The black donkey turns counterclockwise to pull the wooden pole. Driven by the wooden pole, the stone wheel on the left will turn, and through the cleverly placed gears, it will also drive the stone wheel on the right to turn.

There was a suitable gap between the two stone wheels. Heifu asked several hired farmers and servants to feed the peeled sugarcane into the rotating stone wheels. The sugarcane was crushed and flattened, making a crisp sound. The squeezed sugarcane juice flowed down into the pottery jar that had been placed long ago, and the original sugarcane pulp was squeezed out in this way...

Heifu also scooped a bowl of sugarcane juice to taste, and it was only lightly sweet. Sure enough, it was impossible to complete the breeding and improvement in two years. I am afraid that this sweetness would not even reach one-third of that in later generations.

But it is better to have it than not. They can't finish chewing so much sugarcane in a winter. After leaving dozens of kilograms as seed buds for next year, they simply squeezed the rest. Heifu also wanted to try whether he could make sugar cane.

An hour later, the containers at home were full, and the main battlefield moved to the kitchen. After the fiber impurities in the sugarcane juice were precipitated and removed, they poured it into the newly built iron cauldron.

"Yan, you sell maltose in the village, so try to boil this big pot of sugarcane juice according to the method of maltose."

Yan is the son of their aunt, one year younger than Heifu. His family is a merchant. He usually works as a peddler in the village market, playing flutes and selling malt dough on the street to make a living. These peddlers do business regardless of the weather, and they have to make the items they sell themselves, which is why Heifu asked him to come.

Yan was a little nervous. After all, Heifu's status was different from the past. He was already an official doctor. He first shirked, saying that maltose was made from grain, but he had never seen anyone make it with mulberry juice, and he was afraid he couldn't do it.

"The principles are all reasonable, you try it, even if it doesn't work, it's okay."

Heifu was sure, although he had never seen the process of making sugarcane, but he could roughly guess the principle. Isn't it to remove water and analyze the sugar in the sugarcane juice?

Yesterday afternoon, he personally went to Yunmeng Township to watch Yan make maltose. I won't talk about the complicated process in the early stage. I will only talk about the last step, which is to extract the sugar liquid from the grain, simmer it in an iron pot with a low fire, and stir it continuously until it is thick. After stopping the fire and cooling it down, it becomes the hard maltose that his nephews and nieces like to eat. In addition, there is soft maltose, which tastes a bit like the sorghum maltose of later generations.

Under Hei Fu's urging, Yan had no choice but to bite the bullet and start. On the two stoves in the kitchen, there was an open large iron pot and another small copper pot. The first stove was burning with dried sugarcane leaves. The fire was blazing, and the sugarcane juice was boiled in the iron pot. At the beginning, the juice was very thin. When only a quarter of it was left after boiling and evaporation, it tended to become thicker...

Yan then scooped the sugarcane pulp from the large pot into the small pot, and then boiled it slowly. The sugarcane juice became thicker and thicker, gradually showing a beautiful amber color...

"The most important thing for frying sugar is the heat."

Yan was not so nervous at this time. He said so to Heifu and Zhong, and at the same time, he skillfully scooped up the pulp with a spoon and poured it into the pot, judging the degree of tenderness of the sugar water by the pulling of the silk.

Having said that, frying sugar with sugarcane juice is not the same as maltose after all. The first time, Yan failed to master the heat and fry it to a crisp...

"Doctor Guan... I..."

Yan was very panicked and thought he had messed up, but Heifu picked up a piece of black stuff stuck to the bottom of the pot and put it into his mouth, and his eyes suddenly lit up.

"It tastes a bit bitter, but also sweet!"

The direction was right, so Heifu asked Yan to keep trying. The second time, Yan was more focused. He turned down the heat, scooped up the thick syrup with a spoon, and squinted his eyes to observe the syrup flowing down naturally in the sunlight.

Finally, when he was sure it was OK, the fire was turned off. The pot was filled with golden red syrup that had become extremely thick, boiling hot and steaming, sweet and fragrant. They were scooped into a ceramic bowl, and in the cold weather, they gradually turned into red lumps...

At this time, Yang and Yue, who had been unable to hold back after smelling the aroma of syrup outside, squeezed in. Hei Fu cut two pieces of sugar and stuffed them into their mouths. A sweet taste entered their throats, mixed with a unique burnt aroma...

"Uncle Zhong didn't lie, it's really sugar!"

"You can really make sugar out of it!"

Yan also tasted a piece carefully and was overjoyed. To be honest, except for the first time when he was inexperienced and over-fried it, this sugarcane juice sugar is much simpler than making sugar with grains such as wheat and sorghum!

"But why is this sugar red?" The malt sugar he made on weekdays was mostly white and light yellow.

"Because it's called brown sugar!"

Heifu named this kind of sugar and licked a piece. The familiar taste seemed to bring him back to the days in his previous life when he cared about his girlfriend's menstruation and bought brown sugar to soak in water...

The past is like smoke, not just like a lifetime ago, but really two lifetimes apart.

But the problem came again. They only made large pieces of brown sugar. How did they make the white rock sugar and white sugar?

Heifu rolled his eyes. How would he know?

The reason why brown sugar is red is that there are still a lot of impurities in the sugarcane itself. On this basis, how to remove impurities and precipitate granular sugar and white sugar? Those processes may have to be slowly explored by someone. Yan in front of him is a good candidate.

First of all, he is the son of his aunt and a relative of Heifu, so he can be trusted. And he is a merchant, so it is not illegal to sell brown sugar in the market.

According to Yan, if more brown sugar can be made, it will still be profitable. This product is cheaper in raw materials and simpler in process than the "Jiaqiangzuogan" glutinous rice.

However, after they squeezed all the 400 kilograms of sugarcane in the cellar to make sugar, Yan was not so optimistic, because everyone worked hard for most of the day and only made about 10 kilograms of block brown sugar...

"We still have to improve the sugarcane. The sweetness is too low. It must be increased by at least two or three times."

Heifu was very distressed. They explored for a day and the process of making sugar was relatively mature, but the raw materials could not pass the test. The terrible thing is that this cannot be solved in a year or two. It still needs to be tossed slowly.

Heifu decided to plant hundreds of acres of sugarcane in his own land next year!

As for the ten kilograms of brown sugar made today, let's keep it at home for ourselves. Maybe we can ask my uncle and aunt to try and make a sweet and sour fish for us to taste?

Vinegar has existed since the Zhou Dynasty. It was called "醯" (xī) and was a must-have item in the home. There is a story about a neighbor borrowing vinegar in the Analects of Confucius...

Heifu was salivating, but a shrill female voice came from outside.

"What smells so good?"

Yan stuck out her tongue: "My mother is here."

Sure enough, Zhong outside also smiled and said: "Aunt is here at the right time. Yan made some good candy. Aunt, please try it."

"It's really sweet... Did Yan make it? Please pack a few pounds for me to take back and try."

Heifu and Yan looked at each other, and both of them didn't want to leave the kitchen. Yan was born afraid of his mother, and Heifu could not bear the aunt's urging for marriage and matchmaking. He had only been back for three days, and his aunt had recommended five girls from the village to him...

Sure enough, the aunt's shrill voice had moved to Heifu's mother who was fighting in the courtyard, reporting to her: "Sister-in-law, I have done what you asked me to do! I have found a good marriage for Heifu today! The granddaughter of the three elders in the village is only sixteen years old, handsome, and has a good figure. She can be a good match for Heifu!"

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