Sorghum Syrup

Sorghum syrup is a sweet syrup pressed and boiled from the stalks of sweet sorghum, a variety of the sorghum grass with a high sugar content; in some parts of the United States it is called sorghum molasses, though it is a different product from molasses made from sugarcane or sugar beets. Producing it is heavily labor intensive, requiring the stalks to be pressed for their juice and then boiled down. Sweet sorghum cultivation expanded across the American South in the 1850s and 1860s after the Civil War disrupted the supply of Caribbean cane sugar, and Northern abolitionists also grew it as an alternative to slave-produced cane sugar; production peaked at about 20 million gallons a year in the early twentieth century but has fallen below 1 million gallons a year since postwar labor shortages, with Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee remaining the main producing states, where sorghum syrup and hot biscuits form a traditional Southern breakfast.