A sweet hobby: Enderle family has kept the sorghum molasses tradition alive for generations

Ralph Enderle of New Hamburg, Missouri, has been making sorghum molasses on his 80-acre spread for almost four decades. It's a yearly cycle his father followed, and his father before him. But beyond that, Enderle said he isn't sure how far back the practice goes. "You can't really make a whole lot of money by it, but you keep an old tradition alive," he said. In May, Enderle plants the cereal grain on a part of his farm he doesn't rent out, and when it's ready to harvest, he and others chop down the stalks, strip them, load them on a truck and haul them a little past his house to a special milling area.

Once there, they feed the tall, thick cane stalks into a motorized press that squeezes their greenish juice into a catch basin. From there, it's piped using a garden hose to a series of pans, where it's heated and stirred to a rich golden-brown color and thick consistency, steam billowing over the awning of the lean-to where the cooking takes place.

"That's what the steam is," Enderle said, "the moisture leaving."

Once the molasses is ready to be emptied into a large barrel with a spigot, where it can be siphoned into jars, it's first poured over cheesecloth into waiting buckets so any particles are filtered out.

"You do that as the molasses is good and hot," he said, before allowing it to cool.

Paul Meyer holds a jar of fresh sorghum at Ralph Enderle's New Hamburg, Missouri, home on Monday, Oct. 10.Laura Simon

Now that Enderle is retired, sorghum-making is more of a hobby than anything, although he said during the Great Depression, people used it in place of brown sugar for things like chili, baked beans, barbecue sauce and pecan pie. Even though the taste of the recipes came out a little differently, sorghum got the job the done for people facing food shortages and rationing around the country.

Plus, having grown up eating the sweet, sticky treat, Enderle said he simply likes the taste. And the fact that every batch is different keeps him interested. "It's is a challenge to be able to cook it and do a good job of it," he said.

ljones@semissourian.com

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