Three Kingdoms: A Million Soldiers Grown from the Fields

Chapter 77 Charcoal Extraction Sugar Making Method (Bonus 4k chapter for reader Liu Zhenghao)

Taoyuan in September is somewhat peaceful.

There's not much work left to do. Besides regularly applying well-rotted fertilizer, the only other things to do in the fields are weeding and pest control.

The more than 2,000 mu of farmland are growing well, and the irrigation canals are connected to draw water from the stream for irrigation.

The 700-acre pumpkin field is growing vigorously, and the scattered wheat fields look decent too.

The remaining fields were all planted with beans.

Sowing soybeans to fix nitrogen is a way to prepare for the coming year.

Every ten days, the sugarcane and cotton in our fields have been harvested almost four times.

Besides saving the seeds, Zhang Xian also began to experiment with these harvests.

The cotton was not enough for spinning cloth, so it was set aside. The sugarcane yield of over 100 kilograms from four rounds could be used to try making sugar.

When he first received the sugarcane from Steward Zhou, he thought that the local sugarcane was naturally short and small. He never expected that the sugarcane grown in his homestead was much taller and bigger than the ones he brought back.

The whole plant is 2.2 to 2.3 meters tall, and each stem weighs about 4 kilograms. After removing the head and tail, it still weighs 3.5 kilograms. The skin is purplish-red or greenish-yellow and covered with white wax powder.

He tasted the first harvest and found it to be quite sweet, not as bad as he had expected. However, the purple-skinned sugarcane was much sweeter than the green-skinned one, so he used sections of the purple-skinned sugarcane for subsequent plantings.

Zhang Xian didn't know the specific methods of sugar making, but in essence, it was nothing more than boiling juice.

He carried an iron pot back to his small courtyard and put the sugarcane weighing over 100 pounds from his storage space onto the ground in the courtyard.

Since he didn't have any tools for juicing, he managed to get a stone mortar, which was originally used for pounding rice, but he figured it would work for juicing.

With firewood readily available in the yard and all the necessary tools, he began making sugar.

The sugarcane we brought back was all purple-skinned, and both ends were cut off. The top of the sugarcane is too low in sweetness, and the roots at the bottom are used for seed saving, so these are the sweetest parts of the sugarcane.

Each one weighed three and a half pounds. He took one, cut it into small sections of twenty centimeters, and put it into the stone mortar.

The mortar and pestle was a bit too small; it got full as soon as I put one in.

There's no other way but to persevere. Once this sugar-making process is over, I'll definitely have to get myself a suitable juicer.

Pound, pound vigorously; if you increase your strength but don't use it, it's a waste.

You might as well consider pounding this stuff a form of strength training.

The stone pestle moved up and down, splattering juice everywhere, accompanied by a squelching sound and the breaking of fibers.

After much effort, the purple sugarcane in the stone mortar had almost shrunk into a ball, and the murky juice in the half-mortar emitted a sweet aroma.

He lifted the stone mortar and poured the juice into the iron pot, which weighed a little over a pound.

After pounding for a while, he was sweating a bit, so he went back inside, took off his long robe and inner shirt, changed into his modern clothes, and continued pounding.

He pounded the sugarcane, which weighed over 100 kilograms, more than 30 times, which was time-consuming and laborious.

However, this is just an initial test. Once he finishes this, he will know which aspects can be improved and which tools are suitable.

The pot contained about thirty to forty pounds of broth.

The essence of sugar boiling lies in the word "boil." The fire is lit and the liquid in the iron pot boils, bringing up a lot of foam.

"Should we skim off the foam?"

Although he had never boiled sugar, he had cooked soup before. He knew to skim off the foam when cooking soup, but no one had ever taught him how to boil sugar.

What if it's useful?
Unable to make up his mind, he simply stopped skimming and waited until the sugar was extracted, then kept some to compare with the skimmed foam from the second boiling of sugar, and that would make it clear whether or not he should skim it.

As the flames scorched the pot, the liquid in the iron pot gradually changed from a cloudy white to a bluish-black color, and a large number of bubbles rose from the bottom, but the pot still looked like liquid, without any viscosity.

He had no choice but to keep stirring to prevent the bottom from burning.

As you stir and stir, the liquid in the iron pot gradually decreases, and the color changes from bluish-black to brownish-red. The sugar syrup becomes viscous, and with each stir, countless drops of syrup stick to the wooden spatula.

'It's almost like caramelizing sugar, is it ready?'

As he stirred, Zhang Xian thought to himself that the liquid in the iron pot was now only a thin layer at the bottom, with fine bubbles rising to the sides of the pot and then flowing down in a viscous manner.

"What are you doing, patriarch?"

"Oh my god, you scared me!"

Zhang Xian, who was concentrating on boiling sugar, was almost scared out of his wits by that shout.

He turned his head in annoyance, only to see Li Zhen hopping over and peering curiously into the pot.

"Get away from me! Don't you care about your face and eyes?"

Zhang Xian used the middle of the wooden shovel to hit the little girl hard on the head.

The latter covered his head with both hands and looked at him pitifully.

"I'm scared of you. Come squat here and you'll find out what it is in a bit."

With Li Zhen joining the small courtyard, it was a good opportunity to use free labor. With her watching the fire, he could focus on the changes in the iron pot.

As the broth continued to thicken and a faint aroma of burning wafted out, he sensed something was wrong and quickly shouted, "Put out the fire! Put out the fire!"

Use a wooden spatula to stir the syrup, preventing the remaining syrup from continuing to touch the bottom of the pot.

Li Zhen was also very fast. Just as Zhang Xian shouted to pull the fire away, she had already started pulling the fire out of the stove.

As the temperature in the pot gradually decreased, he lifted the two handles of the iron pot and poured the syrup into a ceramic jar.

"Help me get these hanging down."

He gestured towards Li Zhen with his lip.

"Oh."

Li Zhen, bewildered, picked up a wooden spatula and scraped all the remaining syrup from the iron pot.

More than 100 kilograms of sugarcane, 30 to 40 kilograms of juice, and in the end, all you get is a jar of syrup weighing about 10 kilograms.

Furthermore, he felt that it was just syrup and not the same as sugar at all.

It can't even compare to the inferior sugar syrup of later generations.

'Do you want it to crystallize?'

How do we tie the knot?

'Did it form naturally?'

A series of question marks appeared in my mind.

He squatted down and stared into thought as he looked at the pottery jar placed on a bench.

"Head of the family?"

Li Zhen tilted her head and carefully poked Zhang Xian.

The events that happened in Taoyuan last month were still fresh in her mind, and she was afraid that her good head of the family was up to something again.

"Hey, hey, hey, why are you so annoying, thinking about something?" Zhang Xian broke off a stick about the thickness of a finger from the woodpile, blew off the ash, poked it into the earthenware pot, stirred it a few times, lifted it up, blew on it to cool it down, and handed it to Li Zhen.

"Go to your room to eat. There's a travelogue of the world on my bedside table. You copy the first hundred words twice! If you don't finish, I'll spank you!"

"Master."

Li Zhen started looking pitiful again.

Heaven help us! The school finally gave us a day off, and now we still have homework!
But in the eyes of a man focused on his work, such pitifulness was utterly insignificant.

"go with!"

He shoved the stick, dipped in a dollop of sugar, into Li Zhen's mouth. In an instant, the little girl's eyes lit up.

Slurping his lips, he said, "Mmm, it's sweet, so sweet."

Dopamine: That's right, it's me putting my power on!

The little girl walked happily to her room, completely forgetting the pain of having to do homework during her rare holiday.

The courtyard became quiet, and Zhang Xian stared at the syrup inside the jar, continuing to ponder.

He didn't know how long he had been lost in thought, but suddenly, a series of videos seemed to play in his mind and before his eyes.

[Future Vision Level 2: When crafting items of the current generation, there is a certain probability of obtaining the crafting process for the future evolution version of that item (current probability increased by 6%, skill level upgrade)]

He didn't know how many times the video was playing in front of him, but he could clearly see the people moving around and what they were doing.

As the curtain fell, a jar of snow-white, sand-like sugar was revealed.

His mind went blank for a moment, and he instantly realized all the mistakes he had made in the sugar-making process.

"The skill actually triggered!"

"This is the charcoal extraction sugar-making method from the Song and Yuan dynasties!"

“So that’s how it is”

Zhang Xian smacked his lips a few times, as if he were savoring something.

His eyes glanced at the pottery jar, a hint of disdain in his gaze.

"What a pity about my more than 100 kilograms of sugarcane."

The pot of sugar water he boiled can theoretically be considered sugar.

The syrup in the earthenware jar will naturally crystallize and precipitate during sedimentation. However, since the sugar water was not treated in any way, the final product was just sugar granules of even lower quality than brown sugar.

"Let's keep it as a reward for the progress of the people of Peach Blossom Spring."

About ten pounds of syrup can yield about five or six pounds of sugar crystals, with the remainder being syrup that cannot completely solidify.

The experimental sugar-boiling experiment unexpectedly triggered a vision of the future, which made Zhang Xian extremely happy.

He was happy not only because he had obtained the method for making sugar, but also because he had learned how to make activated charcoal.

This can be considered a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately, all the sugarcane has been used up, and the next sugar production will have to wait until the sugarcane matures.

However, we don't have to wait as long as this time, which took four rounds.

The level 4 farmland, with 648 spaces for vegetation growth, is a far cry from what it used to be.

This time, there are 200 sugarcane plants alone. Each selected sugarcane plant weighs 3.5 jin (1.25 kg), and the next sugar production will require 700 jin (350 kg) of sugarcane.

Unlike winemaking, sugar production is not feasible because individual sorghum plants are too small to be mass-produced on farmland.

But sugarcane is different. A single stalk can weigh several kilograms. With the current large-scale expansion of residential areas, 700 kilograms of sugarcane in ten days is equivalent to 2,000 kilograms in a month.

In an era when a pound of Lingnan sugarcane paste was worth a gold ingot, the sugar produced from two thousand pounds of sugarcane in a month was enough to rival the annual output of some small wealthy families.

Ten days later will be the time for this batch of sugarcane to ripen. Perfect timing, these ten days are the time to make some tools for sugar making and train sugar workers.

Having made up his mind, he completely extinguished the embers in the courtyard, and remembering that Li Zhen was still in the room, he quietly went to take a look.

At this moment, the girl was copying from a bound book.

He didn't disturb them and left the courtyard on his own.

The people of Peach Blossom Village were no longer surprised by the strangely dressed manor lord.

Although the manor lord rarely wears this outfit anymore, he still sees it once or twice a month, so it's become a habit.

Carrying the earthenware jar tied with straw rope, he first went to the charcoal kiln.

The charcoal kiln in Taoyuan is located at the very edge, with a straight, rectangular building between the two arched kilns.

That's the kiln opening; the temperature rises from there into the kiln bodies on both sides.

He found the foreman in charge of charcoal production and went straight to him, instructing him: "After this batch of charcoal is produced, help me burn a batch of hardwood charcoal made from jujube and pear wood. I need it."

"Yes, Master, I'll call you when it's ready."

The charcoal foreman, somewhat excited, agreed.

Being able to speak directly with the manor owner is a blessing that others don't have.

Although this place is called a charcoal kiln, the workers here were personally trained by Han Ji. In addition to burning charcoal, they can also burn bricks and pottery.

It's a multi-functional kiln. Han Ji intends to build a few more kilns here so that the village can be self-sufficient in whatever it needs in the future.

He gave instructions to the charcoal foreman and then turned to leave.

The main purpose of using jujube and pear wood charcoal is to make activated carbon.

To whiten sugar, the most important step is decolorization, and the charcoal extraction method used in the Song and Yuan dynasties was already able to stabilize the color of white sugar.

The most crucial step here is using activated carbon for pigment separation.

If it weren't for the activation of future vision, I probably would never have figured out how to make white sugar on my own in my entire life.

I didn't use white sugar just for its appearance, well, appearance is one reason, but the most important thing is that white sugar has a purer taste.

For wealthy and powerful families, it's not like they've never eaten sugar before. If they want to start a sugar business, they need something truly unique.

Although it sounds harsh, the truth is that sugar has absolutely nothing to do with ordinary people in this era. Even if they spend their entire lives, the only sweetness they can obtain is from wild fruits growing by the roadside.

Once you've prepared the porous charcoal needed for activated carbon production, the next step is to prepare the sugar crystallization tank.

The sugar-making process you see when activating the skill shows that the inside of their vat has spiral patterns, which is mainly to induce directional crystal growth.

Making pottery on-site was impractical, but fortunately, Taoyuan had plenty of pottery jars. He found a skilled farmer and had him carefully grind spiral patterns inside the jar.

With the crystallization tank, he then went to find someone to make a bamboo-woven rotating cage, which was also the technology he saw when the skill was activated. It could be turned by hand and rotated at 180-200 revolutions per minute.

This is for separating molasses.

In other words, sugar solution that cannot be crystallized.

The separation method used during the Song and Yuan dynasties was about 80% efficient.

It can cool wet sugar into dry sugar more quickly.

Over the next few days, he prepared for the second sugar production.

He handed the original jar of syrup to Huang Zhong, instructing him to use it as a reward for the hardworking soldiers in Taoyuan, thereby boosting morale within the army.

He also went to the blacksmith's shop and personally crafted a juicing tool. The leverage principle of pressing down to extract juice was much more convenient than when he used a stone mortar and pestle to pound it.

Daily life in Taoyuan continues as usual: the school provides early education, soldiers train hard in the training grounds, and various local specialties are steadily produced.

Wine, paper, bows, armor, and the craftsmanship of artisans are growing day by day.

During that period, Han Ji was only away from Taoyuan for a few days, and Zhang Xian could only take his place and attend classes for those few days.

Putting everything else aside, with the added knowledge and skills, the students at the academy have mastered the knowledge very well these past few days, so much so that Han Ji looked at him with a strange gaze when he returned after finishing his business with the 'campers'.

It's as if they're asking, "If my lord has such abilities, why does he need me to teach him?"

Um.
Don't ask about this kind of thing; you wouldn't understand anyway.

Soon, the sugarcane in the farmland grew to maturity.

(End of this chapter)