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Description
On reverse: Kettle Room, Beechnut Life Savers, San Jose, California From accompanying captions: "Steam-jacketed copper pressure cookers for cooking Hard Candy. A batch was made up of sugar, water, and invert syrup (produced by melting down broken and unusable tablets, if there were enough; or by melting sugar until it reached the proper temperature). Each batch was heated by steam to the correct temperature and pressure, then sealed and cooked for a measured length of time (by a clock set on each kettle). The molten syrup was then dumped onto wheeled "batch tables" and rolled over to the mixing tables, where color and flavoring were added, and teh whole mixed together by metal arms, rather like a giant taffy machine. From the mixing table, it was taken to the "spinners," where it was rolled between tapered rollers until a rope of candy the correct size to go into the tablet machines was produce. The spinners were particularly vulnerable to power outages. If the rollers stopped moving, the molten candy would sink down into and between the rollers and harden. The men would then have to dismantle the entire machine, chip the candy off by hand, wash it, dry it with compressed air, and let it dry overnight, bringing production to a screeching halt. The word quickly went out that if the power went off, everybody in range went into action. Spread paper on the floor adn dump the entire batch--get it off the spinners! Later it could be melted down, refined, and re-used as invert syrup.
Type
image
Format
Black & White
Identifier
003532D2-F041-45F9-8189-907920342350 2014-33-1
Subject
Confectioneries Manufactures--California--San Jose--20th century (LCSH) Beech-nut Corporation
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