Organic Panela (Bio) 25kg - Raw Colombian Sugar Cane

Most of the Colombian sugarcane is harvested by hand, with cutting workers stalks down with machetes and loading them onto donkeys for transport. It's not that process couldn't be mechanize or modernize production but doing so would put tens of thousands of workers out of a job.

While panela is technically just raw, reduced cane-sugar juice, it gets cooked hot enough that some of its sugars caramelize, giving it a slightly bitter background.

Most organic panela is made by cutting down the sugarcane by hand and kettle cooking it in small batches, the way it has always been. Using centuries-old methods that involve dehydrating the raw sugarcane juice over low levels of heat, the dried product is then pressed into blocks, in our case the panela is beaten by hand until the panela grains are obtained, which will later be sifted to homogenize their size.

This traditional, small-scale production method lends itself to retaining higher amounts of the molasses contained within the sugarcane. It's the molasses that lends panela sugar its distinct, lightly sweet flavor and aroma. At the same time, molasses contains naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that you won't find in sugars that go through an industrial refining process.