Whole Cane Sugar

Producing this organic, whole-cane sugar is an amazing process which involves a huge amount of manual work. The sugar cane is cut and delivered to the ingenio (like a coffee beneficio but for sugar) where the cane is fed through a series of crushers which separate the juice from the fibre. The used cane fibre is dried and later used as fuel in the furnaces that heat the boilers. The sugar juice then goes through a series of boilers, each time losing more water and becoming thicker in consistency and darker in colour. In the last boiler (made in Glasgow 1944) the sugar becomes ‘honey’ – as it changes form it changes name – by slowly simmering and reducing until it is a thick consistency and caramel colour. At the critical moment the honey is let out of the boiler and into big vats where men with large metal paddles mix it, releasing the heat and the last of the water. This mixing continues until the honey dries into a crumbly mass of ‘dulce’ – the specific name for this type of sugar.