The sometimes Compactness of Panela

Preamble

Just Panela is a truly unrefined, unprocessed form of organic cane sugar.  Like many natural products this means it is subject to change due to its natural characteristics: 

Soil, sun, rain, humidity level, pressure, temperature, gravity, all of these variables can play a role in Just Panela®’s compactness, clumpy-ness,  or loose-ness. 

Usually, with some agitation with one’s fingers through the bag, it will free itself up, back into the golden powder of beauty that is Just Panela®!

A Very Quick History of Refined Sugar

In 1852 David Weston invented “The Hawaiian Centrifuge”.  This was done for a couple of reasons: 

To make sugar more ‘durable’.  It traveled across sea and land with poorer packaging and isolation from the environment.  It could get from, say, Hawaii to the mainland with less problems from the exposure to the sea and elements.  Afterall, ‘granulated sugar’ is a rock or a crystal.

The other reason for centrifugation is/ was to remove the organic material such as molasses and outermost layer from the raw crystals of sugar and in doing so, the nutrients and terroir, taste, texture, and color as well. All of the good stuff.

All other common forms of cane sugar used in North America are centrifugal refined:   White, Brown, Turbinado, Demerara included.  

So, why does Panela sometimes come clumpy? Or hardened? 

The short answer

 It is largely sucrose.  And Sucrose is sticky and tends to want to stick back together.   Think: Honey, Maple Syrup and any other natural sweetener! 

The medium and long answers:  

It’s a natural product that has natural characteristics that come from nature, naturally😅.    All joking aside, as an organic product,  there is no emulsifier or loosening agent applied to Just Panela®. 

·       In most cases of hardening and clumping some agitation will re-loosen it.  This is true with the 5lb bags and 1lb bags.   

·       The larger bags will have a higher chance of the panela ‘bricking up’.   This is one reason we moved down from a 55lb (25 kilo) bulk bag to a 44lb (20 kg) bulk bag.  Four our bulk pallet customers this tends to occur to the bags on the bottom of the pallet. In other words, it is due to gravity + pressure. 

·       The dryer the Just Panela® the more it wants to clump and brick and solidify and harden.  As such we tend to work with higher (like 5%) humidity panela.  

·       We are working on a crusher/ agitator tool. We supply to some nutritional powder manufacturers and other dryer products that have a hard time working with the clumping.  We have had a difficult time finding some ‘off the shelf’ commercial grinder and are working on our own ‘crusher’ for some of our manufacturers that require it.  If this is of interest to you, Let us know.