And that's how you make brown sugar

I had always heard about how natural the brown sugar production process was, but I never knew the details. 

I knew what the sugar cane plant looked like, and I knew what brown sugar looked like. But I didn't understand how they turned the juice-filled plant into the stuff that is in the pantry.

On my last day at the school, the local community asked the students to help them with an experiment. The community has been producing brown sugar for over a hundred years. They are in the process of applying for a grant to explore other markets, but they needed to know exactly how much sugar cane they could grow in the 10 meter by 10 meter space. 

So they asked the students, and I tagged along.

Harvest sugar cane and cut off the leaves.

Transport the cut sugar cane to where it is going to be processed. 

Weigh your harvest. Obviously this isn't always necessary but it was good for the experiment. The students harvested 364 kg of sugar cane. They also managed to eat a lot of sugar cane in the process of harvesting. So if you want a more accurate number, I would conservatively add 5-10 kg of sugar to account for "loss."

Run the sugar cane through this press to extract the juice.

The juice runs from the press through those tubes in this picture. That white box is a filter that will take out some of the chunks before the liquid is then stored in the giant blue barrel.

Then you are going to place the juice in a giant cauldron and let it boil down for half and hour.

You are going to need to get a fire going below the cauldron. This guy's job is to chop wood and make sure the fire keeps going.  He gets there at 5:00 every day to start the fire. 

It's a sugary shvitz. You are going to need to use that giant paddle above to continually stir the juice as it boils down.

Once the juice has been cooking for a half hour, you pass it down the ramp into the awaiting tray to be stirred around with a hoe.

At first, you will be stirring around a liquid.

As it cools, it starts to harden, making it more of an effort.  As you move it around with the hoe, the individual granules  become more evident, but there are still some chunks.

So you sift it to make sure only the finest pieces fall through. Then you continue to work the remaining chunks until they have a similar consistency.

And then you've got a pile of brown sugar.

The student's harvest yielded 30 kg of brown sugar for the community. 

This was the process in a very traditional processing system. I imagine that there are more mechanized systems for larger-scale production, and I would think that white sugar requires a similar process with a bleaching step added along the way.