Our Coconut Sap Sugar is light brown in color and an
all-natural sweetener that tastes a bit like brown sugar
but has all the natural goodness of coconut water.
Coconut Sugar can be used to sweeten any of your favorite
beverages, sauces, marinades or dishes. Most people use it as a
replacement for white, refined sugar in their recipes.
One tablespoon of muscovado or raw sugar
weighs 28 grams and contains 27 grams of carbohydrates. In contrast, a
tablespoon of Coconut Sap Sugar weighing that same 28
grams only contains 16 grams of carbohydrates. The lower
carbohydrate content is evident when used in baking as an
equivalent amount of coconut sap sugar will not make the
food as sweet as if one were to use white sugar,
muscovado or raw sugar. What
makes up the remaining 12 grams? The other constituents found in coconut
water that concentrate as the sugars concentrate. It is important
to note that coconut sap sugar tastes very sweet and is an
excellent alternative to other "sweeter" sugars, but you will have to use
your taste buds to know exactly how much to add. And it is important to
understand that there are more than just sugars in dehydrated
coconut water (aka Coconut Sugar).
Coconut Sugar is made by collecting sweet sap from the
flowering stem at the top of the coconut tree called an
inflorescence. The inflorescence is carefully clipped and then bent into a
bamboo container for collection. Twice a day, these trees are climbed and
full bamboo containers exchanged for empty ones. It is usually the men and
their sons who climb the trees. To watch them do this is amazing. The
collected sap is transported into a tiled, clean kitchen
where it is placed in a stainless steel pan where it is brought to a light
simmer to concentrate the sugars. Once crystals begin to
form, the solution is removed from the heat and crystallization of the
entire basin occurs rapidly.
The women working in the kitchen grind the crystals while
they are still moist, to break them into very small, fine grains. These
grains are packaged into 10 kg bags and transported to the Quality
Control Center. The over 700 families who make this
Coconut Sap Sugar, bring their products here where it is
further dried and tested for moisture content, particle size and microbes.
It is from this site, that ocean going containers arrive and are filled
with product bound for America.
Recently I have seen articles stating that the collection of
coconut sap is harmful to coconut trees and
affecting coconut oil and coconut milk
production. Nothing could be further from the truth. To read more about
this please click here.
When initially packaged, coconut sugar has no moisture and
flows easily. This sugar will remain this way for a long time. However,
when the package is opened repeatedly and stored for over a year,
especially in humid environment, it will likely begin to take on moisture
and become hard or clumpy. This sugar is still usable, but it will require
being broken up and dissolved.
Because this sweetener comes from 700 different family farms in Indonesia,
even though every farm has been and continues to be inspected, its organic
status could be questioned. Therefore, upon request from the organic
certifier in Indonesia, a battery of tests for pesticides was done to make
sure this coconut sugar is indeed organic. These tests were all done by GC
(Gas chromatography) and MS (Mass Spectrometry). The contaminants tested
for were:
- A battery of Chlorine based-Pesticides
- A battery of Phosphorous-based- Pesticides
- A battery of Nitrogen-based Pesticides
- A battery of Pyrethroids
- And a group of other miscellaneous pesticides
All results were negative at the lowest detectable limits.
Coconut Sugar is positive for Coconut Allergens. At our
manufacturing facility we also process tree nuts from all over the world
and ancient peanuts from Ecuador and well as sesame seeds and sesame seed
oil. Our coconut milk powder contains trace amounts of a milk protein
called casein, but this is the only source of dairy at the facility and
there is no wheat, soy, shellfish or fish anywhere in the storage or
production areas. Eggs for the manufacture of mayonnaise are present at
Wilderness Family Naturals one week per month and in a separate part of the
facility. Precautions with the manufacture and storage of product are taken
and procedures for the careful cleansing of all utensils in all production
rooms are enforced to minimize any cross contamination of allergens.
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