Muscovado sugar in my coffee
I’m a sweet guy, remember? I said that so right when I started this blog. So I put a little amount of sugar in my coffee, about half a teaspoon or even less. Before I started roasting coffee in my kitchen, I used to drink Swissmiss hot chocolate in the morning. And when I ordered from those coffee shops, it’s usually café mocha. I’m sweet, can’t help it.
Over the years, I’ve preferred brown sugar over white. I just like the raw flavor in brown sugar, or maybe it’s just the looks? White sugar is too clean looking, so pure, so refined. That’s just not me. I’m rough.
And then I heard a lot about muscovado sugar. I heard it’s even rawer (there such a word?) than brown sugar. If I remember it right, my friend and fellow coffee guy Danny Ong, of Cotabato City, first introduced me to muscovado sugar. I tried it in his home. I liked it.
Muscovado (right) vs. brown sugar
Muscovado is also called Barbados sugar, named after an island in the Carribean known for its sugar industry. Here’s an entry from Wikipedia: “Muscovado is very dark brown and slightly coarser and stickier than most brown sugars. Unlike most other brown sugars, which are made by adding molasses to refined white sugar, muscovado takes its flavor and color from its source, sugarcane juice. ”
A muscovado sugar from India is getting rave reviews at Amazon.
I’ve heard and read about muscovado being more nutritious than the white and brown sugar varieties. I’m not sure, I have yet to see medical evidence. (Hehe … pardon this journalist, who’s always looking for hard evidence, and who’s married to a doc who’s heavily into evidence-based medicine.) Bottom line — I like muscovado in my coffee more than any other sugar. If I’d live longer or die younger coz of it, I don’t care.
Back in my hometown of Iligan, I’ve bought so-called muscovado sugar from a few grocery stores. Didn’t really like them. It’s just like the calamay, also called red sugar, we had as children. I’m not sure though if those calamay is now referred to as the muscovado.
Then in one of those coffee parties I hold at home, my friend Jaeger, of Aruma Coffee Lounge here in Iligan, brought some packs of muscovado sugar in sachet form. He says it’s from Negros, sugar capital of the Philippines. I like it. I haven’t seen that kind of muscovado being sold locally, though. But Jaeger was kind enough to sell me a pack of 100.
My digital scale says the sachet — contents and packaging material included — weighs 6 grams. So maybe there’s 5 grams of sugar there, approximately 1 teaspoon. One sachet is too sweet for me though, so I use only half of it for a cup of coffee.
Ahh … my coffee adventure just got a little better.
Muscovado sugar just earned the right to be on my coffee rack.
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Did you know that Negros used to be the top exporter of Muscovado in the world?
That I would like to believe, if presented with independent data, not a claim from someone from Pinas or from Negros.
In the same way that Batangueños would claim that their coffee is the world’s best, or that Pinoy claim that the Philippines once was the world’s number one coffee producer, claims that unfortunatelly I couldn’t verify from independent sources.
Very interesting. I had never heard of this type of sugar before.
hi, bob,
where can I buy muscovado sugar in sachet? like the one in the pixs. thanks? Im from gensan.
Tantan, I only know of one place — Aruma Cafe here in Iligan. I heard they get it from Silay in Negros.