Almost every country that planted cane ended up refining sugar and forgetting the rest. Colombia did not. Here panela survived as a craft, with its mills, its furnaces and its people, and it is still part of the daily food of millions of households.
This is not nostalgia. It is a living industry, rural and enormous.
What panela actually is
Panela is evaporated cane juice. Nothing else. The cane is milled, the juice is drawn off, cleaned, boiled until almost no water is left, and poured into a mould to set.
What matters is what does not happen: the molasses is never separated from the crystal, nothing is centrifuged, nothing is bleached. That is why it keeps the colour, the smell and the flavour of the juice it came from. Refined sugar goes the other way: everything that is not sucrose is taken out.
And that is the whole technical difference — which is also, in one line, why panela is not brown sugar. Brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added back in. Panela never had anything taken out in the first place.
It also explains why two panelas from the same town can taste different: it depends on the cane, on the soil, and on the moment the furnace operator decided it was ready.
How it is made, step by step
- The cane is cut. By hand, with a machete, on most panela farms in the country. It is processed quickly after cutting, because the juice ferments.
- It is milled. The cane goes through a roller mill — the trapiche — which draws between 58 and 63 % of its weight as juice. What is left is the bagasse.
- The bagasse is not thrown away: it is stored in sheds called bagaceras until it drops below 30 % moisture, and then burned as fuel for the same furnace. The mill feeds itself.
- It is cleaned. Raw juice carries soil and particles. It is filtered, then clarified: plant mucilages are added — barks of balso, guásimo, cadillo, juan blanco or san joaquín — which release binding polymers when macerated. The impurities rise as a foam called cachaza, skimmed off by hand with a ladle. It happens twice: once around 60–70 °C, giving the black cachaza, and again near 92 °C, the white one. It is patient work, and it is described exactly like this in the FAO technical manual.
- It is evaporated. The clean juice travels along a series of pans over the furnace, each hotter than the last. The water leaves. The juice goes from watery to syrupy to thick molasses.
- It is brought to the point. This is the moment of craft. It happens between 120 and 125 °C, but the furnace operator is not watching a thermometer: he decides by how the syrup falls off the ladle, how it stretches between his fingers, how it sounds. A minute too long and the panela comes out burnt and bitter. A minute too short and it will not set. The juice went into the pan at 16–22 degrees Brix; it comes out at 90–92.
- It is beaten and moulded. The syrup is drawn off, beaten so it partly crystallises, and poured into moulds. It hardens as it cools. Out comes the block, the tablet, or — if it is ground — powdered panela.
Colombia, the country of panela
Colombia is the second largest producer of panela in the world, after India, and the largest consumer per person on the planet. That is not a brochure line: it comes from FAO data. In 2023 the country produced 1,068,031 tonnes, close to 10 % of world production. And in consumption, 54.9 grams per person per day — around 20 kilos a year — which is 63 % more than Myanmar, the runner-up, and roughly 25 times the world average.
Behind that there are 21,808 trapiches, of which some 9,000 are for household use and some 13,000 supply the market. More than 350,000 families take part, generating 287,000 direct jobs — the equivalent of 45 million days of labour a year — and occupying 12 % of the economically active rural population. It is grown in 511 municipalities across 28 departments.
The heaviest: Santander (17 %), Cundinamarca (14 %), Antioquia and Boyacá (12 % each), Nariño, Huila and Cauca (8 %) and Tolima (6 %). Between them, 84 %.
It is the second most socially important agro-industry in the country after coffee.
Why we use it as the base
Three reasons, and none of them is sentimental.
- It dissolves. Powdered panela goes into hot liquid without lumps, which makes it a comfortable carrier for something else.
- It tastes of something. Mushroom powder on its own is earthy and awkward. On panela, the roast of the maitake and the sweetness of the lion’s mane find something to lean on.
- It needs no binder. Nothing has to be added to make the formula hold together or dissolve. The panela does both jobs on its own, which is how the ingredient list stays as short as it is.
That is Seta Panela: Colombian powdered panela with mushrooms, for the same cup you were already making.
Saccro is a food. It is not a medicine and it does not replace a balanced diet.
Colombia