Raw sugar
Hi , I was wondering if there is a downside to using organic raw sugar instead of brown sugar for FPJ ?
The answer
Raw sugar sometimes comes in large granules and has a hard time getting close enough to the plant's surface to create the desired osmotic pressure. This can be overcome by grinding the sugar in some sort of contraption such as a coffee grinder without too much hassle to get the fine texture. A vitamix (or comparable) blender is also probably powerful enough and can be done in a large batch that can also reduce the tedious nature of smaller blending apparatuses.
Here is what the textbook has to say on sugars:
From the KNF library
From the KNF library
Drafted by Claude from Office Hours and the books
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Sep 2026
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2 sources
The library never names raw sugar. It does say what Drake looks for in a sugar.
Drake said what matters is dryness for the osmotic draw, not refinement. (Office Hours Ep. 36, 1:00:28) He said this about muscovado. He said it should work fine as a brown sugar substitute, especially within a week and without supersaturating. (Office Hours Ep. 36, 1:00:28)
The manual explains why the sugar's job is contact. Sugar draws the juice out through the cell wall without destroying it. (Pure KNF Manual, p. 38) Sugar exerts osmotic pressure when put in close proximity to plant material. (Pure KNF Manual, p. 38)
The library does not cover raw sugar itself, so it neither confirms nor rules out a downside beyond what Drake wrote above.
Sources
- 1:00:28 Office Hours Ep. 36 (Jun 2022) — Jadam Sulfur Safety, Muscovado vs Brown Sugar, Dioxin Cleanup · “what matters is dryness for the osmotic draw, not refinement”
- p. 38 Pure KNF Manual · “The sweetness is from the sugar used to extract the juice through the cell wall without destroying it.”
