Why our jaggery changes colour from batch to batch
How it is made · 17 August 2026
Buy two jars of ShuddhGaon a few months apart and they may not be the same colour. We could prevent that. We choose not to, and it is worth explaining why.
Where the colour comes from
Three things decide the shade of a batch: the cane itself, the season it was cut in, and how long the juice spent in the kadhai. Cane cut early in the season carries more water and gives a lighter set. Cane cut at peak maturity gives a darker, deeper one. A few minutes longer over the fire deepens the colour again.
How uniform jaggery is made uniform
Commodity jaggery is often treated so that every batch looks identical on a shelf. Chemical whiteners and sulphur are used to lift and fix the colour. It makes for a consistent product and a longer shelf display, and it takes something out of the food to get there.
We do not use sulphur or any chemical whitener. That is the whole reason our colour moves around.
What does not change
The ingredient list stays the same: sugarcane, and nothing else. So does the process: kolhu-crushed, slow-cooked in an open iron kadhai, skimmed by hand. And the sweetness, which is consistent even when the shade is not.
So a lighter jar is not weaker and a darker jar is not burnt. They are two batches of the same honest thing, made a few weeks apart.