Special Crystal Sugar has an ICUMSA rating of between 150 and 230. This consumable sugar is often used in carbonated beverages, confectionery, bread making and baking, as well as other processed food applications. It does not have the sparkling white color of ICUMSA 45 sugar, nor is it as refined as ICUMSA 150. Special crystal sugar is still acceptable for human consumption however, and is quite widely available.
Refining Sugar and ICUMSA Ratings
Special Crystal Sugar is defined as being sugar that lies between ICUMSA 150 and ICUMSA 230, but what does that really mean? In order to understand the ICUMSA ratings system, one needs to understand how sugar is extracted and refined.
Most sugar comes from one of two natural sources, either sugar cane or sugar beet. Sugar cane is the more popular of the two sugar sources, and sugar is extracted from sugar cane by a process of rolling and crushing the cane forcing the natural juice inside the cane to mix with the sucrose and pour out of the rollers, where it is then collected and taken away for refining.
Extracting sugar from sugar beet is a slightly more difficult proposition. Sugar beet is generally sliced finely and then fed into a diffuser where the slices are exposed to running hot water which leeches the sugar from the beet flesh.
When first produced, raw sugar is a deep brown color. There are a variety of ways of refining sugar, but almost all of them require that the raw sugar is mixed with a high sugar syrup to create a mixture called ‘magma’ and then put into a centrifugal chamber, which spins the liquid part of the solution away from the solid sugar crystals.
The next stage of the process is the stage where the sugar loses its brown color and becomes white. This is normally achieved by carbonization, which involves adding milk of lime to the sugar juice. The milk of lime forms calcium carbonate (chalk) deposits in the juice. These chalk deposits collect colorants and contaminants as they form and fall to the bottom, making it easy for them to be removed by a process of sedimentation.
What is then left is a clean sucrose juice from which the sugar must be extracted. This is normally done by boiling the mixture, removing a great deal of the water, and creating a solution in which sugar crystals can form. These crystals are then sent into another centrifugal chamber where the water is spun away, leaving sugar crystal behind.
This is a very simplistic description of the process, and, as has been mentioned, there are many different ways to refine sugar. In most cases however, the three steps outlined above will be used at some stage in the refining process.
Sugar Ratings
As you can see, it is the color of sugar that gives the best indication of how refined it is. Raw sugars are dark brown, whereas refined sugars are so white that they really do sparkle. The ICUMSA ratings system uses these properties to measure the quality of sugar.
ICUMSA is an acronym for the International Commission For Uniform Methods Of Sugar Analysis, which is an international body concerned with ensuring that a standardized system for sugar analysis exists globally so that sellers and buyers can accurately describe the products they have to sell, and those that they wish to buy.
ICUMSA testing is carried out with an instrument called a tristimulus colorimeter. This is a device which is capable of measuring how much light a substance absorbs. The more light a substance absorbs, the darker it appears to be to the human eye. Our perception of brightness and darkness, and even colors is actually based on the ability of the substances we are looking at to absorb various wavelengths of light. A red jacket, for example, is actually made out of a material that absorbs all the wavelengths of light in the spectrum apart from the red ones and then reflects those back to our eyes.
The colorimeter works in much the same way as a human eye, but is more useful because unlike an eye, it is capable of producing a number at the end of its analysis which accurately describes exactly how light or dark the sample was.
This test is so accurate when carried out properly that it has become the standard for international sugar trading. When one purchases Special Crystal sugar, or ICUMSA 150 – 230 as it is known technically, it will, under normal circumstances, be independently ICUMSA tested at the port before it is shipped to the buyer. This provides assurance to the buyer that the type of sugar they ordered is the type of sugar that they will be receiving.
Icumsa 150 – 230 Prices
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