Sugar (unrefined demerara)

Sugar is soluble in water and so can be extracted from plants like sugar cane or sugar beet quite easily, as well as dissolved when stirred into liquids like tea. The extraction process involves the concentration of sucrose syrup from the plants and then the evaporation of all the water, which causes the sucrose to solidify into small sugar crystals. These are usually brown in colour because of a small amount of residual carbohydrate and some minerals from the plant. This is called unrefined brown sugar, as the process of refinement would extract out the remaining impurities, leaving the sugar white. 

The sugar is named Demerara after the South American colony of Demerara in Guyana where it was originally made by enslaved people. For more information on the history of the sugar trade and its growth through the exploitation of African people in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, see this video by Museumand, the National Caribbean Heritage Museum.