Flavors of soft drink

Except for seltzer water, all soda drinks contain added flavoring. Some of the more popular flavors are colas, lemon-lime, orange, ginger ale and herbal types such as root beer and birch beer.

Most of the drinks are prepared from extracts or infusions of various roots, berries, barks or herbs with a suitable solvent or diluents, or they may be made from the jucie and pulp of various fruits.

Essential oils are sometimes added in some of the flavors and in a few cases synthetic flavors are used. Synthetics flavors are very complex and may easily contain hundreds of distinct compounds.

Flavors used in soft drinks can be divided into main types based on solubility in water.

Water soluble flavors present no major problems when used in beverages, as there is ample water in a beverage formulation to dissolve and disperse the relatively small amounts of flavor required.

A flavor containing oil components that are not soluble in water cannot be used directly in the formulation as the oil is not miscible with sugar solution.

Normally, there are two common methods are sued to utilize essential oil to flavor the beverages.

The first method involves separating out the water-soluble fraction of the essential oils by extraction and distillation and the second method is to convert the oil into a water dispersible emulsion such as beverage flavor emulsion.
Flavors of soft drink

Flavors and Colors of Softdrinks: The History

Flavors and Colors of Softdrinks: The History
Original carbonates were artificial imitations of naturally occurring mineral waters. Manufactures blended mineral salts in the same proportions as found in the natural spring waters and added carbonated water. A large range of such waters was available during the early 1800s. Early attempts at producing flavored products were limited by a lack of stable flavoring and spoilage problems.

The flavoring materials used consisted mainly of herbal/botanical extracts, for example, ginger, nettle, nutmeg, horehound, lemon oil, vanilla etc., but the technology for manufacture of soluble stable flavoring extracts develop rapidly during the middle of the century with the establishment around this time of many specialty flavor companies.

An early recipe for lemonade consisted of citric acid essential oil of lemon and sugar syrup, the mixture being topped up with water and impregnated with carbon dioxide – instantly recognizable as the forerunner of today’s lemonade.

By the second half of the century, carbonate manufacturers could buy a very comprehensive range of flavors to use in their products and the science of flavor chemistry as well under way. As demonstrated by the development of artificial vanilla by Tiemann and Wallach in 1872. This reduced the cost of vanilla flavor by factor of more than x30.

Many of the popular drinks of today were on sale before 1900. The quantity of CO2 added to a drink has a pronounced effect upon its clear character and flavor impact. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as temperature increases but increases with increasing pressure, that is, a given level of carbonation will generate a higher pressure as the temperature increases. Ice cold water (0 degree C) will dissolve 1.7 volumes (3.4 g/l) of CO2 at atmospheric pressure.

At CO2 levels and at temperatures above this, increased pressure must be applied to retain the CO2 in solution. In some of his early highly carbonated waters Nicholas Paul used carbonations of up to eight volumes of CO2 (16 g/l): however, the usual carbonation levels now range from about two volumes for a slightly sparkling fruit drinks to around five volumes for a mixer drink such as tonic water.

In the early 1800s, colors were restricted to mainly variants of brown and red that is, those which could be produced from caramel or cochineal. This remained the case until the introduction of synthetic aniline dyes around 1880. In 1885 the manufacturing of some colors from vegetable extracts but that there was a trend for these to be replaced by the new aniline-based dyes, even though these are considered objectionably by many. It also strongly warned manufacturers not to use colors such as arsenic sulphate, lead chromate, mercury sulphate and copper arsenite, which it claimed were sometimes used to color confectionary.
Flavors and Colors of Softdrinks: The History

Essential oil, fruit extracts and synthetic flavorings

Essential oil, fruit extracts and synthetic flavorings
Essential oils form a major source of flavorings. Essential oils are odorous components of plants and plant materials that are the characteristics odors of the materials from which they are extracted, because of the large production of juice, quantity of essential oil of orange are produced as by-products. For this reason, there is a little need for the production of synthetic orange flavoring.

Fruit extracts have been used as flavorings, but these are relatively weak when compared to essential oils and oleoresins. An oleoresin is a solvent extract of spices from which the solvent, usually a hydrocarbon, has been removed by distillation, Because of their weak effects, fruit extracts may be intensified by combining them with other flavorings. Synthetic flavorings usually less expensive and more plentiful than natural flavorings. On the other hand, natural flavorings are often more acceptable. In fact, one of the problems with natural flavorings is that they may vary according to season and other controllable variables.

Synthetic flavorings, however, can be reproduced quite accurately,. Many artificial flavors, such as amyl acetate (artificial bananas flavor), benzaldehyde (artificial cherry flavor) , and ethyl caproate (artificial pineapple flavor), are added to confectionaries, baked products, softdrinks, and ice-cream. These flavorings are added in concentrations of 0.03% or less.
Essential oil, fruit extracts and synthetic flavorings