Overview of Carbonated Beverages

Overview of Carbonated Beverages
Soft drinks are unique in being a class of beverage that is mainly served as a thirst quench.

The most 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 infusion of various roots, berries, barks or herbs with a suitable solvent or diluents or they be made from the juice and pulp of various fruits.

Essential oils are sometimes added in some of the flavors and in a few cases synthetic flavors are used.

Substantially all of the the drinks are acidulated with edible acids such as phosphoric, citric, tartaric or lactic.

They contain sugar or sugars which impart much of their flavor and their caloric value although some dietetic varieties contain a noncaloric sweetener – saccharin.

Weighing oil, clouding agents, foaming agents, defoaming agents, bodying agents, preservatives, antioxidants, buffering agents and other optional ingredients may be used depending upon the particular flavor formulation.

Caramel and certified food colors may also be employed to enhance the appearance of the product.

The majority of the soft drinks contain a supersaturated carbon dioxide, up to 5 gas volumes and have a pH value between 2.4 to 4.5 . These factors create an environment that is either germicidal or inhibitory to a great number of microorganisms.

A microbial growth of public health significance cannot occur in these acidulated carbonated drinks.

Due to the competitive nature of the beverage industries and in order to keep production costs at the lowest possible kevel, beverage manufacturers have tended toward installation of high speed packaging lines and automatic control systems.

Thus an efficient plant operation has become more mechanized and leans toward scientific management. The old fashioned and essentially manually operated small scale plants are now deemed to be uneconomically and find themselves struggling to survive in today’s business environment.
Overview of Carbonated Beverages