Mandarin orange fusion beverage

Procedure 1: Beta-carotene oil blend

1. Combine beta-carotene with natural orange blend flavour and MCT.
2. Heat up the oil blend to 110-140ºC until all beta carotene crystals are dissolved, check for any un-dissolved crystal under microscope.

Procedure 2: Flavour and colour emulsion

1. Dissolve the required amounts of sodium benzoate in water.
2. Dissolve citric acid in the above solution.
3. Disperse PURITY GUM® Ultra starch with moderate agitation using high shear mixer.
4. Heat up the above water phase to ~80-90 ºC.
5. Make pre-emulsion by slowly adding the beta carotene oil blend with moderate agitation. Using LCI high shear mixer for 2 min at 5000 rpm.
6. Homogenise the above pre-emulsion using high pressure homogeniser at 4500/500 psi multiple passes till obtain finer particle size.
7. Check particle size of the emulsion. Particle size should be less than 1 micron, preferably 0.3 to 0.4 microns.

Guidelines

1. It’s important to follow the procedure of dissolving sodium benzoate in water first, followed by citric acid. Otherwise, precipitation may occur.
2. In the emulsion, you can replace the oil blend (natural orange blend flavour, beta carotene suspension and MCT) with an alternate oil blend such as vegetable oil/ MCT with orange, lemon, lime, etc. to construct your desired flavour.
3. You may need to adjust the PURITY GUM® Ultra starch to oil ratio from 1:4 to 1:3 depending on the specific oil blend.
4. If the viscosity of the emulsion is too high, reduce the PURITY GUM® starch level to 5% and reduce the oil blend to 20% accordingly; compensate the difference with water.
5. The recommended homogenisation pressure is 4500/500 psi for two passes, but you may decrease or increase the pressure if the emulsion particle size is too large or too small. Sometimes, over-shearing may break the emulsion.
6. Process the emulsion at minimum 80ºC to prevent beta-carotene crystallization.