Manufacture of Cloud Emulsions for Soft Drinks

Clouding agents are used in soft drink manufacture to give a more natural appearance to products with low juice content; they can also mask sedimentation and “ringing” - where coloring/flavoring oils rise to the surface of the container during storage. Clouding agents are normally supplied as emulsions similar to flavor emulsions. A typical formulation would contain the following:

• Clouding Agent: The clouding effect is obtained from fractions of oils with as neutral a flavor as possible. Citrus oils are the most widely used; vegetable oil is used, but less common due to poor resistance to oxidation.
• Stabilizer: The emulsion is stabilized with gum, typically gum arabic.
• Weighting or Densifying Agents: Added to prevent “ringing.” Originally Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO) was common, but its use is now restricted. Typically resin gums such as damar gum are used.

 

 

The Process

Typically cloud emulsions are oil-in-water emulsions. A typical manufacturing process would be as follows: 

• The gum (stabilizer) and any other additives would be dispersed into water to form the continuous phase of the emulsion.
• The citrus oil or other clouding agent is premixed with the weighting agent, added to the vessel and mixed to form a pre-emulsion.
• The pre-emulsion is then passed through a high pressure homogenizer to obtain the required globule size.