Heat-Triggered Flavors Target Teas

The point in time when flavors in a food system are released is crucial to the overall quality of a formulation, yet this concept is often overlooked when developing a product’s flavor profile. Flavor Dynamics’ new Flavorcoat® line of flavors for hot tea respects the role that timing plays in flavor release to impart authentic, fresh profiles to flavored tea.

In making a cup of tea, fresh ingredients leave a powerful impression, because their volatile components, though fleeting in their impact, are vital in recreating the ingredient’s characteristic flavor profile. The flavor line relies on a new water-soluble, heat-triggered release system to deliver different nuances at just the right moment during steeping, thereby better imparting the flavor profile of the foods they mimic.

These products are designed to be “flavor friendly” and help ensure that the characteristics of the original vision translate to the final market product. The line’s fresh fruit and spice flavors resist losing the light volatiles that are vital to a quality flavored tea. “A good example of this is our Natural Flavorcoat Lemon Ginger Flavor,” explains Joseph Callari, Flavorcoat product manager. “Ginger’s light-peppery nuances and the subtle green citrus notes of lemon can erode relatively quickly. But, by encapsulating the volatile elements in a matrix that is triggered in water at standard steeping temperature, these nuances are not released until the tea is actively steeping in the pot. This allows the tea’s taste characteristics to shape these lighter elements and give the final product a truer—and higher-impact—flavor profile.”

Flavorcoat’s unique multi-step flavor-dehydration process also imparts several physical characteristics that provide advantages for tea production and shipping. For example, the flavor particles have been designed to be the perfect size and bulk density for blending with cut tea, and are hard enough to stand up to the rigors of the tea-bag filling process. They will resist clumping caused by excessive moisture, as well as segregation stemming from vibration during packaging and shipping.

The flavors also resist oxidation and degradation over a long shelf life—generally longer than the shelf life of the teas they are to be packaged with—yet they readily dissolve during standard steeping time. Furthermore, profiles are consistent from batch to batch, and mimic the flavor of fresh ingredients without being subject to the variations inherent to agricultural products.

The Flavorcoat line presently includes Lemon, Raspberry, Cinnamon, Chai, Key Lime, Lemon Ginger, Bergamot, Mango and Plum flavors, with several additional products in development.

Flavor Dynamics, Inc.
640 Montrose Avenue 
South Plainfield, NJ 07080 
Phone: 888/271-8424 
Fax: 908/822-8547 
Website: www.flavordynamics.com 
E-mail: [email protected]