Getting In The Spirit
December 1995 -- Cover Story

By: Scott Hegenbart
Editor*
*(April 1991-July 1996)

  Even today's health-conscious consumers have a strong demand for unique alcoholic beverages. Wine coolers, prepared cocktails, and so on, also play into consumer demands for convenience. But formulating such products presents many challenges, such as the specification of alcohol-containing ingredients (particularly navigating the legal hassles), interactions between the ingredients, and shelf life issues.

Issues of alcohol

  Before creating an alcohol-containing beverage, a product designer must address many issues that go beyond formulation.

  "You must always think about who is going to consume the product because you don't want something that appears to be targeted to those under legal drinking age," says David Dafoe, president, Pro-Liquitech, Louisville, KY This is a perpetual challenge."

  Obviously, no company would want to develop something that's bubble gum-flavored or has the kind of concord grape flavor that appeals to children. Still, fruit-flavored products are popular and offer a great deal of variety. The challenge is to formulate a fruit-flavored product with adults-only appeal.

  Another issue is the alcohol tax. No other product category has a major ingredient with tax rate influencing its selection. When developing a wine cooler, for example, one could formulate a malt-based cooler that tastes just as good, but is taxed at a lower rate. Years ago, certain prepared cocktails were introduced with spirits. Then they were reformulated with a wine base because it had a cheaper tax rate. Now most cooler-type products are malt-based because the taxes are so much lower than if they were made with wine.

  "That is the only reason those products changed," says Dafoe. "Malt isn't a better or cheaper ingredient. In fact, it's cheaper by the gallon to buy spirits than wine, but the taxes are four times as high on the same product."

  In addition to taxes, federal and state governments exert even more influence on the development of alcohol-containing products. Governments control who will buy it, where consumers may buy it, and where they may consume it. Even before a product gets to consumers, the federal government controls the formula, which must be subjected to an approval process. After approval of the formula, the government next must approve the label.

  "It's a very sweeping process," says Dafoe. "By mission, the government is only supposed to assure that what's on the label is what's in the formula. In fact, they make moral judgments based on the product name and who they think may buy it."

  Every alcoholic beverage also has some standard of identity. These can range from one or two sentences to many paragraphs. In fact, even the alcohol used as an ingredient must meet a standard of identity.

  If the standards of identity are violated, the formula will be rejected when submitted for approval. Then the designer must not only reformulate the product, but wait another four to six weeks for another approval. Such a situation can wreak havoc on a developmental timetable.

  All the other ingredients must be approved for use by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. If a formula is submitted that has a flavor ingredient that isn't approved, this, too, can send the designer back to the drawing board.

  Even government regulations on distribution influence ingredient selection. The sale of alcohol is a three-tiered business made up of producers, distributors and retailers. Each must be a separate entity.

  Many distributors only have a spirits license, while others only do wine or beer. Some may do two, or all three. The important thing is to know the system the company will be using so the alcohol ingredients selected for the product will make it distributable.

  "If we're working for a large spirit company, a wine- or malt-based product might be cheaper, but we may not have the distribution system for it," says Dafoe. "I'd have to use a spirit base unless it was determined that we were signing distributors that could distribute a product with a wine or malt base."

  After complying with federal laws, state laws also must be considered. Every state has its own regulations regarding alcoholic beverages and no two are the same. If creating a product for national distribution, designers will want to take the various regulations into consideration in order to avoid having to create several formulas. Although, sometimes this is unavoidable.

  For example, in some states a prepared cocktail can be sold in a grocery store if it's 11.9 proof or lower. Other states may allow the sale of products that are 14 proof and lower, while others won't allow alcohol to be sold in grocery stores at all. If the marketing department wanted to target this cocktail specifically to female heads of households who do the weekly shopping, they would want the product in grocery stores so the proof level would be a concern.

  In this situation, creating different formulas with different proof levels would be unavoidable. For those states that don't allow grocery store sale of alcohol, the product could be sold through liquor stores and a slightly adjusted regional marketing plan would have to be implemented. Or, a nonalcoholic mixer could be created. Of course, some states don't even allow mixers to be sold in grocery stores.

Fermentation Fundamentals

  Before formulating with wine or some other alcohol, it helps to know some basic information about how they are made. Beer starts with four main ingredients (malted barley, water, yeast and hops), along with many enzymes and adjuncts that provide flavor consistency, foam retention, clarity, improved shelf life, and so on. Many brewers augment the more costly barley malt with adjuncts or other cereals, whether in the form of grain or malt extracts, or other liquid sugars such as honey or corn syrup to facilitate volume production. The types of malt, grains and extracts chosen contribute immensely to the quality and character of the beer. For example, Vienna malts are widely used today to create the red color that is currently popular in lagers and ales.

  Ground malt, corn or rice grits, and/or extracts, are mixed with hot brewing-quality water and cooked briefly. This mashing process liquefies the starches in the grain, and a partial conversion to maltose and dextrins takes place.

  The liquid, now known as wort, is filtered into a lauter to separate the spent grains. The wort is then piped into the brew kettle, where it is boiled and hops are added for bittering. Any remaining hops are filtered out as the wort is piped to a cooling tank. Yeast is added to the wort when it reaches a temperature between 37 degrees and 70 degrees F and is then moved to a fermentation tank. Depending on how attenuative the yeast strains are, primary fermentation can take three to seven days for ales, and one to three weeks for lagers. The young beer is then piped to storage or bright tanks, where the yeast is either allowed to precipitate out or is filtered. Aging induces a slower, secondary fermentation when the character and body of the beer develops, as does natural carbonation. After aging is complete, the beer may be filtered (sometimes pasteurized) and bottled or kegged, with additional carbon dioxide as necessary.

  Specialty ales -- such as Belgian-style ales -- barley wines and fruit beers are made with different malts and flavorings. Because Belgian lambics are spontaneously fermented using wild yeasts, any wild yeasts that may linger on the peels of fresh fruit are fine. Not so in the United States, where most brewers abhor wild yeasts. Here, they use only processed fruit purees, juices, frozen sweetened fruits or pulp, or natural flavors to add flavor.

  To make whiskey, malt is cooked with water to yield a wort, or mash, and proprietary yeast strains are added. After primary fermentation, the young beer is distilled in a patent, or double-column still. The raw whiskey is screened and aged in wood (with the exception of corn whiskey) for two to eight years or more. To make bourbon, the distiller employs the sour-mash process, blending 25% of the spent beer from prior stillaging with 75% fresh mash, which increases the pH slightly to limit bacteria] contamination.

  To make wine, fruit (usually grapes) is crushed, releasing the juices from the skin and pulp. White wines are made from fruit juice filtered away from the grape skins immediately after crushing. Red and rose wines are left to ferment in contact with the grape skins and pulp to extract color, body and tannins. The wild strains of Saccharomyces present on the grape skins begin fermentation almost at once.

  Wine fermentation takes approximately one to three weeks, depending on the strength of the yeasts and temperature of the wine. The new wine is then racked into wooden casks and allowed to age for several months. As impurities such as yeast cells and proteins precipitate out of the wine, the wine is racked again into fresh casks.

  Depending on the quality of the fruit and traditions of the wine-making region, wine can age from six months to three years in wood casks prior to bottling.

  Distilled spirits used to create flavored alcoholic beverages can be obtained by distilling wine or a fermented mash of fruit, as in brandy production; a distillate of fermented sugar cane juice or molasses, as in rum production; a distillate of neutral spirits and herbs to create gin; or a distillate or neutral spirits filtered with charcoal to create vodka. In the United States, neutral spirits are primarily obtained as a byproduct of corn processing.

From beverage to ingredient

  Naturally, beer, wine, and distilled spirits are sold to be consumed as is. At the same time, malt-base, wine and other alcohol sources are the foundation of prepared alcoholic beverages.

  It would be difficult to make a margarita-flavored malt product that didn't taste like beer unless it were altered in some way. In addition to minimizing the flavor contributions of beverage bases, other components also may be removed because they might interact with other ingredients in a prepared beverage.

  "Unlike beer, a malt base is often brewed with different adjuncts for a more neutral flavor," says Lincoln Henderson, manager of exploratory product development, Brown-Forman Corp., Louisville, KY. "Then it is treated with activated carbon to make it as neutral tasting as possible. Reverse osmosis probably won't be used because then they'd have to call it a distilled spirit."

  Wine also is treated with carbon filtration, which removes the fruitiness and tannins. Some wine cooler products may actually name the type of wine, such as sangria. Here, the wine may either not be processed at all or be processed to a lesser degree.

  With spirits, no further processing is performed for ingredient use. When used as an ingredient, however, spirits are used at a higher proof. Nearly all spirits are distilled to a higher proof, then diluted back to meet standards of identity. Rather than pay to have water shipped around, companies that make formulated beverages purchase the higher proof spirit which will be diluted out to the proper proof when the formula water is added during processing.

From fermentation to reformulation

  With the alcohol issues in hand for the time being, it's time to start formulating the alcohol-containing beverage. First, you must establish whether the product will be a wine cooler, flavored beer, malt cooler or prepared cocktail so you'll know which standards of identity you have to meet.

  Coolers and such do not actually have a standard of identity all their own; most of them are considered cordials. The legal standard for a cordial is pretty simple. It's a product that contains alcohol and at least 2.5% sugar by weight.

  Some cocktails also are legally considered cordials. However, many common drinks such as margaritas and piña coladas have a standard of identity. A Margarita must contain tequila, and a piña colada must contain rum. If a margarita-type product does not contain tequila, it would have to be called Margarita flavored.

  Specifically, the government requires that 51% of the proof be the standard-of-identity alcohol source. Many companies seek the tax advantages of only using as much of the required alcohol as they have to in order to meet standards. In other words, a margarita may contain 51 % of its proof of tequila, with the other 49% of the proof being a malt base that's taxed at a lower rate.

  Other than the standards of identity, cocktails, coolers, and so on, all are formulated in pretty much the same way; they commonly contain an alcohol source, a sweetener, an acidulant, flavors and colors. Not all products contain each one of these, however, and some even contain other ingredients, such as clouding agents or a hydrocolloid to add body.

  Alcohol. As mentioned before, the primary issues driving the alcohol selection for many companies are the alcohol tax and the distribution system. Keep in mind that the tax advantages of using a malt base are not always possible, depending on the desired proof of the finished beverage.

  "Malt base has the lowest proof of all the bases," says Dafoe. "It's impossible to make a 20-proof cocktail out of malt base. It's inherently less than 20 proof."

  Color can be an issue, particularly with wine bases. With a red wine base, the intensity of the red color may be problematic if the target product is to be orange or yellow. Cloudiness sometimes is an issue with malt-based products, but rarely with those that contain wine.

  With both wine and malt bases, the amount of residual flavor also should be specified. Sometimes residual flavor can be a benefit. If, for example, the product is to be strawberry or raspberry flavored, residual wine flavor can enhance some of the fruitiness, so less flavor is required.

  "You'd save money because it wouldn't have been subjected to as much further processing," says Dafoe. "You also may save money because you could reduce the added flavor level."

  But even when naturally occurring flavor components in the alcohol source are desired, it may not be possible to take advantage of them.

  Dafoe explains: "I worked on a spirit-based product that was whiskey-flavored and used a base of both spirits and wine. It worked well as far as the flavor profile went. Then we did a shelf life study and noticed some precipitation. The tannins in the whiskey were reacting with the color and flocculating. We ended up with a base that was essentially colorless and flavorless. We then had to add all that back in: a color, a flavor and even a whiskey flavor enhancer."

  Although one might assume otherwise, flavor is even an issue when using grain-neutral spirits. Indeed, distillation removes aldehydes, flavorful oils, and so on, but what remains can vary. A supplier's specification sheet will ordinarily list these residual components as being less than so many parts per million. In truth, an off-flavor can occur if these components are as low as the parts-per-billion range.

  "For grain-neutral spirits, you look at the spec sheet, then do analytical work to see if it meets the spec," says Henderson. "Then you submit it for sensory analysis, and that will be the final say."

  Sweeteners. Generally, no major concerns exist with the type of sweetener used with any of the three alcohol sources. More often, the sweetener selection depends on what the designer is trying to achieve. Liqueurs generally have sucrose because that's what's traditionally used. Coolers and cocktails, on the other hand, normally are manufactured in plants that have a bulk system for high-fructose corn syrup for ease of addition.

  Products that are water-white may yellow with time as sugars reduce. This is avoided by using a high-purity granulated sucrose. Clear products also may show a slight haze caused by the precipitation of residual salts or polysaccharides when the sweetener and alcohol are mixed. Again, a high-purity sucrose will avoid this, particularly if the sucrose also is low-ash.

  Acidulants. As in many nonalcoholic beverages, acidulants are pretty much a commodity. Citric acid is the acidulant most commonly used in cocktails and coolers. Other acidulants such as malic acid also may be used to differentiate the product.

  "Some say it takes the edge off the citric acid," says Dafoe. "You get a bit of a different mouthfeel and a different flavor profile."

  Flavors. Flavors are often used in alcohol-containing products specifically to overcome the alcohol's flavor. Sometimes the proof is so high that unusually high flavor levels are necessary. In a peach schnapps at 50 proof, for example, about six times the amount of peach flavor must be added, compared with using that same peach flavor in a 10-proof cocktail.

  Alcohol influences flavor use in other ways, as well. "Some flavor components are enhanced by the alcohol; some are suppressed by it," says Dafoe. "For example, fruit flavors with a lot of esters are typically enhanced by the alcohol. The alcohol actually liberates the esters to give a more fruity character."

  The alcohol suppresses brown or vanilla-type flavors, however. These may have to be exaggerated so the flavor profile comes out right.

  Alcohol-containing beverages are typically no more susceptible to flavor degradation than other beverages. Yet distilleries that have been making bourbon, or whatever, for nearly a century are accustomed to a product that sits around for years and either doesn't change or gets better. If a formulated beverage is treated like pure spirits in distribution, the opportunity for degradation may occur. It is important to specify shelf life and handling restrictions to all links in the distribution chain, especially for oxidation-sensitive, citrus-flavored products.

  Colors. Most alcoholic beverages use FD&C colors.

  "You can't go wrong with them because hardly anything affects them," says Dafoe. "If there are color problems with an alcoholic beverage, it's probably not because of an added color ingredient."

Prototype to production

  Even with the right ingredients, formulation can involve some tricky calculations. Determination of the final proof must be done by volume; formulation is typically done by weight. The government standards don't help much because they use percent by weight for ingredients such as sugar, but use both percent by weight and percent by volume to measure alcohol.

  "If you have two different alcohol sources -- spirits and wine, for example -- the taxes on spirits are calculated by weight, whereas wine is taxed by volume," says Dafoe. There are a lot of calculations you have to figure out that are harder than you may think."

  Calculating the formula for alcohol contribution is critical because the government will check samples. If a company says a product is 80 proof, it better be. If it's short, the company is shorting consumers, in the eyes of the government. If the proof is too high, the government is not getting its full share of taxes.

  Now, with a properly calculated formula, it's time to make samples of the beverage in the lab. When doing this, there are three critical points to keep in mind:

  1). Add the ingredients in the same order as they will be added In the plant. Different interactions may occur when certain ingredients are mixed with high concentrations of alcohol. Certain hydrocolloids, for example, may precipitate and should be added later in the process after the alcohol is more dilute.

  "That's really a huge problem in scaling up," says Dafoe. "In the lab, people often just slop things together. In a production facility, the workers are more accustomed to the need to add ingredients in a certain order. Being aware of this is one way to help translate the lab work to production."

  2). Make samples of the product In larger batches. In the lab, designers can easily become accustomed to very small amounts of ingredients. On a larger scale, however, one can expect larger variances because of the larger amount of ingredients being scaled. Lab-test some batches as large as possible so you can observe these potential variances and account for them. This is particularly important for carbonated beverages because it takes most lab carbonators a fair amount of running time to reach peak efficiency.

  3). Mix lots of Ingredient samples. Don't continually make the product out of raw materials from the same lots. By mixing them up, you'll see the same sort of natural variation you'd see in the plant.

  When the formulas made up in the lab are 80% to 90% finalized, begin shelf fife testing. This should include accelerated testing in a heated chamber, UV testing if the product is sensitive to light, and regular storage tests.

  End-point indicators to watch for include flocculation. If the product contains clouding agents, look for any ringing, or settling. Also be aware of any color changes, especially if the product contains fruit juice. A color change is a clear indication of something breaking down.

  "Get shelf life tests started right away," says Dafoe. "The company wants to get the product on the shelves as fast as it can. Any negative interactions will be revealed early, and they can be corrected while still making the timetable."

  Other testing during development should include distilling the samples so the alcohol level can be checked. Some way to measure the specific gravity also is required, whether it's a densitometer or hydrometer.

  Creating alcoholic beverages is more complicated than playing bartender at a party. The legal intricacies alone can seem mind-numbing. Nevertheless, many companies manage to navigate the legal hurdles and create successful products.

Back to top