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What parameters to check for dried beans in brine?

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salimckm

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Posted 13 July 2015 - 08:34 AM

Dear friends,

 

Greetings to all.

 

I am Mohammed salim, was basically from the dairy and chocolate food industry. Recently I moved to canned food industry, which is quite fresh industry for me. So I will we very grateful if some someone from the same field advice me on following my queries 

 

Basically we are filling different dried beans in different brine

 

Beans are generally fava beans, broad beans, red kidney, navy beans, split fava beans and some peas, chick peas, sweet corns

 

Brines are generally, according to different industry, we are mixing salt, sugar, citric acid, tomato paste, EDTA, and spices like chilli, cumin, garlic, onion paste, modified starch etc.

 

Now my queries are

              1) what are the quality parameters we need to check for the brine analysis

              2) what are the devices I need to set up for those parameters. 

              3) since our daily beans feeding daily is very huge for eg;- 720000 Kg per day,

                                 anyone knows about the best laboratory devices to check the quality of dried raw beans?

 

 

 

I look forward for your valuable comments

 

 

Thanks and regards,

Mohammed salim

 

 



Philip Jones

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Posted 20 July 2015 - 02:54 PM

Hi Mohammed

I assume you are soaking your beans to rehydrate them before filling and retort.  If you do not, you will have difficulty destroying  the phytohaemaglutenins in the beans and you will have toxicity problems. The achievement of Fo 3 will give you sterile product, but not make it toxin free if the bean is not hydrated.

 

All batches of raw material are best put through a canning test before use.  This is primarily to determine the best level of water hardness to give the best quality after retorting.  The skins of beans contain pectins which react to calcium in hard water and can result in the skins being too soft and splitting, giving poor quality product.  Conversely, skins can be, very tough and stop hydration, giving very hard product.  My process was always to soak a sample of raw material (about  500g) for 18 hours in soft water (the actual bulk process soaked 15-24 hours in practice, but 18 was a good balance).

The samples were then canned in soft water brine and 50:50 hard:soft water brine. They were then retorted with standard process and assessed after 24 hours.  Raw materials were bulked together as necessary to simplify the soaking operation in production..  I should say, for my processes, we received beans in 24 tonne loads in 12 x 2 tonne tote bags.  Our retorts were continuous rotary cookers, so fairly aggressive.  Batch retorts/static retorts will be less aggressive, so you may need to be less concerned than I was about damage and breakdown of product. 

 

With regard to the specific bean types you mention, Chick peas are pretty resilient, and are less affected by water softness, but soft water will increase yield. Fava beans I have no experience of.  Pea beans break down easily, which is the reason for them usually being packed in a thick sauce. Corn is usually packed with minimum brine and is a different process.  Peas are very sensitive to water hardness.

 

Checks on brine - measure percentage salt by titration.  Sugar strength by brix.  Nothing complicated

 

I never cam across a lab instrument for quality in the ways you are talking about.

 

If there is anything you want clarifying, just ask.

 

Regards

The Director



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salimckm

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Posted 23 July 2015 - 08:44 AM

Dear Colleague,

 

Thank you very much for your prompt reply. The information you provided is really helpful me to apply those in my system. meantime I have some more doubts regarding the same topic.

 

the canning test you mentioned mainly or only for the damaged or broken beans right?

1)what about the soaking efficiency?( my challenge is, even from approved suppliers, some beans soaking will finish before required time whereas  some beans soaking will not finish even required time. So this case brine absorption will either become more or less. it will affect the final product. NB: All our raw beans are importing from various countries. so after bulk delivery, this is very big challenge to confirm these whole quantity are same specifications.

2) what method are using for finding the size of the beans/foreign material, moisture, colour etc.?

3) For brine , which testing method(reference) are following? can you send me the testing procedure for the same?

4) Can you share me all the blank formats( raw material inspection, inprocess/brine analysis/ finished product analysis) which you are using in your lab? This will help me to establish an effective analysis system in place.

 

 

I will be very grateful if you could share me more on this.

 

Thanks and regards,

Mohammed Salim



Philip Jones

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Posted 23 July 2015 - 09:29 AM

Hello Mohammed.

 

I will try and help as much as I can,   I worked over 10 years in the canning industry, so am very familiar with your issues, but I have moved on to a different sector, so do not have access to documents used.

 

the canning test you mentioned mainly or only for the damaged or broken beans right?

The test was primarily a quality test to see that the beans were adequately softened without too much breakdown.  It was intended to see the optimum hardness of water gave the best quality finished product. Sometimes breakdown was excessive and resulted in material rejection, similarly, rejection could occur because the  product was still too firm after retorting.  The soaking could also identify "non-soakers" which do not hydrate at all, and be another cause of rejection. There is a degree of trail and error. 

It may be that your raw material performs differently to the ones we had.  Kidney beans were North America,  Peas were from UK (but were the most sensitive to water hardness and breakdown was common), White/navy/pea/haricot beans were from a number of countries.

1)what about the soaking efficiency?( my challenge is, even from approved suppliers, some beans soaking will finish before required time whereas  some beans soaking will not finish even required time. So this case brine absorption will either become more or less. it will affect the final product. NB: All our raw beans are importing from various countries. so after bulk delivery, this is very big challenge to confirm these whole quantity are same specifications.

Good question.  Batches of material will hydrate faster or slower then other batches.  Less uptake of moisture in soak usually means greater uptake in retorting and stabilisation in the hours following retorting, and vice versa.  You manage this by adjusting the fill weight into the can.  The adjustment is based on an understanding of the target fill weight from the drained weight of finished product.  We used to do a final product drained weight every 2 hours and adjust the fill based on the result.  I would have thought you would have this data or are you a start-up factory?

2) what method are using for finding the size of the beans/foreign material, moisture, colour etc.?

The materials were pre cleaned before we received them using sieves and colour sorters.  The main issue we had and pain most attention to, was removal of stones. The beans were water flumed from the soak tanks and in-line riffle plates removed any stones very effectively.  I assume you are designed similarly, given the tonnages you mentioned.  We had in-line colour sorters which the beans passed through, but these were removing black spots and blemishes not controlling colour.  Colour we did not worry about.  The only one which varied significantly was peas, which always had colour added to make them a uniform green.

3) For brine , which testing method(reference) are following? can you send me the testing procedure for the same?

Brix was simply by refractometer.  Salt was standard analytical method for chloride titration with silver nitrate as in any chemistry test method book

4) Can you share me all the blank formats( raw material inspection, inprocess/brine analysis/ finished product analysis) which you are using in your lab? This will help me to establish an effective analysis system in place.

No longer available to me, as discussed.  Raw material inspection was done on a 500 g composite sample (500 g approx. from each of 4 containers and mixed before dividing). This would be manually picked to determine foreign bodies, breakage etc and compared with your buying specification.  Another 500g would be soaked as previously described.

Finished product analysis was not normally carried out apart from visual/taste.  Nutritional analysis would be carried out annually for label declarations

 

I hope this additional information helps

 

Regards,

The Director



Philip Jones

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Posted 23 July 2015 - 11:18 AM

 

Hi Mohammed,

One additional point.  Your thermal process guys need to understand the maximum  amount of product in the can (based on final drained weight, particularly with sauce products.  The heat transfer will change as the product : brine or sauce ration changes.  Standard thermal process should be determined with a 10% or 15% overfill to ensure a safe process for all variations of fill.  Again, your thermal process team should be very aware of this.  If it comes as a surprise, be worried!

Regards,

Philip



salimckm

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Posted 05 September 2015 - 10:13 PM

Dear colleagues,

 

Thank you so much for the valuable time and sharing to my queries.

 

Continuation to my topics regarding the canning of beans, the quality test as Mr.Director mentioned is very effective in house process.

 

But what is your suggestion in my following cases?

 

1) mostly my production target is so high, and we will be in high pressure. so due to this we will be through the following situations 

 

our soaking are in batch wise, that is beans are soaking in 3000 lit capacity tanks.

 

a) some time soaking time want to reduce because of tight production, so required water absorption may not be there

b) some time soaking time more because of any problem in the line, this case more water absorption may come

c) some time, even in same delivery of raw material, we will have different quality beans,which gives different performance in soaking.( this can be avoid by supplier change, but this is not my hand, company policy is not strict in purchasing the good quality beans) 

 

:rofl2:  :rofl2:  :rofl2:

So to cut short, my only option and big challenge is to control the in process. that is I need to make sure the filling weight is correct before retort rather than checking the drained weight after retort. because I need to wait 2 hours to know the drained weight, but if in the case any deviation in the drained weight, I am not able to adjust the filling weight, why because my soaking tank may be changed after filling tank, so new soaking tank may different performance in soaking. 

 

So I am looking we have any analysis or calculation using by in process sample(soaked just ready for filling) to confirm the correct filling weight in order to get standard drained weight rather than checking drained weight after retort??

 

 

I hope you understand my scenes and give your valuable suggestions.

 

Thanks and regards,

Salim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to wait till cooking finish to know the the current filling weight is right or wrong in order to get standard drained weight. so if in the case the filling weight is less or high, my first two hours products also may not be in standard drained weight. So what I am looking is, if we  



salimckm

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Posted 12 September 2015 - 06:56 PM

Dear Colleagues,

 

I hope you all might busy, however please just remind you for the attention on my queries.

 

I would be very grateful if you would share the information on the same.

 

Thanks and regards,

Salim





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