Water separation in fruit beverages (Colloidal stability)
Hi everyone,
We wanted to know that why fruit beverages has water separation later on 03 months duration. What would be the corrective action and prevention.
Hard to answer....what's the process? What's in the fruit beverage? Is it considered shelf-stable or require refrigeration?
A complicated question....
It depends on the type of juice that you are talking about. Under normal circumstances, a well produced juice will not have a water separation layer. You have to provide more details then we can help you.
Fruit juice separation is a common phenomena , it is a separation as a colloidal or settlement from the serum .
however it depends on the kind of fruit used , percent of fruit in the final product , volume of the final package container , processing ( hot break temperature ) and Homogenizers effeciency This occurs more often with a centrifugal (spinning screen type) juicers since they are less effective at removing the thicker pulpy layer and also at the fast rate at which they extract. The fast spinning motion effects how the final juice will turn out. , stablizer used .
I do not know your process but I can guess that it is most properly from the homogenizer since you said after 3 months , it will appear first like a crack then increased by time , and will be more obvious in Mango and guava which has a thick pulp , you will not find it in the juices prepared from concentrates like apple or orange for example.
Application of a proper stabilizer may enhance the homogenizing and embed the separation , but first of all assessment for the homogenizer and homogenizing process is important and will help a lot to improve the mixing of end product.
Some brands add a consumer message " Shake well before open " , hand shaking is reconstitute the juice again and reference to my experience the separation is disappeared using hand shaking of the product and it may prolonged to month before separation again.
best regards ,
Ehab