Math of Food
Hello everyone,
Can anyone throw some light on strategies for masking undesirable flavor or bitterness in a nutraceutical drink. Basically, this drink is prepared by mixing a spray dried premix in water.
@bonitaaranha.. That's one issue that occasionally crops up during discussion In improving taste in food and beverage with fellow food scientists.
As far as I can remember,...
There are various ways to sort that matter; namely microencapsulation of bitter material, forming a chemical complex to prevent direct contact of the bitter component on the tongue taste receptors, the use of non nutritive sweetener like stevia to counter bitter taste, and the employment of bitterness blocking agent One material example is AMP or adenosine monophosphate.
Hi, which molecule / compound is responsible for the undesirable taste?
Most of the larger flavour houses offer masking agents that target specific attributes.
I have worked with some good ones from Bell Flavors and with a mushroom chitin based masking agent that I don't think is widely available yet.
Keep your expectations reasonable. No matter what the claims are, there is no magic bullet to flavor masking and your target client is most likely already accustomed to some bitter notes in this type of beverage.
It's a mixture of spirulina, barley, wheat grass and alfalfa powder.
Are you adding any flavors? Fruit flavors tend to be good maskers in this type of beverage.
Since these are the ingredients, I am sure you might have worked on different ratios of these ingredients before coming up with this final formulation. And that would mean that you already know the source (from among the above ingredients) of that bitter or bad Flavor.
So how about limiting its usage to a lesser proportion.
Yes I do understand the threshold level of certain compounds even at 0.01% might be higher than we could sometimes imagine of.
Hope You can trace back on your trials.
Meanwhile if you know the compound from any papers- it might additionally help to identify a masking agent.
Or else just play with some flavours as someone have already suggested.
Alfalfa is known as Lucerne in South Africa and is used widely in animal feed pellets. I had some the other day as I make flavours for this purpose. I would unless you are making a claim on the Vitamin K content, reduce this as the others are more neutral in taste.Please try sweetener with a Vanilla Peppermint or Spearmint Flavouring as a trial. These don't need any added acid to enhance the Flavouring.