by Frank Del Corso

Fortifying beverages with new and different ingredients presents many challenges from stability and taste perspectives. Traditionally, only small amounts of vitamins or minerals were used to fortify bread, salt or milk, but today’s market demands more from beverage scientists. In order to stand apart from other beverage brands, consumers continually want more things added to their formulations. A complex combination of vitamins, minerals and sport supplements are combined in some beverages today to deliver a multivitamin in a bottle. Other brands choose one main supplement to convey a simpler message to potential customers. In the early days of the new-age beverage boom, small amounts of herbs and vitamins were added for “label romance.” Simple extracts of botanicals were added at very low levels in order to list them in the ingredient line. Since then, there seems to be a shift from the pixie-dust mentality to one where consumers want more research-based and effective doses of ingredients. Many highly purified or standardized botanicals can add bitterness to a beverage, and some minerals such as calcium can add chalkiness. This can present a challenge for any beverage scientist trying to add some of these highly concentrated ingredients and still make the beverage taste great. Fortunately, from years working on the bench, any good food scientist has formed a sound strategy to modify taste and combat the lingering metallic aftertaste, bitterness or chalkiness from the addition of some of these nutrients.

Some beverage technologists use a four-tiered approach to modify taste to create an overall pleasant drinking experience. This four-tiered strategy involves reviewing and choosing the

right combination of sweeteners, acids, modifiers of flavor and other ingredients (SAMO) in order to modify taste and create great-tasting fortified beverages that meet a marketer’s demand for function.

The SAMO strategy to taste modification is a method used successfully in many fortified beverages on the market today. A major factor in the ingredient selection involved in this strategy is the marketing and branding of a beverage. Understanding the positioning of a beverage is the first step in the process of creating it; only when this is fully understood can a beverage developer move ahead with applying this approach. (www.beverageinsights.com) . Copyright © 2013 VIRGO Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.