“I’m not adding anything else to my beer other than barley malt, yeast, hops and water.

Why would I use flavourings?!”

Beer contains an extremely complex blend of aroma and flavouring molecules, that occur naturally during the brewing process to give beers their unique flavour. Whether it be the familiar hoppy terpenes such as humulene and myrcene, the fruity esters of ethyl-2-methyl butyrate and ethyl acetate or the buttery ketones like diacetyl and acetyl propionyl; these flavour molecules all contribute to the wonderfully unique and complex beer flavour, we all know and love.

But did you know that these same molecules, plus many more, are all part of a flavourists toolkit to recreate the taste of nature?

What are Flavourings?

Flavourings in our food and beverages makes what we eat and drink exciting. Just think of all the different types of strawberry flavour you have tasted in your lifetime. From the strawberry flavoured confectionery, yogurts, milkshakes, cereals, jams and vodka, they all have their own unique taste profile. Some might be described as more jammy, fruity, green, creamy, sweet or sour and some will taste like your biting into an actual strawberry! With flavourings, the ability to create a flavour profile completely bespoke for your brand and target audience is made possible.

Flavour molecules (natural flavouring substances) we use are all extracted from various botanical sources, mainly high yielding and widely grown crops including sugarcane and cassava. After a series of processes that may include heating, distilling and fermenting, akin to a well-equipped restaurant kitchen and strictly regulated by EU flavouring legislation EC/1334/2008; a pure, 100% natural flavour molecule is produced. It’s taste and aroma will be unique based on its chemical structure and will often smell nothing like the source material it originated from. That’s because, just like hops, all botanicals are packed with hundreds of aroma molecules that make up its complex flavour.

Bespoke Flavour Formulation

To construct a strawberry flavour from all 350+ aroma molecules identified in a fresh, ripe strawberry would be time consuming, expensive and not very creative! Flavourists can construct a strawberry flavour from as little as 10 natural molecules and create a unique flavour profile, specific for an application by adding and adjusting the amounts of each. Your consumer wants it to taste a little fruitier? No problem. We don’t have to scour the globe for a fruitier strawberry that only grows in an exclusive English garden; flavourists might want to add a touch more ethyl-2-methyl butyrate for example.

Quality and Consistency

In some cases, brand owners may want to claim that their product contains ‘real grapefruit’ for example. But how does a craft brewery go about this without buying tonnes of grapefruit and using its peel to flavour their beer?

They may experiment this way and find the flavour is too weak, not the right profile they were hoping for, or inconsistent between batches. It will also be extremely time-consuming peeling all of those grapefruits! Again, this is where natural flavourings can assist. Flavour Houses are experts in extraction and use a variety of processes and techniques to extract the best quality flavour from the fruit or botanical source. These techniques can include maceration, distillation, thin film evaporation, reverse osmosis.

By choosing the right method for the product, we can ensure the highest quality and consistency. The EU legislation defines these extracts as flavouring preparations, at Omega, we call them kiiNotes®.

Creativity and Technology

Figure 1 demonstrates the key attributes of the extract, dependent on the type of kiiNote® technology used. All methods use a botanical source as the starting material, but the end product can be very different. Some techniques such as maceration, infusion or percolation mean the final extract will have the colour and phytochemicals molecules extracted in addition to the flavour molecules. Other techniques such as distillation or spinning cone column can be used to only extract the flavour molecules, leaving the colour molecules behind and resulting in a clear, colourless liquid…perfect if you a ‘water white’ beverage. A further advantage of techniques such as distillation and spinning cone column is that they are allergen free. This means we can create an extraction from hazelnuts for example, where we can state 100% from hazelnut and it does not have to be declared as an allergen.

Furthermore, with the increased demand for low or no alcohol beers, using extraction techniques that use little or no alcohol but still provide the desired flavour are a great tool for building back the flavour, mouthfeel and the trigeminal effect often lost in low or no alcohol beers.

Sustainability

Aside from providing great taste, the use of natural flavourings in products, allows more people all over the world to experience flavours in a sustainable and commercially economical way. Take vanilla, the world’s most popular flavour as an example. More expensive per kg than silver, vanilla is a crop in high demand! Madagascar, responsible for 80% of the world’s vanilla, has been hit by devastating cyclones in the past, wiping out the season’s vanilla crop. Botanicals are at the mercy of nature with droughts, flooding, and adverse weather patterns all significantly affecting not only yields, but quality. Even if the conditions were always perfect, there just simply isn’t enough available land to grow enough vanilla to satisfy the world’s sweet tasting fix. Natural Flavourings provide a reliable, sustainable and great tasting solution.

Come and Experience for Yourself

So, whether you’re looking to add an extra citrus kick to your IPA or you are looking to add chocolate and hazelnut notes to your stout, natural flavourings can most certainly help.

Want to find out more about this fascinating, creative art? Come and join us for a tour at Omega Ingredients to learn more about the world of natural flavourings. Oh, and if you have trouble creating the right flavour and mouthfeel in your non-alcoholic alternative…we have a few tricks to help with that too!

- Martyn Warner. Technical Manager