alt Hacker NewsOne pro-tip as I now somehow have a commercial bottling license these days: get pre-hydrated gum Arabic. Much easier to work with. Almost everybody who messes this up will make the mistake at the hydrating the gum Arabic stage. Blend it with any dry ingredients like sugar before using.
If you can’t source it, I’m not going to tell you that you SHOULD pretend to be a bottling company and ask a gum provider to send you some free samples, but you could and the amount they send you will last the rest of your life. TIC gums is pretty awesome and if you’re into frozen desserts has some incredible gum mixtures for ice creams, sorbets, etc.
Also, consider just using water soluble flavor concentrates and skipping emulsification all together. That’s what most pros do and it’s why Sprite isn’t cloudy like it would be if you used oils. My favorite suppliers that sell in consumer and pro-sumer qtys are Apex Flavors and Nature’s Flavors.
This probably won’t work for Cola as I think some of those ingredients have all of their flavor molecules in the oils, but as a general rule, if you can buy it at the store and it is clear, it is made using water soluble. If it is brown it probably isn’t, hence the caramel color additive.
Replies
> Blend it with any dry ingredients like sugar before using.
That's the key.
I'm not an expert - and have only experience making/mixing liquids for cocktails - but Gum Arabic (often used to add a thicker mouthfeel in sugar syrups) isn't a great emulsifier but needs to be full homogenised with the oils before adding to more liquid - exceptionally high speed, aggressive blending for longer than it looks like is needed, to create tiny droplets which the gum arabic then stabilises, or the oil will end up separating after a few hours/days.
Sucros Esters, Propylene Glycol, or Polysorbate 80 (which I haven't used) probably do a better job but only Sucros Esters could be considered 'natural'
Another fun use for gum arabic is making watercolor paints, you can do it with your kids sourcing the pigment from different soils. pour water and let the heavy big particle fall to the bottom and source the small ones from the top and mix some ingredients
What's the use in ice cream?
My ice cream is just ... ice cream. Cream, milk, sugar.
I wonder how they pulled off Crystal Pepsi.
A neat trick, even if nobody cared.
Thank you for helping contribute to reduced trust in the society. Fuck them big dudes, amirite?
Posts like this are why I read HN comments first.
Posts like this remind we how much better it is to be as part of a large trading bloc to be able to easily order/sample these sort of things, rather than it likely being a pain in the arse to get locally.