9 Syrup Making — The Heart of

the Process FST - 502

Beverage Technology

THE SYRUP PROPORTIONING SYSTEM

This chapter deals with the subject of the syrup-making stage
in soft drink manufacture. It, therefore, ostensibly deals only Syrup-to-water proportioning is
mainly used in the carbonated soft
with those final beverage-filling operations in which prepre-
drinks industry.
pared concentrated syrup of the product is blended, at the filling
machine, with treated water in a prescribed water-to-syrup ratio.
This blending operation is effected by a piece of equipment called a syrup proportioner (or
blender). It may vary in design, from a simple pump with a manually adjustable piston stroke to
very sophisticated units consisting of computerized flow rate regulators. Whatever the design, the
principle is the same. The flow is set to deliver the prescribed amount of syrup to that of the treated
water. The resulting water and syrup blend is then thoroughly mixed in-line on a continuous basis,
is carbonated, and is delivered to the filler bowl for packaging into bottles or cans. This system,
in which concentrated syrup is first produced and thereafter mixed with treated water at the filling
point, has always been, and still is, the main one used in the carbonated soft drinks industry.
I visited many carbonated soft drink operations, big and small, all over the world. Most, if not
all, produce their products in this manner. On the other hand, with the exception of the larger
international soft drink corporations, I have not come across many smaller still beverage manufac-
turers that use the syrup proportioning system for their final beverage products. Such manufacturers
prepare their final beverages in tank batches of bulk final beverage in ready-to-drink (RTD) form,
which is then delivered to the filling machines for final product packaging. I will return to this
subject of syrup versus bulk RTD a little later in this chapter.
It would seem that this chapter is only applicable to carbonated soft drink manufacture. This
is not altogether true, because when preparing RTD noncarbonated beverages, a syrup-making stage
of sorts is still involved. Concentrated syrup is first made up in a tank and then diluted with treated
water in the same tank to final batch volume at a specified final beverage Brix. The reader is
requested to bear in mind that though the focus of this chapter is on carbonated soft drinks, much
of the subject matter is applicable to bulk preparation of RTD still beverages as well.

WHY IS SYRUP PROPORTIONING USED?

This question can be answered in two ways, depending on how
one looks at the question. If the question is really asking why Syrup proportioning may well have
its roots in early soft drink history.
this system is, in particular, used for carbonated soft drinks, I
have a theory that may serve as an explanation for this.
Historically, carbonated soft drinks developed in the late Mass production of soft drinks in
19th century in the American drugstores, where people could bottles copied the way the bever-
find refreshing drinks made from diversely flavored syrups dis- ages were prepared at the drugstore
pensed and mixed into glasses of carbonated water (see the soda fountain.
“Introduction” of this handbook). These drinks were known as
the “soda fountain” beverages that became a rage in the U.S.
Some drugstore owners saw the business opportunities involved and began supplying the customers

Dr Muhammad Nadeem

© 2005 by CRC Press LLC

 with the drinks manually filled into bottles so that they could be taken away for drinking at
home. Proving to be a great success, some entrepreneurs recognized the business potential in
mass producing the bottled beverages in factories. Thus, the first bottling plants came into
being.
My theory is that when the machinery and processes were designed for these first bottling
plants, the designers copied the ways the beverages were prepared in drugstores. A small
amount of concentrated syrup was dispensed into a bottle, carbonated water was added, the
bottle was capped, and the liquid was mixed by shaking or inverting the filled bottle a few
times. Not only was copying the manual drugstore process the logical and reasonable thing to
do, but also processes and equipment to prepare and fill carbonated RTD final beverage into
bottles did not exist at the time, even if someone had thought about going that way in mass
producing the drinks.
Syrup making became the standard process for carbonated beverage production. Even as
gradually more sophisticated machinery and processes developed, the syrup-making stage
remained an integral but separate part of the production sequence on which basis these new
processes and equipment were designed. This principle has lasted to this present day, and
most of the modern, highly sophisticated carbonated beverage filling equipment is still
designed on the syrup propor- tioning principle.
This was one way to answer the original question of why syrup making and proportioning
it with water at the filler is found in carbonated soft drink operations only. Obviously, if
there were no advantages in this system historically, it would have been abandoned for the
RTD beverage filling system. Before dealing with these advantages, I ask for the reader’s
indulgence for my going into a little more history of the carbonated soft drinks industry
development related to syrup-making aspects.

SYRUP-MAKING TECHNIQUE
In order to standardize the terminology used in this chapter and to address some primary
premises on which this chapter is based, the following items need to be clarified:

• The syrups discussed in this chapter, unless specifically indicated otherwise,

refer to those prepared with the natural sweetener sucrose alone (cane sugar or beet
sugar). This is not to say that syrup making with other natural sweeteners, such as
high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or invert sugar, is vastly different. The differences
in operational aspects are virtually the same, but I wish to avoid falling into
scientific inaccuracy traps by not distinguishing between some of the subtle
technical differences between sucrose and these other natural sweeteners that may
exist when they are used in syrup making.
• Sucrose will be referred to as “sugar” for the simple reason that this is how the
operators on the floor of the bottling or canning plant commonly call it. There is
no need to always use the chemical notation for this sweetener.
• Syrup making in this chapter refers to the operation that takes place on-site in a
carbonated beverage manufacturing facility. It does not refer to the operation in an
outsourced syrup manufacturing facility from which the syrup is delivered in bulk to
the beverage factory by tanker. Though in principle these should be similar
operations, this chapter focuses on the in-house syrup making of a regular
carbonated beverage bottling plant.
• The site in the bottling plant in which all syrup making is carried out will be
referred to as the “syrup room” (even though in some larger carbonated soft drink
operations this can be more of a “hall” than a “room”).

© 2005 by CRC Press LLC

GENERAL PROCESS OUTLINE Figure 9.1, a simplistic schematic representation of the
syrup-making process, outlines the standard syrup-room equip-
Simple syrup preparation.
ment and process flow of the system. A measured amount of
treated water is pumped into the tank (1), and the agitator is started. The prescribed amount of
sugar is added to the treated water and allowed to mix in the water for some time, until it is
completely dispersed and dissolved in the water. The resultant sugar solution is commonly called
“simple syrup” and will be referred to as such in this handbook.
The simple syrup is then pumped through a polishing filter (2) to a second tank (3). Filtering
the simple syrup through the polishing filter is a standard requirement aimed at removing any
foreign matter, such as black carbonized specks that are commonly found in even the best grades
of sugar. The pore size required of the polishing filter depends on the general quality of sugar used
and is usually in the 5 to 20 µm range.
To the transferred filtered simple syrup in a second tank, the
Adding the beverage base ingredi- other beverage formulation ingredients are added in a prescribed
ents. manner and sequential order. The total complement of formu-
lation ingredients, excluding the sugar (and the carbon dioxide
gas later added at the filling machine), form what will be called the “beverage base” for that
particular formulation.
The beverage base ingredients are mixed well into the simple
syrup by the tank agitator until they are completely dissolved
Topping up to final volume with or dispersed in the syrup. The agitator is then stopped, and more
treated water.
treated water is added to bring the total liquid quantity in the
tank up to the final volume prescribed for the syrup batch. This
volume determination can be performed by using a calibrated dipstick or sight glass. (Load cells
can also be used if such a luxury can be justified and afforded.)

FIGURE 9.1 The standard syrup-making process.

After topping up with the treated water to the final batch size Deaeration and final quality control
testing are conducted before releas-
volume, the agitator is restarted, and the syrup is mixed for ing for filling.
approximately 10 to 15 min. The agitator is stopped, and the
syrup is allowed to deaerate for 1 to 2 h. At this stage, the syrup
can be referred to as final syrup, as it now contains all the

© 2005 by CRC Press LLC

required components and is at the prescribed volume for the batch. It is ready for use in filling at
the bottling line, provided, of course, that it passed all the required quality control (QC) tests.
This operation of final syrup preparation was referred to in the title of the chapter as the “heart”
of the overall carbonated soft drink manufacturing process. I called it so, because it is in this final
syrup preparation stage where all of the beverage’s key components are measured out, added, and
mixed into the syrup in the correct manner. It is the stage in which the prescribed quality parameters
for the final beverage are built into the product and checked for conformity. Well-prepared final
syrup will offer the filling line no problems in filling final beverage as far as can be related to syrup
quality. Good final syrup will make a good final product. The final syrup can be likened to a cake
mix. A cake will flop, regardless of correct oven conditions, if the cake mix was not prepared
correctly.