Microbrewing Soda (Small commercial operation)

[VanCola]

Hi everyone, I'm new here.

I am trying to start a small cola bottling operation and I am planning on bottling in glass bottles using a post-mix system. I am basically building a tiny factory capable of producing about 3000 bottles of cola a day. I am still months away from production and I have some questions I would like to ask mostly about preservation.

The ingredients will basically be water, cane sugar, GRAS essential oils for flavor, citric acid, and gum arabic. I understand most bottlers use sodium benzoate in small/safe quantities to preserve. Phosphoric acid also seems to be common for both tartness and preservation through acidity.

I am still testing my recipe and I am not sure whether I will be using phosphoric acid. I would really like to not use sodium benzoate. I'm reasonably sure there isn't some magical-mystery additive that is safer/more natural than sodium benzoate and/or phosphoric acid. I've heard that some people pasteurize their soda afterwards for sterilization and preservation, however, from my understanding pasteurization at adequate temperature is going to decrease the amount of carbonation in the bottle which would really suck for me, I want a fizzy drink. Plus pasteurization equipment is costly and all my other equipment is only coming to about $5000 total plus bottles!

Does anyone know of a natural way to preserve soda without pasteurization? And if not, what is the method for figuring out the absolute minimum amount of sodium benzoate to put in it - I really don't want to use sodium benzoate, but it seems like throwing a small amount in the batch just kind of solves the entire equation, unfortunately. Can I preserve soda with ONLY phosphoric acid? Boylan's Cane Sugar Soda doesn't list anything other than phosphoric acid and it tastes absolutely great, so if I can use only phosphoric acid I would work it into the recipe, but if they're also pasteurizing, nope.


(2) The other question I have is, part of my mini-factory work flow calls for a 200L (50 gallon) mixing vat for my syrup room. I don't need to boil the syrup like for 'mash', I just need to heat the water at "low heat" while I dissolve the sugar in it. Do you folks who have beer knowledge think that a 50 gallon brew kettle with a heating stick will be adequate for this? I'm thinking around 120'f is what would be considering low heat for mixing syrup.

Any help would be really appreciated.

 

[rodolfof1]

from my understanding pasteurization at adequate temperature is going to decrease the amount of carbonation in the bottle which would really suck for me, I want a fizzy drink.

I don't think it would happen, after the beer is bottled, the carbonation always remains, unless there is a problem during closing the bottle.

But I'm not 100% sure!! Let's wait for more opinions.

 

[VanCola]

I don't think it would happen, after the beer is bottled, the carbonation always remains, unless there is a problem during closing the bottle.

But I'm not 100% sure!! Let's wait for more opinions.

Well, I've doubled back to find my research. The original post I was thinking of, turns out was referring to hot-fill / inline pasteurization - of course this won't work, as chilled water is required to hold carbonation. This thread is the supporting evidence I'd seen before, but it appears that the reports say the pasteurization doesn't impact the carbonation "much." Of course, when all my equipment is here, I'll be able to test all this myself easily, but I'd like to have a plan sooner.

I'm mostly set on pasteurizing this stuff. I am willing to leave a larger headspace in the bottle so that the liquid can expand, and minimize breakage. The question now becomes, on my micro-factory scale, what piece of equipment can I use? At this point, I have two ideas,

1) Source a big tank and a heating element/heat pump, and build a rack that dunks into it to hold a few hundred bottles. I have a MIG welder so the dunking rack etc. could be built by me. The water heater would be the question, but a combination of a high powered heating element and a tankless water heater pumping out 180' water would be my starting point. This guy is doing it with beer, radically (3000 bottles per pallet and no cooling or pre warming).

2) My preferred solution is that I've convinced myself that I can turn a commercial dishwasher into a bottle pasteurizer. My research tells me that high-temperature models have a sanitizing final cycle that is a minimum of 180 degrees F, and if I source the highest temp models, 190' F during sanitizing. These are designed for a 3-6 minute cycle time. I don't see why I couldn't "hack" the thing to run for double that time. The time would depend on what I figured out, through testing, gets bottles to an appropriate internal temperature....

...I'm going off this document for pasteurization temperatures (PDF). That document is for inline pasteurizing and says that the temperatures are adequate for controlling e. coli and "bacterial pathogens" which satisfies me. I'm pretty sure that if I achieve those temperatures at all, they will be held for at least 6 seconds (the required temp at 160') but to be safe I would aim for an internal bottle temperature of 170' which pasteurizes in 1 second and change. Using something like this, with the probe fitted through a rubber stopper and the rubber stopper inserted in a bottle hole, could get me some readings. If anyone knows of a similar thermometer that also records TIME HELD, it'd be great.

Those dishwashers can handle a pretty high capacity. The "dream" is 3000 bottles per 8 hour shift. At 24 bottles per tray, 125 trays per 8 hours, is one tray every 3.8 minutes, which is almost exactly that. A dual-rack model would definitely hit those targets, and with my Realism Hat on, it will be a long time before I'm selling that much soda! I'd really like to find someone with one of these machines who will let me run a 12 pack of Juaritos or Boylan's through their machine to see if they break...

Obviously, this is all based on my intention to have the very safest possible product to then send to a lab for appropriate testing. My local health authority has a list of labs in my area that I've already accessed.

Any thoughts from anyone, expert or peanut gallery, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jimmer]

Since you are commercial, you'll need a health inspection. Just who and how depends on your state— in NYS, it's Ag & Markets division of the State Health Department. If you go really big, it's FDA. Ask them these questions, though you might want to do better research first so they don't dismiss you out of hand.

There are mandated limits for preservatives— I think it's 0.01% by volume of sodium benzoate, but don't rely on my hazy memory, look it up in the FDA regs.

I think a more standard way would be to make a pasteurized syrup and combine it with purified carbonated water, and bottle from there without contact with air or oxygen. This is done as a process in post-mix soda machines, so look at them to design your hardware. Alternatively, mix the soda and batch carbonate, again without O2 in the atmosphere of your brite tank, then bottle. For 3000 12 oz bottles, you'll need a 300 gallon (10 barrel) tank, more or less, not counting waste.

The best bottling systems fill the bottle with CO2 or nitrogen, place the cap on foam before sealing, and yield less than 15 parts per BILLION of O2. Oh, yeah, you'll want a counterpressure bottling system so the whole bottle doesn't foam up.

Rather than completely reinventing the wheel, try taking some brewery tours, soda bottling plant tours, talk to bottling equipment companies, talk to a million people. There's a lot to this, and if you are shooting for 3000 bottles a day you aren't doing it on $5000 worth of equipment. Probably not $50,000 worth, either, unless you are very lucky, incredibly handy, and have a lot of friends who will work for soda. That's over a ton of empties, and will weigh over 4500 lbs full.


If you really want to try the dishwasher, try contacting restaurants until you find one who will take the chance. Most have low temp dishwashers, but some will have hi-temp, and someone is probably crazy enough to let you give it a whirl if you promise to clean the machine up afterwards. Watch out for broken glass.

 

[BrianGT]

Van - have you gotten off the ground yet?

 

[bugdry]

I am really curious to hear how this is progressing too.