Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Processes – Separating a starting material into plural different...
Reexamination Certificate
2002-03-25
2004-08-31
Hendricks, Keith (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Processes
Separating a starting material into plural different...
C426S599000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06783785
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder. The present invention also provides a process for preparing ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder. More particularly, the present invention describes a process for preparing ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder using a vacuum shelf dryer.
BACKGROUND AND PRIOR ART OF THE INVENTION
The sugarcane contains 18-20% soluble solids and is reported to impart health benefits to the consumers. The juice, obtained on crushing the canes, with its delicate aroma is a popular beverage with the consumers. It can be an ideal replacement for synthetically flavoured beverages/soft drinks.
India has been known as the original home of sugarcane and the second largest producer next to Brazil. Presently, India produces about 280 million tonnes of sugarcane in an area of 4 million hectares. Of this, about 46% goes for the manufacture of white crystal sugar and around 42% for gurl khandsari production. The remaining quantity is available for the manufacture of sugarcane juice.
It is a well known fact that sugarcanes are crushed to obtain the juice and it is a common practice in India to dispense this juice fresh either as such or with the addition of lime juice and/or fresh ginger extract in glasses by the vendors to the consumers. The major problem encountered in this operation is the lack of hygiene resulting in contamination of the juice with the heavy load of micro-organisms which arises due to improper cleaning of the sugarcanes and handling of the finished product. Raw sugarcane juice is a carbohydrate rich, low acid food and is therefore susceptible to the growth of yeasts, of spoilage bacteria and also of pathogenic bacteria. Pathogens such as
Salmonella, S.aureus
and
C. perfringens
are able to grow and proliferate at a pH of more than 4.6. Contamination of raw juice by these bacteria can occur by the food handlers, by the equipment used or by the environment in which it is prepared. Such freshly crushed juice cannot be preserved even for a few hours since it is known to ferment very quickly.
Attempts have been made by many to develop processes for preserving the sugarcane juice in liquid form. However, there is no knowledge/information regarding its preparation as a powder. There are a few patents relating to the preparation of fruit juices in powder form but none of them relate to sugarcane juice.
Reference may be made to a process for the preparation of powdery fiuit juice in which a fruit juice, lemon or orange, is mixed with palatinose and the resultant mixture is dried and powdered by the conventional method such as spray drying with hot air or freeze vacuum drying (Shimizu Junichi, Kaga Toshio, Mizutani Takeo and Mitsui Seito, JP1983000179309, May 1984). The drawback of this process is that the powder may lose the delicate flavour due to hot air, may stick to dryer surface during spray drying and also the process may not be economical due to high energy input and longer process duration.
Reference may also be made to the preparation of a powdery health beverage wherein a fruit juice such as apple, grape or tangerine orange, is blended with an extract essence of
Flammulina velutipes
Sing., frozen at −30 C. for 10 hr and subjected to dehydration treatment at 30 C. for 8 hr and 50 C. for 12 hr in a vacuum dryer to provide a solid material which is subsequently powdered (Nomoto Masao and Nomoto Masao, JP1987000086465, October 1988). The drawback of this process is enormous time required, namely, 30 hrs and an expensive freezing step which may lead to low productivity and higher cost of the final product.
One more reference may be made to a method of drying sugar-containing materials in which fruit juices such as apple and grape juice and syrups such as honey are blended with a corn syrup solid having a dextrose equivalent of 45 or below or lactose and freeze dried (Stern Robert, M. and Storrs Arnold, B., U.S. Pat. No. 3,483,032, December 1969). Herein too the major drawback is the high cost of freeze drying process.
Another reference may be made to a method for the production of dried fruit juice by freeze drying of cut fruit and later ground to a powder state (Gazin M. Ju and Shaposhnikova, G. I., RU2136182C1, September 1999). Again the drawback of this process lies in expensive freeze-drying step.
Further reference may be made to a process (Akahori Kozo and Hitosugi Hidenari, JP62179370A2, August 1987) for the production of granular instant drink by dripping fruit juice containing 40-70% water on raw material such as sugar powder and then drying the wet granules with hot air (40-80° C.). The disadvantage of this process may be the loss of granular structure the moment fruit juice comes in contact with powdered sugar.
Reference may also be made to a report (Nigam and Raha, 1982, Proceeding of 37
th
Annual Convention of Sugar Technologists Association of India, pp.206-215) regarding spray drying of sugarcane juice, but the information is incomplete and a person skilled in the art will not be able to obtain a sugarcane juice beverage powder which is commercially viable, safe to drink and possible to manufacture at reasonably less economic value by following the report.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
The main object of the present invention is to provide a ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a process for preparing ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a process for preparing ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder using a vacuum shelf dryer.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENT INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention provides a ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder containing 80 to 95% by wt. dry sugarcane juice, 5 to 15% by wt. acacia pulvis, 0.01 to 0.10% by wt. of a heteropolysaccharide, 1-2% by wt. of one more anti-caking agents and 0.1 to 0.5% by wt of food preservatives and optionally 0.05 to 0.5% by wt. sodium alginate.
In an embodiment of the present invention, said beverage powder contains 0.03 to 0.07% by wt. of heteropolysaccharide.
In another embodiment of the present invention, said beverage powder contains 0.15 to 0.30% by wt sodium alginate.
In yet another embodiment of the present invention, said beverage powder further contains 0.2 to 0.4% by wt of permitted food color.
In still another embodiment of the present invention, said beverage powder contains the food color is tartrazine.
The present invention also provides a process for preparing ready-to-dilute sugarcane juice beverage powder, said process comprises:
(a) soaking the sugarcanes in water containing 0.1% by wt. potassium meta bisulphite and 0.01% by wt. citric acid for 2-4 hours;
(b) cleaning the sugarcanes of step (a) and crushing the same to obtain sugarcane juice having concentration of 18-20° Brix;
(c) filtering the sugarcane juice of step (b) at 25-28° C.;
(d) adding 0.1 to 0.5% by wt. of conventional food preservatives to the filtered juice of step (c);
(e) emulsifying the juice of step (d) with 5 to 15% by wt. gum acacia pulvis, 0.01 to 0.10% by wt. of a heteropolysaccharide and optionally 0.05 to 0.5% by wt. sodium alginate;
(f) homogenizing the emulsified juice of step (e) for 5 to 10 min at 2000-2500 psi pressure,
(g) drying the homogenized juice of step (f) under vacuum, 550-600 mm Hg pressure at 50-70° C. for 10-20 hrs to obtain solid sugarcane candy/cake,
(h) powdering the solid sugarcane candy/cake to a coarse grind to obtain a particle size of 0.6-0.8 mm under dehumidified conditions, and
(i) adding 1 to 2% by wt. of conventional anti-caking agents to powdered sugarcane candy/cake of step (h) to obtain sugarcane juice beverage powder.
In an embodiment of the present invention, wherein in step (b) the sugarcanes are washed with plain water before being crushed.
In another embodiment of the present invention, wherein in step (b) the sugarcanes are crushed using mechanical devices.
In yet another embodiment of the p
Borse Babasaheb Bhaskarrao
Prakash Vishweshwaraiah
Raghavan Bashyam
Ramalakshmi Kulathooran
Ramesh Mysore Nagarajarao
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
Hendricks Keith
McDonnell & Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff
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