Understanding the role of premium flavours in the expanding alcohol and beer market

With a host of factors teaming up to spike up the demand for alcoholic drinks with premium flavours as well as those with low alcoholic content, the importance of the supercritical fluid extraction process assumes ever greater significance for the extraction of alcohol flavours.

Here is a list of reasons that are driving the demand for alcoholic beverages:

Introduction of beers with special flavours.

Western influences on people in the context of rapid urbanization. This is particularly true for youth.

Surging consumption of low-alcohol and no-alcohol beer in tune with the rising preference for low alcohol by volume (ABV) drinks.

Ascending disposable income of youth.

Descending prices of low alcohol beer.

If a drink appeals to the tongue, the strings to the purse (or wallet if you so please) get automatically loosened. With premium flavours tingling the taste buds of people, again the youth in particular, through blended beer and blended alcohol the demand for such drinks is shooting up to astronomical levels.

What makes the supercritical fluid, extraction process particularly appealing to the alcohol industry is its capacity to extract pure, unadulterated flavours which go into making blended beer and blended alcohol. After all, it is these flavours that are revving up the consumption spree.

Take the case of wine to illustrate the point. Wine is a complex brew of over 800 compounds. Now, customers like enjoying their glass of wine with the latter’s organoleptic properties i.e. those that appeal to senses such as taste, odour, colour, or feel. But they also prefer wine with low alcohol content. The method used to obtain wine with low alcohol content, should not affect its organoleptic properties when removing the compounds that add to the wine’s alcohol content.

Employing the SCFE process for the extraction of alcohol compounds from wine helps achieve exactly that.

And since we started the discussion with premium flavours, SCFE also helps extract just the compounds that impart the required flavours that go into making blended beer and blended alcohol. The hop flower imparts the characteristic, and prized of course, flavour to beer. Malted barley, water, and yeast are the three primary ingredients of beer. But without the hop flavour, beer tastes excessively sweet – to the point of being repulsive.

What the SCFE process is able to do is separate the hop flavour in its pure form. Such beer will taste better. By the way, hop also naturally extends the shelf life of beer. Therefore, using SCFE for hop extraction is a win-win technique.

SCFE relies on pressure differential for extracting the required compound called target molecule. In the extraction of alcohol for the production of alcohol, the target molecule will be alcohol. In the extraction of hop flavour, the hop molecule is the target molecule.

 At high pressure in the SCFE process, the target molecule gets dissolved in the supercritical fluid (SCF). At low pressure, the target molecule comes out of solution of the SCF. Such an action prevents the contamination of the target molecule, either by heat (as is the case with hydrodistillation) or by chemicals (as happens during the solvent extraction procedure).