Segawa, M.1, Mizutani, K.1, Suzuki, T.1, Wada, K.1, Nishizuka, T.1, Higuchi, S.1, Nishitani, I.1 and Ito, Y.1, (1)Asahi Breweries, Ltd., Moriya-shi, Ibaraki, JAPAN
Technical Session 3: Analytical Flavors
Monday, June 05, 2017
8:30–10:15 a.m.
Caloosa Ballroom
The alcoholic beverage market in Japan is in a period of rapid transition with the ready-to-drink (RTD) market expanding in place of beer. RTDs are carbonated drinks with less than 10% alcohol, containing fruit juice, acidifiers, sweeteners and flavor compounds. The RTD growth is driven by prices cheaper than beer because of the tax rate, and above all, by the fact that various RTD flavors can meet a wide range of customer needs. In Japan, the RTD market is larger than that of beer cocktails, and thus all major Japanese beer companies are making enormous efforts to develop new RTDs. Recently, Japanese customers are increasingly demanding the feeling of more natural juice and a fresh aroma from RTD products. These trends are particularly noticeable with popular citrus flavors such as lemon and grapefruit. This is why we developed RTD products that have an even fresher feeling of fruit juice. First of all, we explored major flavor components contributing to a feeling of natural juice by sensory evaluation and non-target GC-MS with multivariate analysis software. The results showed that citral and methylheptenone contribute to the enhanced feelings of natural juice and freshness. Citral is an important flavor component among citrus oils. But it is highly unstable in beverages and converts into off-flavors such as p-cymene (gasoline-like), p-methylacetophenone (bitter-almond-like) and p-cresol (phenolic). The deterioration of citral proceeds during the storage of products, resulting in an undesirable alteration of the product flavor profile. On the other hand, methylheptenone has a green aroma with high flavor stabilizing properties, and, combined with citral, this component is considered to maintain a feeling of freshness. Next, we investigated countermeasures to prevent citral off-flavor formation. Similar to beer, off-flavors are generated through oxidation-triggered deterioration. Therefore, we searched effective antioxidants from 200 polyphenol-containing materials. Some plant extracts, such as olive fruit extract, were found to have a considerable inhibitory effect on off-flavor generation. Furthermore, we successfully identified the optimal product pH to minimize the acid-induced circularization of citral. Through antioxidant usage and pH optimization, it became possible to develop a product that maintains the fresh feeling of natural juice even after long-term storage. As shown above, we have been able to create revolutionary RTD products with new values of freshness for customers. Strikingly, sales registered in the first year were the highest among all the RTD brands that have been launched for the past 10 years in Japan.
Mutsumi Segawa joined Asahi Breweries, Ltd. in 2015. Since then, she has developed RTD products and been involved in technological development of fresh flavor preservation in products. Before joining Asahi Breweries, Ltd. she received a master’s degree in biological sciences from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2015.
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