At Frontline Food Consultants and Engineers, we provide cocktails production consulting for Ready to Drink Cocktails. Creating a range of cocktails has never been easier with our cocktail Formulation and Flavor Development Services for the right alcohol content, taste and sweetness. Whether you are producing traditional spirits or something exotic, we strive to have steady flavor, smell, feel and produce wholesomeness for prolonged longevity.
We supply you with quality raw materials from the market and assist you in monitoring and maintaining the quality of your alcoholic products – spirits, mixers, flavorants, and organic natural products. In order to provide you with cocktail recipes that fit the convenience factors and quality trends from the marketplace, we have collaborated closely with our R & D department. We also Provide Regulatory Compliance Consulting to ensure Your cocktails seem to meet legal requirements on alcohol production and its labeling packaging etc. Addressing the need for increased convenience and eye appeal is our Packaging Solutions when being offered bottles, cans or pouches.
What are Cocktails?
Cocktails are prepared drinks, made up of spirits and juices, sodas or syrups commonly known as flavored alcoholic drinks. In a production format, cocktails can be prepared to be put in bottles making them ready to drink- RTD. The ready-made cocktails are meant to emulate alcoholic beverages, like margaritas, mojitos, and cosmos amongst others and its aim is to offer cocktail products that are prepared fully with correct proportions of alcohol and flavors.
As with many beverage industries making RTD cocktails requires particular equipment for example mixing or blending tanks for blending of spirits with mixers and flavoring agents to create an RTD with a similar taste. There is the use of cocktail filling and sealing machines to store the concoctions in air-tight containers to minimize oxidation. The CO2 systems may be applied to cocktails that require fizzing, in order to carbonate to the right level. Alcohol mentors apply names on the machines to determine if the machine meets the specified requirement of labeling alcohol products, apart from checking the quality of alcohol content, favors, and safety of the product during production of the product in order to increase quality.
Types of Cocktails
- Ready-to-Drink Cocktails (RTD): These are prepared and packaged for consumption in a single serve and most of them are in cans or glass bottles.
- Non-Alcoholic Cocktails: Low and no-alcohol products form such contemplation because consumers seek products that satisfy customers who prefer to take no-alcohol cocktails.
- Canned Cocktails: Ready-to-drink booze-flavored spirits that, where carbonated or still drink easy to transport in a convenient container.
- Artisanal Cocktails: A cocktail in a bottle; SV; contains natural products and has alcohol content way beyond a standard cocktail.
- Classic Cocktails: Recipes of alcoholic beverages comprising margaritas, old-fashioned, and martinis in cocktail form ready for consumption by the customers.
Cocktail Production Processes.
- About Alcohol Choice and Preparing
- Spirit Sourcing: For any cocktail one has the base which is the booze the booze could be vodka, rum, gin, tequila or whiskey. Better quality spirits are used as the final cocktail product is going to be a quality product market. While setting the content of the product content or while controlling the number of ADS, ABV is quantified to verify the percentage of alcohol in the batches that are prepared it has to be certain.
- Flavor Profiling: Depending on the kind of cocktail that is being prepared the spirits and extracts or sweeteners are added to the liquor to create the cocktail flavor. In order to enhance the flavor of the food, seasoning, natural fruit extracts, flavoring, or simple kitchen herbs are used.
- Mixing and Blending
- Ingredient Mixing: High-speed blending is used to add liquors with the base, which may include fruit juices, soda, syrup or carbonated water. For quality improvement, it is garnished with pure herbs bitters and fresh fruits or peel if the cocktail forms part of a premium product. Sugar and acid content will also be changed so that they will have a good balance as to their proportion.
- Homogenization: That is very important for cocktails like piña coladas or any that are emulsified or creamy, to ensure that you get the same level of homogenization from top to bottom.
- Carbonation (Optional): In carbonated cocktails carbonation is incorporated into the cocktail when the cocktail is being prepared. This move is particularly important if the cocktail contains bubbles, and the cocktail is garnished with fresh mint like in Spritzer or mojito Cocktail.
- Pasteurization & Preservation
- Heat Treatment: It is widely used to ‘fix’ RTD cocktails to extend shelf-life because any pathogenic bacteria will be eliminated during pasteurization without negatively impacting the product. Technique 1 is a process where the cocktail mixture is heated to around of 70-75°C for a few seconds.
- Preservatives: At times, food preservatives such as ascorbic or sorbate are added in a cocktail to maintain its freshness and to repel bacterial growth. Some of them are natural preservatives for artisan and organic cocktails lines favored by artisans and organic bar masters for artisan or organic wines.
- Bottling and Packaging
- Filling: They are then conveyed to the automatic filling vessels by means of bottles, cans, or cartons/ The numerous vehicles. As with carbonated cocktails the filling gear used here has a mechanism that will not bow down to carbonate pressure particularly at the filling step.
- Sealing and Capping: Most containers include crown corks and twist off or ring pull tops that make sure beer does not have contact with light, air or other hostile elements that will deteriorate the beer or let the carbonation go flat.
- Labeling and Branding: Containers have product information that includes kind of beer, percentage of alcoholic content, taste and brand images. A role in the marketing of this cocktail and other several legal proceedings which are Compulsory.
- Quality Control
- Alcohol Content Testing: Each batch of produced cocktails has the alcohol by volume levels checked so that all the cocktails would have the same ABV level.
- Taste and Sensory Testing: Flavor check is done just before the last packaging to ensure that the food has the right taste that is required to be prepared. Sometimes, optional Modification is done to change the; sweetness, or acidity and even alcohol percentage.
- Microbial Testing: Due to its nature, the product under consideration can become contaminated by microbes at some stage of its production and thus in order to check whether there is a contamination or not, microbial tests are used.
Beverage Packaging solutions for Cocktails
- Glass Bottles
- Objective: Se rearrange your stock to offer clients high quality that will enable them to differentiate between conventional and homemade or exclusive beverages.
- Materials: Taste, so that the consumer gets a glimpse of what is inside the pack and the product retains its taste.
- Benefits: Five: Both, clear and coloured glass bottles are ideal for beautiful and luxury premium cocktail lines since they do not spoil the looks of the product and may be tasted directly after filling the bottles or after years of storage.
- Cans
- Objective: This is in response to the push to have cocktails served in tote-able, recycle-able and non-breakable receptacles for drinking.
- Materials: Bottles sometimes are coated with Food grade varnish especially the aluminum bottles which usually come in contact with alcohol.
- Benefits: Cans are compact easy to handle and most appropriate for consumption in other activities. These they also retain carbonation for sparkling cocktails and are made 100% recyclable material.
- Tetra Pak Cartons
- Objective: Design an eco-friendly innovation on how best cocktails can be packaged in large quantities.
- Materials: Paper and plastic cartons of the aforesaid item with the upper foil layer.
- Benefits: This type of packaging is relatively more Eco friendly that that which is available in the market for use when preparing cocktails. Another advantage is guarding your product and it fits both non- alcoholic and alcoholic forms.