Blending to a specification

The step where a recipe becomes a product, and where a specification replaces a palate.

Blend to numbers, not to taste

Your palate changes with the time of day, the last thing you ate, a cold, and how much of the product you have already tasted.

A specification does not.

Which is why a commercial drink is defined by measurements and confirmed by taste, rather than the other way round.

The numbers that define a drink

Brix, the soluble solids, which is mostly sugar and is the quickest measurement you have.

pH, which is safety and flavor at once.

Titratable acidity, which is different from pH and is what actually correlates with perceived sourness.

The Brix to acid ratio, which is a good predictor of whether a drink tastes balanced, and the number the juice industry runs on.

Two drinks at the same Brix and different acid taste nothing alike, which is why the ratio matters more than either alone.

Tasting has a place

To confirm, not to decide.

Taste against a reference sample from an approved batch, at the same temperature, with a neutral palate.

Temperature matters more than people expect: a drink tasted warm is sweeter and less acidic than the same drink cold, and customers drink it cold.

Scaling a blend

Work in percentages by weight of the finished batch, with water as the balance.

Never scale by volume, because juice, syrup and water have different densities and a volume recipe drifts as it scales.

And adjust to the specification at the end rather than trusting the arithmetic, because raw material lots vary and the specification is the thing you are actually selling.

References