Flavor, botanicals and extracts
Updated
The part customers choose on, and in a beverage it has to survive heat, acid, light and months.
Three sources
The base itself: the fruit, the tea, the coffee.
Botanicals: herbs, spices, flowers, roots, added as an infusion or a maceration.
Flavorings and extracts, bought as a formulated ingredient.
Most products use two of the three, and the ratio between them is most of what distinguishes a craft product from a commercial one.
Botanicals need care
Two questions before any botanical goes in.
Is it appropriate for food use at the level you are using it? Several popular botanicals have limits, and a few are not appropriate in a beverage at all.
Where did it come from? Dried botanical material carries a microbial load, and in a drink that is not pasteurized it is an input you cannot see.
Buy food-grade from a supplier who documents it, and treat botanicals as an ingredient with a specification rather than as an herb.
And be careful with anything implying a health effect, which is a different conversation entirely.
Extracts and flavorings
Consistent, stable and designed for the application, which matters: a flavor formulated for confectionery behaves differently in an acidic carbonated drink.
Ask for one specified for beverages, and for its stability at your pH and under light.
Natural and artificial are defined terms in labeling, and which one you have is the supplier's to state and yours to declare correctly.
Where flavor fails
Heat, during any thermal treatment, which strips volatiles. This is the real cost of pasteurizing a delicate drink.
Acid, over time, which degrades several flavor compounds.
Light, particularly in a clear bottle on a bright shelf.
And oxidation, through headspace and through permeable packaging.
Which is why a drink should be tasted at the end of its intended shelf life, from a bottle stored the way customers store it, rather than approved on the day it was made.