Separation and settling

The visible failure in a bottle that is otherwise fine, and the one customers photograph.

Three layers

Something settling to the bottom, something rising to the top, or the liquid splitting into two phases.

Each has a different cause, and only one of them means anything has gone wrong.

Pulp and sediment

Fruit solids and tea particulate settle. That is physics rather than a fault.

The decision is whether to prevent it or to accept it. Filtration and fining prevent it and remove body and some of the natural positioning; stabilizers hold it in suspension and are an ingredient on the label.

Accepting it needs a label instruction, "shake gently before opening", and that instruction has a catch in a carbonated product, where shaking is exactly what you do not want a customer to do. In that case the answer is to filter rather than to instruct.

Oil separating

Citrus oils and flavor oils are not soluble in water and will rise and form a ring at the neck.

It looks like spoilage and is not, and it is fixed the same way as in every other property here: a solubilizer or an emulsifier at the level the supplier states, added as a premix rather than neat.

An oil ring also concentrates flavor at the top of the bottle, so the first mouthful is not the product.

Living sediment

In a live product, sediment is culture, and it is a positioning decision rather than a defect: some brands present it as evidence the drink is alive and some filter it out.

What it is not is inert. Sediment in a live bottle is the thing still fermenting, so a heavier sediment is a faster clock on both thresholds.

Which means "naturally cloudy, sediment is normal" is honest and should be accompanied by a cold-storage instruction rather than standing alone.

References