Thermal processing of soft drinks

Soft drinks can take many forms (juices, carbonated beverages, smoothies, chilled teas and coffees, flavoured water to name a few) and they usually have one thing in common, heat is used to ensure their safety.

This course addresses the key considerations for thermally processing soft drinks, essential knowledge if you are:

• A new product/process developer looking to understand the best thermal processing options for a new product going to market
• A manager or member of a quality/technical team who want to understand the principles of existing thermal processes
• An engineer who is looking to specify appropriate process equipment
• In a retail-based role, looking to ensure suppliers are well equipped to deliver a safe thermal process

Regardless of your role, if you want to understand how to apply the appropriate thermal process for your soft drink and the different methods of achieving that, then this course is for you.

The course will cover all aspects of thermal processing of beverages, whether they be flash pasteurised, filled then pasteurised in pack, UHT sterilised or sterilised in-pack, and everything in between.

A major theme is decision making for new products, why, for example, with some drinks it is more appropriate to pasteurise then hot fill, and others it makes sense to process in the pack after filling.

There will be opportunity to calculate thermal process targets yourself for batch and continuous processes, discussion of the microbiological theory that dictates thermal processing, evaluation of processing methods and key validation methodology.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course delegates will:

• Understand what an appropriate thermal process target (time/temperature) would be for your product(s) based on theory delivered during this course
• Understand the pros and cons of different processing and filling methods and whether they are appropriate for your product(s)
• Able to calculate P/F values for thermal process data
• Be able to undertake thermal validation work and interpret the result