Standardization of process for customised instant tea
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Date
2021-12
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
India is one of the largest producers as well as consumers of tea {Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze} in the world. Since it is the cheapest of all the beverages available, it has become a regular part of our living, having economic, therapeutic and social importance. Having more than 4000 bioactive components, with polyphenols accounting for one-third of them, tea is known for its various health benefits. There is no standard and universal way to make tea, mostly tea leaves are brewed in hot water before adding other ingredients. Considering the busy lifestyles and hectic schedules of people the brewing time of less than 5 min is also sometimes very long. Further, cleaning utensils used for tea preparation and its straining etc. are much more cumbersome. Also, handling and disposal of wastes generated from tea leaves, tea bags etc. are a mess to handle and discard. The present investigation was thus aimed to develop a hot water soluble liquid tea concentrate which is complete soluble without leaving any residues / turbid matter and which provides option of in-the-cup customization of tea aroma and tea pigments, alongwith other ingredients in liquid form. Tea aroma concentrate (TAC) was obtained by hydro-distillation of commercial black tea with a water : tea ratio of 118:10 and collection of 20 % of the aroma distillate. The non-volatile total soluble solids concentrate (TSSC) were obtained by removal of excess water from leftover of TAC distillation by vacuum evaporation and subsequent extraction of soluble solids with 40 % ethanol and making the concentrate ethanol free under vacuum. For in-the-cup customization of tea, 0.25 mL (5 drops) of TAC and 0.5 mL (10 drops) of TSSC gave a beverage of excellent quality when added to 80 mL of boiling hot water with cardamom oil (0.05 mL), tulsi oil (0.05 mL), ginger juice (1.5 mL), sugar cubes (2) and milk (10 mL).The cost of tea portion excluding all other ingredients, w.r.t. the optimized product, (₹ 0.85 per cup) was only marginally higher than that (₹ 0.75 per cup) for commercially available loose black tea. Upscaling of the technology can be done for further cost reduction. Improvement in packaging and product delivery studies may be undertaken in future to open new avenues for commercialization of in-the-cup customized teas with all liquid ingredients for higher convenience.