The process behind 'Sparkling Lemonade'
Developing a tasty, low-calorie, Swedish-made lemonade is a difficult task in itself. Keeping it as natural as possible and avoiding obscure ingredients like "aroma" doesn't make it much easier. But we succeeded! After countless tastings, lots of discussions and more than one round of "how on earth are we going to fight the soft drink giants?", we have finally come up with something extraordinary. But how did we get there, and what happened along the way? The flavors As many of you probably already know, we already have Swedish-made lemonade - Lemonad with lemon flavor (https://swedishtonic.com/produkt/lemonade-12-pack/) and Ruby Lemonad with grapefruit and blood orange flavor (https://swedishtonic.com/produkt/ruby-lemonade-12-pack/). It was obvious that these two would remain as we developed further into the sugar-free segment. But what new flavors should we add? We looked at the flavors that already existed. Lemon is a really sour variant while Grapefruit/Blood Orange is perceived as more fresh and floral. What we thought was missing was an alternative for those who don't like acidic drinks and a wildcard, something unexpected and exciting. After a bit of testing, we found great alternatives - Raspberry Lime, sweet raspberry with fresh lime, and Jalapeno Lime, lime with a pinch of jalapeno! The ingredients Continuing to use high quality ingredients, without shortcuts such as flavors and continuing with Swedish-made lemonade, was a fact. So the composition of the products themselves was therefore relatively simple. When you work with quality, it can almost only be good, but despite this, we have still chosen to go the extra mile to reach new heights. One example is the Crisp Lemon flavor where we found an extract made from Sicilian lemon. In a fusion of real juices, from-the-named-source extracts and total transparency, you know exactly what you're getting when you drink our Swedish-made lemonade. Nothing is hidden behind a curtain, it's just really cool ingredients that we are more than happy to boast about. However, there was one component that took many hours of R&D and lots of samples from suppliers to get right - the sugar replacement. So let's talk about it and why we chose to go without added sugar! Why no added sugar? Beverages, especially soft drinks and lemonades, are a typical category where relatively large amounts are consumed at any one time. Making this type of product sugar-free seemed like a no-brainer - this way everyone can enjoy the products without worrying about the impact on their health and blood sugar. "But aren't sugar-free products very artificial and just as harmful to health?" many people are probably thinking. Well, it depends! There is a plethora of different sweeteners. Some of them are hugely artificial and cannot even be found in nature - a good example is aspartame. Aspartame as a substance is synthesized from two amino acids via a production process and cannot be found anywhere in nature. Simply an invented substance that we humans are the creators behind! Others are actually quite similar to sugar in both their "naturalness" and process. The two we have chosen are Steviol Glycosides and Erythritol. Technically, all sweeteners are safe to consume, otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy products containing them. But what we at Swedish Tonic have seen is that the artificial ones are more and more linked to health risks and this is not something we want to expose our customers to. Therefore, we have chosen the two that according to many sources are considered most safe and natural. All in all, we have done our utmost to create as good and healthy a product as we can! Greetings, Anton Johansson - Head of R&D and production
Read full post