Many processed fruit suppliers to the beer industry, whether they’re selling orange juice or mango puree, tend to call all of their products puree. However, outside of the beer industry, most beverage and food manufacturers tend to categorize processed fruit as purees or juices.

Some processed fruit industry participants would argue that fruits such as orange, grapefruit, lime, lemon, mandarin, blood orange, and passion fruit, should all be classified as juices since the product is squeezed. Notably, many of these are citrus fruits. The people in this camp would take the position that there’s no such thing as “orange puree” or “lime puree.”

You could say that San Diego, California is hoppin’ when it comes to its beer scene.

According to the City of San Diego Economic Development Department, it ranks among the top 5 cities nation-wide with the most operating beer breweries, and craft breweries make up a sizeable portion of the overall industry.

Belching Beaver, launched in 2012, is a craft brewery headquartered in San Diego producing a variety of beers and hard seltzer. Its hard seltzer line-up includes three flavors: Passion Fruit & Guava, Pineapple & Mango, and Raspberry & Blackberry.

The popularity of hard seltzers is an undeniable success in the BWS (beer, wine and spirits) sector and future growth is set to remain robust.

Last year, the hard seltzer category grew an impressive 155 percent, and Goldman Sachs forecasts U.S. retail sales will expand from approximately $4.1 billion last year to $30 billion by 2025, comprising roughly 25 percent of the total alcohol beverage sector.

The appeal of hard seltzers is shared among producers and consumers.

For producers, there is a relatively low barrier to entry. Beer makers, for example, have been able to launch hard seltzer products by utilizing much of their existing equipment infrastructure and supplier network, including ingredients, packaging and distribution providers.

The goal of this article is to highlight some of the differences between processed fruit ingredients that are “Not from Concentrate” (NFC) versus “From Concentrate” (FC) aseptic purees and juices.

First, let’s think about our own experiences with fresh fruits that we buy at the grocery store or from our local farmer’s market. When you leave a mango, pineapple, or peaches out on your kitchen counter, you’ll invariably notice an abundance of aroma as it ripens. Specific fruit species and varieties will create their own mix of volatile compounds such as esters, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, lactones, and terpenoids and apocarotenoids.

Many fruits have a very high water content, typically 70-90+ %. In the interest of increasing shelf life and reducing storage and transportation costs, some companies opt for concentrated purees and juices. For example, if you’re making a concentrated orange juice, the orange is squeezed and heated under a vacuum evaporator to create a condensed product of roughly 5x less volume.

Aseptic purees refers to a processing technique that takes perishable fruits and vegetables, and extends the shelf life by sufficiently eliminating harmful germs and filling it into a previously sterilized package, such as an aseptic bag, drum or bin/tote.  

In many ways, the concept is similar to canning food. Aseptic packaging uses more sophisticated processes and systems, but the three fundamental steps in order to achieve a shelf-stable product are essentially the same.