EP3876751A1

EP3876751A1 - Method for producing honey powder

Info

Publication number: EP3876751A1
Application number: EP19882963.2A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Katarzyna SAMBORSKA; Aleksandra JEDLI SKA; Artur Wiktor; Dorota Witrowa-Rajchert
Original assignee: Szkola Glowna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego W Warszawie
Current assignee: Szkola Glowna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego W Warszawie
Priority date: 2018-11-07
Filing date: 2019-11-06
Publication date: 2021-09-15
Also published as: PL237629B1; EP3876751A4; WO2020096472A1; PL427692A1

Abstract

A method for honey powder preparation is to prepare aqueous honey solution with an addition of milk powder, with the content of solids in the solution from 10 to 45%, wherein the content of honey is from 10 do 80% of solids, the content of powder milk is from 20 to 90% of solids, wherein powder milk with fat content of up to 2 wt.% and water content from 1 to 6 wt.% is used, and this solution is spray dried.

Description

Method for producing honey powder

The object of the present invention is a method for preparing a honey powder.

Bee honey, consumed due to its unique taste and aroma, is also characterized by numerous health-enhancing properties, and treatment with honey products is science-based medical discipline called apitherapy. However, as a result of high viscosity and density, honey in its natural form has unfavorable features causing difficulties in transport, trade and dosage. In honey, unfavorable phenomenon is also spontaneous glucose crystallization, as it leads to a secretion of certain amount of water, which is an environment for yeast growth.

These problems are largely eliminated with the use of honey in a powder form. Honey powder can be consumed directly, used as an additive for a range of food products, e.g. yoghurts, drinks, sauces, edible coats, as well as for dietary supplements and treatment supporting preparations. The use of honey powder as an additive for cakes and breads increases their attractiveness because it improves their taste, color, aroma, texture and it helps to maintain high quality of a product. The use of dried honey in some type of sweets, such as nougat or caramels, allows to eliminate unfavorable taste developed during high temperature baking. Because of the ease of storage and simplicity of usage, the use of this product has been also reported in cosmetology and dietary supplement production.

It is severely hampered to obtain honey in a dry, powder form, mainly because of the high content of monosaccharides (glucose and fructose) and organic acids. These substances are characterized by low glass transition temperature, at which the state of the components is changed - from hard, brittle“glassy” material with very high viscosity to soft, viscoelastic „gummy” material with viscosity of about lCb Pa-s. Temperature of this transition is characteristic for each substance and it increases with molecular weight. The state of the material during spray drying results from the relation between product temperature and glass transition temperature - material must be in a glassy form to enable drying. During spray drying of material with high monosaccharide content, the temperature of the material in drying chamber is usually higher than glass transition temperature. As a result, material is in viscoelastic gummy state, i.e. in a form of syrup or viscous particles sticking to the chamber walls and drying of such material to a powder form is not possible. To enable material drying, modification of drying parameters is necessary or such material preparation so that the temperature of the material during drying was lower than glass transition temperature. In practice, it is difficult to obtain when materials with high monosaccharide content, and so also honey, are dried, because of low glass transition temperature of all the components. The method to obtain such relationship is to modify the composition of the drying material so an increase of the glass transition temperature is obtained to a value higher than the material temperature while the same temperature of the material during drying is maintained. Traditionally, it is obtained by an addition of substances such as: starch, maltodextrin or gum Arabic, characterized in high glass transition temperature. However, it is associated with introducing into natural product foreign substances that are not natural food components, and this is not in line with current trends of so-called clean label.

In order to obtain dried honey, spray drying is usually used, however other drying methods are also used, such as: freeze-drying, microwave or vacuum drying. All these methods aim to obtain bulk product, which usually contains about 50% of bee honey (Hebbar U.H., Rastogi N.K., Subramanian R., 2008. Properties of dried and intermediate moisture honey products: A review. International Journal of Food Properties, 11 (4), 805-808), and the remaining part is traditionally drying carriers. Over the last few years, methods that allow to obtain honey powder with an increased honey content (and decreased amount of carrier) were developed, e.g. thanks to earlier membrane or enzymatic processing of honey (PL222559, Samborska K., Sokolowska P., Szulc K. 2017. Diafiltration and agglomeration as methods to improve the properties of honey powder obtained by spray drying. Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies, 39, 33-41 ; Samborska K, Suszek J, Hac-Szymaticzuk E, Matwijczuk A, Gladyszewska B, Chocyk D, Gladyszewski G, Gondek E. 2018. Characterization of membrane processed honey and the effect of ultrafiltration with diafiltration on subsequent spray drying. Journal of Food Process Engineering, 41(6), el28l8, 10.1111/jfpe.12818). However, these methods still use traditional drying carriers and the yield (powder recovery) of drying process of variants with an increased honey content was low.

Examples of drying honey together with milk are known in the literature, but it is liquid milk with low content of solids, and the honey addition represents maximum 20% of dry substance of the product (Bansal V., Sharma HK, Nanda V. 2014. Optimisation of spray drying process parameters for low-fat honey-based milk powder with antioxidant activity. International Journal of Food Science and Technology, 49(4), 1196-1202; Bansal V., Premi M., Sharma H.K. Nanda V. 2017. Compositional, physical, functional attributes and flow characterization of spray-dried skim milk powder enriched with honey. Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization, 11, 1474-1485). The aim of the invention was to develop honey drying method enabling to obtain powder with an increased honey content by high yield drying process, with simultaneous replacement of drying carrier with substance being natural food product.

The method according to the invention for honey powder preparation by spray process with the use of an aid that increases glass transition temperature is characterized in that aqueous honey solution is prepared with an addition of milk powder with solids content in the solution from 10 to 45%, where honey content is from 10 to 80% of solids, milk powder content is from 20 to 90% of solids, wherein powder milk is used with fat content up to 2 wt. % and water content from 1 to 6 wt. % and this solution is spray dried.

Spray drying is preferably carried out with rotational speed of spray disc from 20000 to 40000 rpm, in the inlet air temperature from 150 to 220°C.

The spray drying is preferably carried out in spray dryiers, where the size of the obtained particles is from 2 to 300 pm.

Preferred raw material feed rate during drying is in the range from 0.1 to 1 cnu/s.

It is preferred to continuously collect obtained powder during drying, so it does not remain for a longer time in an increased temperature environment, as this can cause its caking.

In case the invention is realized at the full industrial scale, it is possible to use more concentrated solution being spray dried, in which the content of dry substance in the solution will be higher than 45%. Preferably, this content may reach up to 70%. In full industrial scale realizations, it is possible to obtain higher values of raw material feed rate than in the embodiments described below. Preferably, raw material feed rate during drying may reach up to 4 kg/s.

The method for honey powder preparation according to the invention allows to obtain product with up to 80% of honey content as a result of high yield drying (powder recovery) and at the same time to eliminate the use of drying carriers, such as maltodextrin o gum Arabic, by replacing them with milk powder. The use of milk is not associated with introducing substances with an increased caloric value into the honey.

The obtained powders are characterized by preferred physical properties, low water content and good free flowing.

Product prepared according to the proposed technology can be free-flowing replacement for liquid honey, with possible use in food and pharmaceutical industry. These applications can include e.g. additive for dairy products or products consumed with the addition of dairy products (e.g. breakfast cereals). Honey-milk powder can be also used e.g. as sugar substitute in pastry and baked goods, an additive to coffee whitener etc. The method according to the invention is further presented in the embodiments.

Example 1. Aqueous solution of rapeseed honey (water content of 18.1%) with an addition of skimmed powder milk instant (fat content of 2% and water content of 6%) was prepared in such a way that the content of solids in the solution was 45%, and the ratio between solids from honey to solids from milk was 80:20. 500 g of the solution was spray dried with the following parameters: inlet air temperature l50°C, outlet air temperature 70°C, raw material feed rate 0.1 cr /s, rotational speed of spray disc 40000 rpm. About 150 g of powder was obtained, wherein the honey content was about 120 g (of honey solids).

Example 2. Aqueous solution of conifer honeydew honey (water content of 15.5%) with an addition of skimmed powder milk instant (fat content of 1.25% and water content of 1%) was prepared in such a way that the content of solids in the solution was 10%, and the ratio between solids from honey to solids from milk was 10:90. 600 g of the solution was spray dried with the following parameters: inlet air temperature 220°C, outlet air temperature 80°C, raw material feed rate 1 crm/s, rotational speed of spray disc 20000 rpm. About 40 g of powder was obtained, wherein the honey content was about 4 g (of dry honey substance).

Example 3. Aqueous solution of rapeseed honey (water content of 18%) with an addition of skimmed powder milk instant (fat content of 1.25% and water content of 4%) was prepared in such a way that the content of solids in the solution was 30%, and the ratio between solids from honey to solids from milk was 70:30. 500 g of the solution was spray dried with the following parameters: inlet air temperature 180°C, outlet air temperature 75°C, raw material feed rate 0.3 crm/s, rotational speed of spray disc 26000 rpm. About 100 g of powder was obtained, wherein the honey content was about 70 g (of honey solids).

Table 1. Examples of drying process parameters for honey with an addition of powder milk and properties of the obtained powders

Claims

1. A method for preparing a honey powder by spray method with the use of an aid that increases glass transition temperature, characterized in that the aqueous honey solution is prepared with an addition of milk powder with solids content in the solution from 10 to 45%, where honey content is from 10 to 80% of solids, milk powder content is from 20 to 90% of solids, wherein powder milk with fat content up to 2 wt. % and water content from 1 to 6 wt. % is used and this solution is spray dried.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein spray drying is carried out with rotational speed of spray disc from 20000 to 40000 rpm, in the inlet air temperature from 150 to 220°C.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein spray drying is preferably carried out in spray dryiers, where the size of the obtained particles is from 2 to 300 pm.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the raw material feed rate during drying is in a range from 0.1 to 1 cr /s.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the obtained powder is collected continuously during drying.