Flavor Friday Episode #5

Preserving sugar water is one of the most important steps when making your Shaved Ice or Snow Cone Flavors. There are people who avoid preservatives in their flavors because they want to offer a product that is perceived as more healthy. It is 100% ok to make sugar water without preservative, as long as you have the ability to do so. By that I mean you will either need a refrigerator that can hold all of your flavors as well as your extra sugar water, or you can simply dispose of your flavor once it is a few days old. It is hard to put a time frame on how quickly a flavor can go bad. So much depends on how hot the environment is, where they are stored, whether they are exposed to the sun, etc.

If you are, however, ok with preserving your sugar water, then we have just the right product for you! The critical thing with this product is that the instructions must be followed to the “T”. Our instructions on the side of our preserving kit are simple and very easy to understand. We have two different versions of our preserving kit, one is a liquid option that dissolves almost instantly into your sugar water but will cost a bit more to ship due to its liquid weight. Our other option is a powder form and is quite affordable both in its price as well as the cost to ship it. Technically it will take a bit more time to dissolve in your sugar water solution, but it really comes down to whether you enjoy cheaper shipping and whether you prefer to work with liquid or powder.

The instructions on the pack are the following:

• For the Liquid Version:
• Fill a 5 Gallon jug with 1 Gallon of water
• Add 2 ounces of Preservative
• Add 25 Lbs of Sugar
• Fill jug with water to the 5 Gallon mark
• Add 1 ounce of Citric Acid
• Mix Until Dissolved
• Flavor with Snowie Brand Original or Natural Concentrate Shaved Ice or Snow Cone Flavors
• For the Powder Version:
• Fill a 5 Gallon jug with 1 Gallon of water
• Add 1 scoop* (1 oz) of Preservative
• Add 25 Lbs of granulated sugar
• Fill jug with water to the 5 gallon mark
• Add 1 scoop* (1 oz) scoop of Citric Acid
• Mix until dissolved
• Flavor with Snowie Brand Original or Natural Concentrate Shaved Ice or Snow Cone Flavors

So why did we do a Flavor Friday episode on this subject? Well, it is one of the most common mistakes among our new customers. There is really only one area that you must pay attention to when performing these instructions and that is that the Preservative goes in first and Citric Acid, last. Do not ever put these products in at the same time. Callie talks to us about how the Citric Acid is not put into the sugar water to create more of a twang in your flavor. It is simply to act as an activating agent for the preservative. If you forget and put these products in your sugar water at the same time, they will simply bind to one another and create a useless glob. Callie places preservative and citric acid on the Snowie Shovel at the same time to show you the chemical reaction. If you notice something similar floating in your sugar water, then it is not preserved and you will want to use your product quickly. It is also important to make sure your jugs are perfectly clean after they have been used with an unpreserved product.

We will be offering deals every week on the products that we talk about during our Flavor Friday Episodes. This week, we are offering you 10% off our preservative kits. You can get a 10% discount on either our liquid or powder Preservative and Citric Acid kits. All you need to do is use the coupon: “PRESERVED10”

See you next week!