Novel Perspectives in Gushing Analysis: A Review

J. Inst. Brew. 117(3), 295-313, 2011 The phenomenon of gushing, characterized by the spontaneous overfoaming of carbonated beverages directly after opening a bottle (or a can), can still be a problem for the brewing and beverage industry worldwide. Due to its sudden and partly eruptive character, gushing can be detrimental to the image of the industry when it occurs in the hands of the consumer. Gushing is a complex phenomenon, induced by a variety of gushing factors of the raw materials and in the production process. A reliable methodology to avoid gushing is not yet available. Nevertheless, the obvious measure to prevent or at least minimize gushing is to assess the raw materials for their risk of gushing before they are processed further in production. Thus, the investigation of gushing analysis plays a particular role in the industry to prevent gushing and also in research to get more cognition on this phenomenon. This article gives a review of gushing with the focus on analysis. In current gushing tests, the overfoaming amount of bottled and carbonated extracts of the examined raw materials is used to determine the extent of the gushing potential. However, these analytical methods have disadvantages. The overfoaming amount can fluctuate, making it difficult to quantify the gushing potential precisely and the performance of these tests takes time (some days), which can lead to the unfavourable situation where the raw materials have already been processed before gushing could be detected. Therefore, the thematic priority of this review article is to present new ideas to quantify gushing more precisely and novel analytical approaches for the prediction of gushing by applying combined particle analysis.