Effect of Pre-Treatments and Clarificants on Sugarcane Juice Characteristics

Abstract

Enzymatic browning, sedimentation and loss of its typical flavour are the major problems encountered during storage and thermal processing of sugarcane juice. Top 5 cm of sugarcane was found to give juice of very dark colour. Therefore, it was removed before juice extraction. Topped sugarcanes were peeled to obtain
juice of lower objective colour value (82.79–111.62) than juice of
unpeeled samples (89.78–150.54). Natural pH of sugarcane juice
was 5.6. During preparation of sugarcane juice based beverage,
sugarcane juice is required to be made acidic. Acidification of sugarcane
juice from the peeled samples to pH below 5 reduced colour
but it was found to increase turbidity. Therefore, sugarcane juice
was clarified using deaola, okra, semal and lime. Use of deola
extract gave maximum clarifying effect; it reduced colour from its
initial value of 98.87 to 18.49 and turbidity from 4.985 to 0.259.