Super Sour Candies, ideas, formulations, brainstorming

Hey all,
Been interested in making some super sour edibles ala warheads, sour punch straws, toxic waste etc. Gonna play around with a few recipes later this week or next, but I’m just looking to pick yalls brain and see

a) if anyone has had any luck making super sour edibles (im sure someone here has)

b) if there’s any secret to formulating a good super sour candy like using or not using any specific ingredients. I know theres the typical malic and citric acid, but any luck with tartaric? Fumaric? Lactic? What combos work best?

Just looking for a good starting point before i head into R&D. Thanks!

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Encapsulated acids work well as a coating agent. Encapsulating them aids in combating their hygroscopic nature and allows you to avoid adding excess acid into the candy syrup (as you know pH and acid content can have a big impact on the ability for candy to set or for texture, so you can’t just add more acid to make it more sour and expect nothing else to change about the formulation). Most GRAS acids used for this application are all hygroscopic, so that’s something to keep in mind as you play around with creating something more sour.

I’ve used Capol product in the past for this and I have had great success. I had no issues getting samples either, so they could be worth exploring. I have no stake in their business nor any relation to them, so feel free to take this suggestion as just a single person who used some of their encapsulated acids successfully. There are definitely other vendors and similar products out there.

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hell yeah thank u so much for the reply. really appreciate it! youve given me some stuff to check out and a direction to take things, so THANK YOU.
We have some capol product samples sitting around here somewhere, so it shouldnt be too hard for me to get some encapsulated acid samples from them. right on!

I’ve had pretty good luck making a pectin based gummy candy and then coating in a 5% tartaric/sugar for a nice tang. Haven’t tried to go super sour, but it wouldn’t take much more tartaric acid, maybe 7-10%. I did have issues with the tartaric causing gelatin based candy to get soggy. Keep us informed of your findings!

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interesting, def something I can mess around with (hopefully) soon. question, when you say 5% tartaric/sugar you mean like a sugar sanding/coating the outside with a mixture of 5% tartaric acid, 95% sugar correct?

i wonder why the tartaric makes gelatin soggy? maybe there is a better acid to use for the coating (if others are just as sour and dont cause the sogginess)

I’ll be messing with some pectin recipes, but also some hard candies and taffies as well.

thanks for the info! ill def keep this updated

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Tartaric acid has hygroscopic properties, so coating the outside with a hygroscopic acid will draw moisture to the outside of the gummy over time (whether it is pulling the moisture out of the gummy itself, or pulling moisture from the atmosphere), which is why using an encapsulated acid is ideal for this technique. Gelatin just may be more prone to becoming “soggy” given the nature of how it sets and remains stabilized vs pectin.

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ahhhh i see what you’re saying. I have some Capolan 1183 thats in the kitchen, left over from the last manager. I wasnt 100% sure what it was, but after you pointing that company out to me, i decided to try a little taste test and this def tastes like some kind of citric or malic acid mixed with something, i’m guessing this is the product you mentioned. I reached out to the company to get more samples and actually learn what this is, but for now I may start messing with it in the sanding sugar. thanks a ton for pointing me in this direction, super appreciated

1183 is encapsulated malic

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sick thanks, thats what I was thinking after tasting it. I’m going to mess around with it until I hear back from a rep

do you happen to know the ingredients for this Capolan 1183? I’m new to encapsulated acids, so any info would be greatly appreciated! I’m curious on the process of encapsulating acids, what all goes into it etc

Think of it as a process of coating the acid molecules with a hydrophobic barrier. Often times different kinds of oils are used. This barrier is now going to try to repel any moisture, with the acid trapped inside the barrier, the hygroscopic properties of the acid are significantly reduced so that it will be unable to pull moisture from the air or the gummy. This helps to prevent the gummy from getting soggy or sweating or developing a wet exterior.

Capolan will be able to provide you more information, and they have several different encapsulated acid products, I think I have 4 or 5 at home that I was playing with. I had mixed them in different ratio’s with sanding sugar and used that to coat my gummies to provide a more sour taste. It worked well.

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hell yeah thank you so much! I’m learning all sorts of new things today! lol

You have any ratios or percentages I could work off of regarding how much coated acid to put in a sugar sanding mix?

I mean it’s pretty subjective as everyone has different tastes, and it was also dependent on the encapsulated acid as some were definitely a bit more potent but luckily they are both powders, so it is very easy to make samples.

Just a bunch small cups and do an increasing ratio from 10% acid to say, 50% acid, and see how they taste to you. Easy experiment to do that doesn’t involve using product and let’s you get an understanding of how the sugar/acid coating would taste on its own. There will definitely be some slight changes when you introduce the candy, but for all intents and purposes, this would give you a solid foundation.

I think I was normally using somewhere between a 70/30 to an 85/15 (sugar/encapsulated acid) so that’s probably not a bad place to start but YMMV depending on what candy it ends up going on and how the sour/tart coating meshes with the candy product.

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cool, after reading somewhere else i was thinking of starting around 15% but yeah thats a great idea, get out some cups and try a bunch of different ratios. sweet, thanks dude!

I did some R&D with hard candies and acid when i worked at an edibles company and had issues trying to add it into the candy. Always turned green and would not harden properly. We ended up just coating the outsides. Still on the market being sold. % are def subjective. 10:1 sugar to (citric/malic) acid is still too much for some folks. Finding tasty flavors is the real issue. Lorann isn’t for everybody. I found a place out of vegas that has some good flavoring for hard candies. I try to use an oil based flavoring but to each their own.

Little off topic but If anybody has a good ratio of sugar to ascorbic acid I should use to coat my gummy’s it would be greatly appreciated. Tried a ratio of sugar and citric and it made them sour (no surprise) wanting to replace it with vitamin c

we typically use 5-7% acid to sugar in our coating. mix of malic and citric. i suppose trying the same ratio with absorbic would be a good starting point.