Blog: RTD Beverage Production
A good way to start this post would be to define what an RTD is. RTD of course stands for ready to drink beverage, but the vast range of products included in the RTD category make RTDs very difficult to define. They include:
- Alcoholic soft drinks
- Beer mix drinks (shandy/Radler)
- Flavoured ciders
- Hard seltzers
- Hard ice teas and lemonades
- Gin and tonic
- Branded whisk(e)y/rum and branded cola
- Cocktails
- Flavoured vodka drinks
- Alcoholic energy drinks
With such a diversity of products it is also difficult to identify a typical set of attributes but most RTDs are:
- Other than gin and tonic or low sweetness hard seltzers, usually sweet in taste due to sugar or sweeteners
- Around 5% abv (apart from those that aren’t!)
- Carbonated (although uncarbonated high abv cocktails are currently in growth)
- Fruity in flavour (except for the new savoury and sour RTDs)
Ready to drink beverages have been around for a lot longer than you probably think. The term ready to drink beverage was actually coined long before the first alcoholic RTDs were even conceived of. The first carbonated beverages were only available in shops where draft carbonated water was mixed with syrups to produce a range of drinks that customers ordered from a menu. In the early days the carbonation was produced by reacting sulphuric acid with calcium carbonate, delicious! The first ready to drink beverages were the combined carbonated water and syrup packaged in a sturdy glass bottle and appeared in the 19th century. While it is eminently possible that alcoholic drinks were mixed with carbonated water and sold before the late 20th century, the first RTDs to achieve sustained commercial success were Bartles & Jaymes Wine Coolers sold in the USA by E & J Gallo Winery in 1985. The drink credited with starting the global boom in alcopop RTDs is Two Dogs Lemon Brew, produced in Australia in 1993. The category has now matured, and the global spend on RTDs is estimated to be around $13.6 billion (compared to ~$900 billion spent on beer). Importantly, in most parts of the world RTD consumption is increasing while the demand for other alcoholic drinks is in decline.
Other than the name, the one thing that unites RTDs is their method of production. A source of alcohol is mixed with flavourings and typically sparkling water before packaging. As simple as it sounds, there is a wide range of approaches, and it is very possible to get each approach wrong. The RTD beverage production course gives beverage production professionals the skills and knowledge needed to ensure that they don’t! It provides a detailed rundown of the vast range of ingredients that can be used and how to navigate the regulations controlling them. The course covers each step of the RTD production process with the kind of technical and scientific accuracy that you would expect from the CIBD. It also details how to measure and maintain RTD quality throughout its shelf life. The course contains everything a brewer, distiller, cidermaker or winemaker needs to know to also become a successful RTD maker.
The RTD market has seen many spectacular success stories and probably more spectacular failures. While effective marketing and innovation often drive success, sustained performance demands an effective and efficient production system. Consistently great flavour never goes out of style and the knowledge gained from the new RTD beverage production short course is required to achieve just that!
Author: Stuart Howe, Technical Development Manager