#2 - Jelly Beans

After that cerebral intro I am launching right into the heady topic of Jelly Beans. Actually, I owe a co-worker some research. I torture her with oddball curiosities ( who wrote the song containing the lyrics "my python boots are too tight") and she chases them down and then tortures me with something (like how do they make the flavors in jelly beans) and so here I am chasing that one down.

So each day in the afternoon I walk up to the front office and snag 4 jelly beans at 4 calories each. They are Jelly Bellys I think which are small. So thanks to Google I learned all about first jelly beans, and then flavors.

Jely Beans:

I found a video which explains how they are made. First heat sugar to 170C, add glucose, starch, color and flavor stuff (natural I am sure) and mix it all in a big boiler. Starch is used as a mold to dribble hot sugar into (brushed off later and reused) and then cooled. They sort the klinkers out, too big and too small with screen belts and then dry them for a while. Then they go in a big dome pot thing which they add sugar to and rotate the pot so the jelly beans roll over each other and get rounder. Food coloring is added to more sugar and put in the drum and then more sugar, then syrup (more sugar), then a little wax to make them shiny. Then off to the packaging machine, into the truck and off to your local store. Here is a great link explaining more.

Flavor science:

This is fascinating. A place called Mother Murphy's Labs scored the job of making all the weird flavors for the Harry Potter inspired jelly beans with flavors like dirt, sardines and boogers. I can imagine them pounding the air in excitement when they got the "baby diaper" flavor project. They also get normal jobs like donuts, mocha, vanilla and the like.

So I wonder what kind of research was involved in developing the "baby diaper" flavored jelly bean?