With such a diverse range of spices & herbs, each with their own characteristics, choosing the best technology for your application is a complex process of interacting criteria.
Crushing/cutting spices, herbs, tea leaves and even roots to a coarse particle size of 3mm or less is usually the first step in spice processing, followed by fine milling. It’s important to ensure that the unique characteristics of your spices are preserved during this entire operation in order to maintain the quality of the end product.
Crushing and cutting
When processing spices, the first step is quite often a crushing/cutting operation in which the spices are gently cut to a specific coarse particle size. the following spice cutting milling solutions are available:
Extructor: No product bruising, no knives to sharpen
Rotoplex: For cutting spices into 3mm particles
Fine milling
In some cases, heat generated during the fine milling process can be detrimental to the spice properties, so it is critical to choose the right milling technology for your application. Hosokawa Alpine offers two types of fine milling grinders for spice use:
Contraplex CW II: With double rotating pin discs, ideal for oily seed spices such as cloves
Ultraplex UPZ: Ideal for fibrous spices such as ginger
Cryogenic milling
For some spices, cool milling (at +50C to +200C) or cryogenic milling (at -800C to -100C) may be preferable to ambient milling. Cryogenic milling allows for finer powders, longer product shelf life, and less evaporation of essential oils, which helps to preserve flavour properties. In the case of white pepper, cryogenic milling retains 94.5% of the essential oil content, compared to 57.8% when finely milled at room temperature.
Mixing/Blending
For customers who process lots of different types of spices in varying batch sizes, the Vitomix ribbon screw mixer is a very versatile solution, not least because it allows the mixing intensity to be adjusted between low and medium shear. It can also be used for the homogeneous introduction of liquid oils/flavours into spice mixtures.
Spice Processing Systems
Every spice, herb, and tea has its own set of machine and system requirements. That’s why we configure the equipment for your individual spice process according to your wishes and needs. You’re not sure which procedure is best for you? Please contact us if you require further assistance.
To discover more about our processing and containment equipment for the spices, herbs & tea industry, please get in touch or click below to view the products.
Powders, particles and solids are processed to GMP and ISO 9001:2015 standards for wide-ranging manufacturing industries, from pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, fine chemicals, additive manufacturing and advanced materials, to food and beverages, cosmetics and personal care. To learn more about our contract manufacturing services, please click here.
If you have and questions or require any information, please get in touch with us through our contact page.
