When it comes to childhood drinks you can’t beat a bit of squash. Much of my youth was spent sampling different flavours of squash and depending on who had made the drink for me I would often end up sampling the strength of the squash too. There is definitely a fine art to make squash, too weak and your drink is basically just coloured water and if it is too strong you spend most of your time trying not to pull as face like you have just sucked on a lemon!
It seems that squash, over recent years has increased in popularity with adults as well as children. Whether this is due to people becoming more aware of carbonated drinks on their health or because of the significant increase in the flavours and types of squash now available. Even pubs and restaurants are looking at their soft drink options and many are increasing their purchase of post mix juices. Companies like http://empireuk.com/post-mix-products/post-mix-juices/ can provide food sector managers with good quality options.
Here are a few top facts about our beloved squash.
Squashes are a part of a wider type of drinks known as ‘dilutables’. Essentially all of the drinks in this category need to have water added to them. It also includes cordials and powders. The come in a variety of strengths which indicates how much water needs to be added to the drinks to make them palatable to drink. The traditional, standard squash strength meant that for every measure of squash that you poured into the glass you needed to add four measures of water. Now there is the more popular, cost effective and less plastic requiring, double concentrate. This, as it sounds, is double the strength of original squash and therefore means that double the amount of squash is found in a single measure poured so you need to add double the amount of water. Taking the original squash as a guide this would mean for every measure of squash you need to add eight equal measures of water.
There are two different types of sugar content in the dilutables available – standard and no added sugar. The standard squash that is available contains both natural and artificial sugar and possibly sweetener. No added sugar varieties only contain sugar that is found naturally in the ingredients that are added, so essentially natural sugars. This does not mean however, that there are no sweeteners present.
The most popular flavour is orange followed by apple and blackcurrant and then lemon and lime. But there are so many options out there. What is your favourite flavour?
