Slush (beverage)
A slush is a flavored frozen drink.
There are a number of different kinds of slush drinks:
- Frozen carbonated beverages, typified by the Slurpee or ICEE, are made by freezing a carbonated drink. These machines are complicated and expensive, and notably require a carbon dioxide supply. They make a very fine and 'dry' slush.
- Frozen uncarbonated beverages are made by freezing a non-carbonated juice or liquid. These machines do not require a pressure chamber, and so are much cheaper and easier to maintain. These machines usually have attractive clear product hoppers, and can fit on a counter top. They make a slightly wetter slush. They are notable in the wide variety of drinks they create, including coffee-flavored ices and alcoholic drinks like margaritas and daiquiris.
- Conventional slush drinks, typified by the slush.ie (real fruits) or Slush Puppie, use a single slurry made by freezing a sweetened base, similar to apple or grape juice. This slurry is mixed at serving time with a flavouring syrup of the buyer's choice. These drinks are notable in that the flavored syrup can be drawn out of the drink, leaving a relatively unflavoured base ice behind.
- "Instant" slush drinks formed via supercooling. Several examples are Slush.ie![1] which allows consumers to make beverages that turn to slush upon opening using a conventional freezer, the Chill Chamber[2] which allows businesses to store beverages at below freezing temperatures that turn to slush upon opening, and supercooled Sprite from Coca-Cola (briefly marketed in the UK) which required special vending machines to store the bottles in a supercooled state so that they would turn to slush upon opening.[3]
- Temperature. Chipped ice in water is the standard for the freezing point of water, 32 °F (0 °C). Ice made from water can be 32 °F, or a much lower temperature. The agitation of the machines is partially to keep the water from freezing solid. Some of the drinks have additives to make the freezing temperature of the mix lower, so that the drink can be much colder than a water slush drink.
- Sugar. Slush is made by a chemistry defying mixture of sugar and water. To prevent the mixture from freezing solid there must be between 12% - 22% of Sugar present in the solution. The sugar acts as the anti-freeze in the solution. The slush machine stirs or rotates the mixture at a constant speed so that the sugar and water molecules bond together before the water gets a chance to freeze. In this way a soft wet slurry mixture is formed.
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