Pearl Jelly
Pearl jelly is a ready to use beverage topping consisting of small gelled spheres, typically 8 to 12 millimetres across, suspended in a sugar syrup and added to milk tea, fruit tea and dessert cups as an alternative to starch based tapioca pearls.
The sphere is a hydrocolloid gel rather than a cooked starch. Most commercial pearl jelly is built on konjac glucomannan gelled with an alkali or with carrageenan and potassium salts, sometimes with agar, gellan or a low ester pectin adjusting the set. That gel system gives a firm, elastic bite that resists collapse in hot liquid and does not retrograde or harden in the refrigerator, which is the practical failing of tapioca. Sugar, fruit juice, acidulant, colour and flavour are dissolved into the gel before setting, so the sphere carries its own taste rather than absorbing it from the drink.
Most of the trade packs it in syrup in pails, cans or retail pouches, with a drained chilled or frozen product sold occasionally. The gel is thermally irreversible once set in the konjac systems and heat reversible in the agar and carrageenan systems, which determines whether a pack can be warmed before service. Drained weight, sphere diameter and gel firmness are the specification points that decide how the product performs in a cup.
We source bulk Pearl Jelly from top China manufacturers for our partners. The manufacturer is in Shanghai. A smaller requirement can ship in a combined container with other ingredients.
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- Function
- Bakery ingredient
Specifications
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Appearance | Uniform translucent to coloured spheres, free from fused beads and foreign matter |
| Sphere diameter | 8 to 10 mm, 90 percent within range |
| Texture | Firm and elastic, no surface stickiness or syneresis |
| Drained weight | Declared per pack, 50 percent of net weight minimum |
| Total soluble solids of syrup | 18 to 28 degrees Brix |
| pH | 3.5 to 4.5 |
| Heat stability | No dissolution after 30 minutes in liquid at 80 degrees Celsius |
| Lead | 0.3 mg/kg maximum |
| Arsenic | 0.5 mg/kg maximum |
| Total plate count | 1,000 cfu/g maximum |
| Yeast and mould | 50 cfu/g maximum |
| Coliforms | Less than 10 cfu/g |
| Escherichia coli | Negative in 1 g |
| Salmonella | Negative in 25 g |
Common Markets Grades
Grades separate first on gel system. Konjac based spheres are firm and chewy and hold shape for hours in a hot drink, while agar and carrageenan based spheres are softer and cleaner breaking and are preferred in chilled desserts. Within each system, size is the next grading line, running from small caviar type beads of 3 to 5 millimetres through the standard 8 to 10 millimetre pearl to large 12 millimetre spheres.
Flavour and colour variants make up most of the catalogue: plain crystal or clear grades, brown sugar, lychee, mango, strawberry, matcha, coffee and taro among them, with the colour supplied either by fruit and vegetable concentrate or by a permitted colour. Packing grades cover syrup packed pails for foodservice, retail pouches at portion weight, aseptically filled cans for ambient distribution, and drained frozen spheres for manufacturers who wish to control the syrup themselves. Low sugar and sugar free grades sweetened with polyols or high intensity sweeteners are traded alongside the standard syrup packs.
Applications
- Milk tea and bubble tea, spooned into the cup as a chewy topping that stays firm in hot liquid
- Fruit tea and iced tea, where the sphere carries a matching fruit flavour and suspends visibly in the drink
- Yoghurt drinks and drinking yoghurt, where the acid tolerant gel does not soften at low pH
- Cup desserts, grass jelly bowls and shaved ice, used as one layer among several toppings
- Frozen yoghurt and soft serve toppings, dosed cold from a syrup pail
- Jelly desserts and canned fruit cups, supplying texture without added starch
- Dairy desserts and puddings, folded in as an inclusion after cooling
- Ready to drink bottled tea with visible particulates, filled through a wide bore piston filler
China Manufacturers of Pearl Jelly
Top Pearl Jelly manufacturers in China.
Company names and logos are the property of the manufacturers themselves. They are listed here because our own directory records them as producing this ingredient. A listing is not an endorsement by them, and we do not represent them or speak on their behalf.
Regulatory Status
Pearl jelly is a composite food, so it has no E number of its own, and the rules reach it through its ingredients and through the general hygiene frameworks, Regulation 852/2004 in the European Union and 21 CFR Part 117 in the United States. Both markets permit the gelling agents used: konjac gum is E425 and carrageenan E407 in the European Union under Regulation 1333/2008, with purity criteria in Regulation 231/2012, while the United States affirms or lists agar, gellan gum, carrageenan and konjac flour for food use, agar at 21 CFR 184.1115 and carrageenan at 21 CFR 172.620.
One restriction is central to this product category and buyers must check it before shipping. Because of the choking risk associated with firm konjac gel pieces, the European Union prohibits the use of konjac E425 in jelly confectionery and specifically in jelly mini cups, a restriction introduced by Commission Directive 2003/52/EC and carried into the current additives framework, and the United States Food and Drug Administration has taken import action against konjac gel mini cup confectionery on the same grounds. Beverage toppings sold for dispersion into a drink are treated differently from jelly mini cups, but the distinction depends on presentation and pack format, so the intended finished format has to be confirmed against the destination market rules. Codex lists konjac, carrageenan, agar and gellan in the General Standard for Food Additives, and JECFA has evaluated each of them as gelling and thickening agents.
Manufacturing Process
The gum blend, konjac glucomannan with carrageenan, agar or gellan depending on the system, is dispersed into water with sugar and hydrated with heating and shear until fully swollen and free of lumps. Fruit juice concentrate, acidulant, colour and flavour are dosed into the hot solution, and the pH is set, since konjac gels are formed under mild alkali while carrageenan and agar gels set on cooling and are acid sensitive if held hot for long.
Sphere formation follows one of two routes. In moulding, the hot solution is deposited into spherical cavities in a chilled mould belt or into starchless silicone moulds and allowed to set, then demoulded and washed. In dropping, the solution is metered through nozzles into a chilled setting bath containing calcium or potassium salts, where each droplet gels on contact as it falls, then the beads are screened out and rinsed. Set spheres are washed to remove surface salt, graded over screens to remove undersize and fused beads, then filled into pails or cans with a sugar syrup at a defined drained weight. The pack is pasteurised, either in the container for ambient grades or before aseptic filling, then cooled and held chilled or at ambient depending on the preservation route.
