Post Mix overview

Postmix refers to the system in which a syrup concentrate of the soft drink is shipped to the retailer, usually in a disposable bag-in-box container. At the point of sale, the soft drink is made by mixing  water or soda water with a post mix syrup. Chilled and purified water sometimes mixed with carbon dioxide (from a gas cylinder), are usually dispensed from a soda fountain or soda gun.

A post mix dispenser is a more sophisticated device than a premix dispenser. The postmix system is suitable for outlets that serve large amounts of soft drinks quickly, such as a sports stadium or a busy fast-food restaurant, club and hotels but can also be installed in house hold residents.

It’s a common statement known to all members of hospitality. High profit margins can be made with large sales of drinks. High profits on soft drink sales are easily achievable in your outlet using high quality post mix syrups that can be purchased at competitive rates.

From a standard highball glass used by many pubs, clubs and restaurants for soft drink you would get about 360 glasses, at around $3.50 per glass that over $1200 return from one box, that’s without ice and if your using it for mixers in spirits it’s a lot more.

What makes a good post mix drink.

(1)          Quality syrup

There are many brands of syrup commercially available with Coke being the market leader closely followed Schweppes/Pepsi.

These two companies spend millions on advertising each year and while they’re the highest profile brands there are many other commercially available products that are extremely high quality and much more affordable.

Such as this link

(2)          Pressure and Gas

To make the soda water that mixes with the syrup that goes into making your favorite beverage your post mix machines use food grade CO2 gas.

Tthis gas needs to be regulated to specific pressures, different machines use different pressures but as a general rule most machines run at 80 psi or 550 kpa. For a more detailed explanation please see this video tutorial.

(3)          Temperature

One component commonly over looked when talking about post mix is temperature. To get a high quality product you want your beverage COLD. This isn’t just for personal preference, soda stays fresher longer when cold.

I tell my customer the magic number is 4 degrease centigrade higher than this your drink goes flat fast, ideally you want your drink dispensed at 2 degrease.

(4)          Water

Water is one of the main ingredients in any soda product, many people tell me that you just can’t beat Mc Donald’s Coke.

Now coke syrup is coke syrup no matter where you get it so why is Mc Donald’s coke better? Well cleaning and maintenance are a big part but the main difference is the water filtration system they use.

Mc Donald’s use a high quality reverse osmosis water filtration system, so why doesn’t everyone use this? Well the cost, they are not cheap.

 

(5)          Technique

It may seem obvious but a good pouring technique is very important, I’ve seen bar tenders raise the gun 30cm above a glass and let the soda waterfall into the glass, while this looks cool it can result in a flat drink.

The correct technique is to slightly tilt the glass, put the tip of the gun just inside the glass lip and let the soda run down the inside of the glass, slowly righting the glass as it fills.

(6)          The right cup

Having a clean cold cup is also a good idea, cups that are not clean, have chemical residue from a dishwasher or are hot out of the dishwasher can also negatively effect the quality of the drink.

Information sources

Southern Syrups – Technical support

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premix_and_postmix

Mark Proffitt web site – http://markproffitt.com/2011/02/15/secret-to-why-mcdonalds-coke-tastes-best/