Oogavé believes you deserve better. Part of that credo is pulling back the curtain so you know exactly where your soda comes from.
Agave is a succulent plant native to Mexico. There are four major parts of the agave that are edible. The leaves may be collected in winter and spring for eating, when the plants are rich in sap. Each agave plant will produce several pounds of edible flowers during its final season. The stalks, which are ready before the blossom, can be eaten like sugarcane. Finally, the sap, called aguamiel or ‘honeywater’, is used to make the organic agave nectar we use to sweeten our soda.
Oogave uses only light premium organic Weber blue agave. Blue agave requires little cultivation, so it is ideal for organic certification. It requires little water and no pesticides, herbicides of fertilizers. It is ready for harvest in seven years.
The skilled men who conduct the harvest are called Jimadores. Harvest requires not only great knowledge of the plant and being mindful of the spines of the leaves, but also expertise in wielding the sharp, spade-like knife called the coa.
After harvest, the leaves of the plant are left on the ground to compost, becoming soil nutrition for the next generation. The remaining pinas or ‘pineapples’ are then hauled out of the fields by truck, or if the terrain necessitates, burros.
The pina trucks are then taken to one of the agave production facilities. There, the pinas are unloaded and fed into a machine that shreds them into a pulp.
The pulp is then placed into a machine known as a diffuser. The diffuser uses hot water and steam to extract the juice from the plant. The remainder of the plant, mostly cellulose, is perfect farm animal feed. The agave juice is then pumped into huge vats. The vats are heated to 190 degrees F for a period of 36 hours in a process called heat hydrolysis. The heat breaks down the natural inulin into simple sugars.
When the hydrolysis is finished, the juice is then passed through filters to remove any plant materials or other impurities. After filtration, the juice consists of 15% sugar and inulin, and 85% moisture. To reduce the moisture content to only 25%, the juice is put into an evaporator. The evaporator is a very tall structure that pulls the moisture out using a vacuum pump. The end result is delicious agave nectar.
The agave nectar is tested by an on-site laboratory to ensure the highest standards of quality. It is then placed into drums and sealed for its trip to our plant in Colorado.
The agave arrives at our facilities in sealed numbered drums. Each drum is clearly labeled, and all the proper paperwork is always provided so that we can trace the organic agave nectar in every bottle of Oogave back to the day it was produced.
The organic agave nectar is then pumped into large mixing tanks. Once there, we add the natural flavors extracts and citric acid to create the base syrup for whichever flavor we are making that day.
After the syrup is thoroughly mixed to ensure consistency, it is pumped into a machine called the carbo-mixer. This machine proportions the syrup with our triple filtered Colorado water. It is then force carbonated to add the bubbles to make our soda pop! The resulting carbonated soda is then placed in a pressurized holding tank before heading into the bottle filler.
The bottles themselves arrive from the manufacturer fresh from the furnace. We then take the extra step of rinsing them one last time before they are filled. The bottles are then fed into the filler, which is our 1961 Meyer Dumore 40 head filler affectionately known as ‘Brass Betty’. The bottles are lifted up to the filling head, pressurized with CO2, and then filled with the great flavor of the day.
The bottles are then rinsed again on the outside and dried by powerful air knives before being labeled. They are finally hand-packed in the individual four packs and case boxes for sale around the World.
Oogave is made as pure and as real as Mother Nature intended. You deserve a soda this good, give one a try…Cheers!
