Buzz
For Harry Potter enthusiasts, you’ve probably received a box of Jelly Belly’s Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans in your Easter basket. As the name suggests, the box contains beans with a variety of flavors—not all pleasant. Along with classic flavors like banana, lemon, and blueberry, you’ll find black pepper, earwax, booger, earthworm, and vomit jelly beans. The company’s BeanBoozled line also features jelly beans that look alike but taste completely different, such as buttered popcorn versus rotten egg, licorice versus skunk spray, peach versus barf, and chocolate pudding versus canned dog food. (The fun of the BeanBoozled Challenge comes from discovering which one you’ve picked!)
And Jelly Belly isn’t joking around with these flavors: The vomit jelly bean really tastes like puke. 'We’re committed to making flavors as true to life as possible,' Jana Sanders Perry, former Jelly Belly spokesperson, shared with Mytour in 2015. 'That includes the oddball flavors too.' However, no one at Jelly Belly is actually tasting canned dog food or vomit, or using those ingredients in the beans themselves—but they sure taste exactly as described. So, how do they achieve this?
Smell is a key factor in how we perceive taste, which is why Jelly Belly’s first step in creating a jelly bean is to analyze the real-life object using a gas chromatograph. The machine turns the target into vapor by either dissolving it in a solvent and boiling it or simply heating it, then examines the chemical composition of these vapors and translates them into flavor markers. These markers are what Jelly Belly’s team uses as the base for developing the beans. 'This is how many of our flavors are analyzed and created, especially those in the BeanBoozled and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans collections,' Perry explained.
When the company decided to introduce a new bean, Stinky Socks, to its BeanBoozled line, the process involved an unusual experiment. According to Perry, 'our flavor scientist aged his own socks in a sealed plastic bag for a few weeks.' The scientist then analyzed the socks in a gas chromatograph, which generated a detailed flavor profile, which was used to create the flavor for the bean.
During the initial testing of the Stinky Socks flavor, the scent was so intense that it affected everything the scientist wore. Perry shared, 'Even though she was only making a small batch, the scent permeated everything, and even her leather boots absorbed it, retaining the odor.' The scientist’s boots were ruined, marking the only instance Perry has encountered where a flavor caused such extreme damage. Thankfully, the flavor was later refined to be less overpowering.
Once a new jelly bean flavor is developed, it undergoes taste testing to ensure the flavor is just right. Feedback from these trials can sometimes come from the company’s owners. Perry recalls, 'Some of our owners grew up on farms and had experiences with rotten eggs.' When the Rotten Egg flavor was created, it went through normal taste testing channels, but it wasn’t until it reached Chairman of the Board Herm Rowland and President & CEO Lisa Rowland Brasher that the feedback was striking: 'Needs more rotten egg flavor,' they both insisted, recalling the strong scent of rotten eggs from their past.
Not all flavors are created in a straightforward manner, and sometimes the process takes unexpected turns. Perry explained that 'The Vomit flavor in Bertie Bott’s and Barf in BeanBoozled weren’t initially intended to be that way.' The original idea was to create a pizza-flavored jelly bean, but every attempt was rejected due to the cheese flavor being unappealing to the taste testers. This led to the creation of something far different: Vomit.
Though the pizza flavor was ultimately discarded, the failed attempt became the inspiration for the Vomit flavor. Perry recalled, 'When the time came to create a vomit jelly bean, one team member remembered the pizza flavor failure. After making a few adjustments, we ended up with the Vomit flavor.' This unexpected journey led to one of the brand’s most memorable (and disliked) flavors.
