So, I’ve always had a bit of a thing for black jelly beans. You either love ’em or you chuck ’em, no in-between, right? For me, it’s always been love. But the other day, it hit me – what actually goes into these things? I mean, what makes them black and taste like that? It wasn’t just a passing thought; I actually decided to roll up my sleeves and find out.
First thing I did, obviously, was grab a bag. You know, the regular kind you see in any store. Flipped it over, did the whole squinty-eye thing at the ingredients list. The print is always ridiculously small on those things. Sugar, corn syrup, modified food starch – okay, that’s your basic candy guts. No shocker there. I kinda figured that much.
Then, boom, licorice extract. Well, no kidding. That’s the main event for the flavor. Sometimes you hear folks talk about anise, and yeah, often “natural and artificial flavors” is where they hide that. But it’s not always just one simple thing. It got way more interesting when I started checking out a few different brands, not just the one I had.
The color part, man, that really threw me for a loop. How do they get that super dark black? I saw caramel color on some bags, which, yeah, that makes sense for a dark color. But then I’d see stuff like Blue 1 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake. Hold on a sec. Are they mixing a whole bunch of colors to get black? Seemed like a weird way to go about it. It’s not like they just pour in “black dye #1”. Some of the fancier brands might use something like vegetable carbon, but the everyday cheap ones? It’s often a cocktail of colors. Took me a bit of just staring at labels and then looking stuff up online to get my head around that.
I also kept seeing beeswax or carnauba wax. That’s for the shiny coating, apparently, and to stop them from turning into one giant jelly bean blob. Fair enough. Some also list confectioner’s glaze. I’ve heard stories about that stuff, that it can sometimes be made from, uh, insect secretions. Yeah, shellac. Kind of a weird thought when you’re about to eat it, but hey, it’s common in a lot of candies for that shine.
So, what did I actually figure out after all that?
Well, after staring at a bunch of bags and doing some quick searches for ingredients I didn’t recognize, here’s the lowdown:
- The main body is pretty much what you’d expect: sugar, corn syrup, and some kind of starch to make them chewy.
- That classic flavor mostly comes from licorice extract, but “natural and artificial flavors” can include stuff like anise oil too.
- Getting them black is often a mix of various food colorings like Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5/6, or sometimes caramel color. It’s not always just one thing.
- And they use waxes like carnauba wax or beeswax, plus that confectioner’s glaze, to make ’em shiny and keep them separated.
It wasn’t like uncovering some massive conspiracy, you know? But it was genuinely interesting to see it’s not just “licorice and black stuff.” There’s a whole science experiment in each little bean. How did I even get started on this? Funny story, actually. My kid sister was over, grabbed a black jelly bean, made a face, and asked me, “What makes these so weird and black anyway?” And I just stood there. Didn’t have a clue beyond “uh, licorice?” So, I told her I’d find out. Couldn’t let her think I didn’t know everything, right? So, yeah, that’s how I spent an afternoon becoming a pseudo-expert on black jelly bean guts. Doesn’t change how I feel about them – still love ’em. Just a bit more informed now, I guess.
