The jelly bean is colourful, but its beginnings are a bit of a grey area. It's believed that this bean's jelly centre dates back to biblical times and Turkish delight. Many centuries later, the outer shell was added and the jelly bean was on its way to sweet success. To make jelly beans, liquid sugar is heated in a kettle to about 175 degrees Celsius.
Glucose is added, and then starch. An agitating device mixes it all together. Elsewhere in the factory, starch spills out of a drum onto large trays.
A leveller moves back and forth to even out the starch. The trays then move forward and a brush knocks off the excess to be recycled. A moulding board now presses down into the starch.
It makes 756 jelly bean impressions per tray. The impressions in the starch will serve as moulds for the jelly bean centres. Nozzles inject the sugar and starch mix cooked in the kettle into the starch moulds. This system can make almost a million jelly bean centres every hour. Next, the conveyor belt takes the jellybean centres to the drying room, where they stay for 24 hours.
This solidifies them and they become chewier. Arms flip the trays of centres and starch and dump them into a drum that will separate them. When the trays flip back, they're refilled with starch and the moulding process begins again.
Meanwhile, the dried jelly bean centres, now separated from the starch, tumble onto a wire mesh conveyor system. It transports them to a steam belt which dampens them. This readies them for the next step, sugar coating. The jelly bean centres go into a sander drum that tosses them around, while nozzles spray them with sugar.
In another part of the factory, liquid sugar flows out of a kettle into a tub. Blue food colouring is added to the syrup. This mix, called the engrossing syrup, is added along with some flavouring to the jelly bean centres as they tumble around in a tilted spinning pan.
Sugar is added to the sticky blue mixture. This process is repeated four times in order to build up a coating around the gummy centre. The next day, when the beans have hardened, hot syrup is added and the beans are tossed around again. This polishes the jelly beans.
There's a lot of sweet stuff here. 124,000 jelly beans in each pan. A little wax is added. Nice!
And as the pan spins, the beans rub against each other, distributing the wax. This adds gloss to the polish. Then the pan stops spinning and the jelly beans air dry for 24 hours to allow the glaze to set. After three and a half days, this big batch of jelly beans is ready. They move in a multicoloured mass along a series of conveyors.
They fall into a scale system that divides them into portions. Then a trap door opens and they drop down a chute to the packaging department. Once they're in the bag, the jelly beans are ready to sweeten your day.