All language subtitles for Inside.the.Factory.S08E02.Jelly.Beans.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-VTM_track3_[eng]

Oh, nice!
We've all got our favourites.

From lollies to liquorice, lots of
us enjoy the occasional sweet.

I like the red ones the best.

There you are - red ones!

From fizzy bottles
and flying saucers to humbugs

and bonbons,
you still can't beat a classic!

And one of the best-known is
the jelly bean.

So we've come to a factory
that specialises

in this very colourful candy.

I'm Gregg Wallace, known for having
a bit of a sweet tooth.

Whoa!

And tonight, I'm visiting Ireland,

to follow a tiny bean on an epic
journey,

where sweet ingredients...

This may be the best-smelling
factory I've ever visited!

..are transformed with colour
and flavour...

That tastes like gravy.

..in a mammoth, magical production.

We're going to polish the bean. I am
not shining every bean on my arm!

I'm Cherry Healey, and I'm hitting
the running track...

I'm ready to go, I'm psyched up!

..to see how sugar in our bodies
gives us get-up-and-go.

WHISTLE BLOWS

And I find out what links
jelly beans and make-up.

If you have
a little feel of it there.

It's weird, it feels brittle.

And historian
Ruth Goodman is discovering...

Little pear drops, please.

..how advances in jelly
technology...

Almost instant.

..helped spark a Victorian
craze for the wobbly stuff.

Oh, my goodness!

SHE LAUGHS

This factory makes over ten million
jelly beans every single day.

And we're going to reveal just
how they do it.

Welcome to Inside the Factory.

This is The Jelly Bean Factory
in Dublin, where they've been

making their rainbow sweet selection
since 1998.

Jelly beans have a soft centre
surrounded by a hard shell,

and although they're
a tiny sweet, making them

is a surprisingly
complicated business.

This factory produces them
in their millions, in 36 flavours,

from strawberry and sour lemon to
passion fruit and pina colada.

Today, I'm following the production

of tubes of their
gourmet jelly beans.

These gourmet tubes contain
a mix of all 36 flavours.

But every chewy jelly bean centre
starts the same way,

with a tanker of liquid sugar,
called glucose syrup,

arriving at the intake bay...

..where I'm meeting
factory manager, Aideen Haverty.

Aideen? Hey, Gregg. I'm just taking
a sample of our glucose syrup.

Is that the major component
in our jelly bean production?

We could not make a jelly bean
without this. How much glucose?

So 20 tonnes in this container. Wow!

How many, roughly, jelly beans
would 20 tonnes of glucose make?

We should get about 43 million
jelly beans from this container.

Love it. Loving it already.
What's your glucose made from?

It's made from corn

but the starch inside has been
converted into sugars.

A different type of corn or a corn
on the cob that we would recognise?

Corn on the cob that you
would recognise.

That's interesting, isn't it,

because it is naturally sweet
when you eat it? Yeah.

Glucose syrup is an ingredient
in all sorts of sweets.

It's usually made from corn,
also called maize,

or foodstuffs like wheat
or potatoes.

The outer coating of the corn
kernels is removed,

and the centre of the grain is
ground to make corn starch.

When the starch is heated
under pressure with water

and sulphur dioxide acid, it
breaks down to form glucose syrup.

It's quite thick and sticky
but that's not really,

really sugary-sweet.
That's because there's a certain

amount of water in there to keep it
moving so that we can pump

it into the factory
and on into the rest of the process.

More manageable? Yes.
Look, I would dearly love,

and I mean this, dearly love to find
out how you make jelly beans.

Come on, let's go.

The glucose syrup inside the tanker

is heated to 50 degrees
Celsius to keep it runny,

and it takes 35 minutes to pump it
all into the factory.

As the tap is opened,
my jelly beans' production begins.

A key component of glucose
syrup is glucose,

but Cherry's finding out it's not
just an ingredient in sweets,

it's also important in our bodies.

You might know the feeling.
You're out and about, when suddenly

you feel dizzy, heartbeat racing,
crashing energy levels.

SHE GASPS

Many of us know this
as low blood sugar.

I throw the term blood sugar
around like I actually know what I'm

talking about,
but what does it really mean?

Dr Gareth Wallis is
an exercise scientist

at the University of Birmingham.

What is blood sugar?

So, blood sugar relates to something
called glucose which

circulates in your bloodstream.

Glucose is a carbohydrate,
it's found in many foods

but also in the body.

When I think of carbohydrate,
I think of a potato, or pasta.

I don't necessarily think of sugar.

Well, potatoes and pastas do contain
carbohydrates,

but those carbohydrates
really are just glucose.

And it looks like this. Wow,
so that's in my blood right now?

Hopefully. So this is a glucose
molecule, and it consists of carbon,

oxygen and hydrogen atoms.

And why do we need them?

Well, we need carbohydrates,
and specifically, we need glucose,

cos it's a really important
energy source for the body.

So without that, what happens?

Without glucose,

we would not have enough energy
to be able to move or think.

Sometimes if I've done a lot of
exercise, I feel a bit faint-y.

What's going on there?

Yeah, it can be, cos you've got
low energy levels,

and that's probably related to
low blood sugar levels.

Our body gets nearly
all of the glucose it

needs from the foods we eat,
predominantly carbohydrates.

As it breaks down the food,
the glucose is released,

giving us energy.

How quickly our body extracts

the sugar we need
depends on what we eat.

What have we got here? OK, well,
these are all carbohydrates,

ranging from quite simple
carbohydrates really through

to complex carbohydrates.

Help yourself to a pre-workout
snack. Treat yourself, dive in!

Simple carbohydrates are found
in fruit juices and foods

containing refined sugars
like sweets.

And complex carbohydrates are

in foods like starchy vegetables,
wholegrains and wholemeal bread,

which generally contain the added
benefit of more fibre and nutrients.

They all contain glucose.

Here, the glucose is really what
we describe as free glucose,

whereas with complex carbohydrates,
the glucose is bound together.

So, some people took the simple
carbohydrates, some people took the

complex carbohydrates, what's going
on inside their bodies right now?

Those who had the simple
carbohydrates will get a very

quick release of glucose
into the bloodstream,

so a quick hit of energy,

whereas with the more complex
carbohydrates, that will take

longer to digest, there'll be a much
more slower release of energy.

This is because complex
carbohydrates contain longer

chains of sugar molecules
than simple carbohydrates.

These longer chains take longer
for the body to break down and

so provide longer-lasting energy.

Whereas simple, quickly broken-down
carbs are helpful for athletes

who need a quick burst of energy.

The increase in blood
glucose in the bloodstream causes

the release of a hormone
called insulin.

So this is insulin
on the surface of a cell.

It causes the glucose in the
bloodstream to go into the cells.

It's like a gatekeeper. Yeah.

Insulin is produced by the pancreas.

The quicker our body
releases glucose,

the quicker it produces insulin.

Once glucose is inside a cell,
it can be used for energy.

But if we don't need that energy
straight away, the body stores

the excess as glycogen in our liver
and muscles until we do need it.

So, that's how food affects
blood sugar levels,

what about exercise?

Right, I'm ready to go.
I'm psyched up!

Time for a quick high-intensity run.

Before we start running,

we're just going to take a blood
sugar reading. OK.

So can I have your finger, please?

We have got a reading, 5.6.

Before doing any exercise,
my blood contains 5.6 millimoles,

that's roughly 1g of glucose
per litre.

So how will a quick sprint
affect it?

WHISTLE BLOWS

SHE LAUGHS

Can I have your finger, please?

So your glucose levels have gone up.

It was 5.6 and now it's six.

Why, when I've just done a bit of
running, has my blood sugar gone up?

What happens when you do some
intense exercise is

the glucose that's
stored in the liver gets shunted

out into the bloodstream to provide
an energy source for your muscles.

Oh, I see.

So it's like my body's gone into
the pantry to get some extra energy?

Yeah. That's really interesting.

So I don't need to have eaten
anything for my blood sugar

to go up? Not in this case, no.

After a prolonged
period of moderate exercise,

glycogen levels in the muscles
and liver drop.

The liver releases less glucose
into the bloodstream, resulting

in low blood sugar levels, typically
giving a millimole reading between

three and four,

one of the reasons we can feel
fatigued during exercise.

Which is why it's important to
ensure you eat enough

carbohydrates for the exercise
you want to do.

Now I should probably
finish that run.

Back at the factory in Dublin,

the production line is churning out
millions of jelly beans,

and I can't wait to get going
with my batch.

So Aideen and I are heading from the
intake bay to the kitchen.

The first step in the complex
production process is creating those

chewy centres, known as the core.

Hey!

Oh, this may be the best-smelling
factory I've ever visited!

So this is where we turn
our glucose syrup into our jelly.

Here we have four stainless
steel mixing tanks.

Our first one is our premix tank,

and this is where we make the base
recipe for our jelly beans.

What's in that tank there?

Right now, it's our glucose
and our water, Gregg.

450 kilos of glucose syrup, enough
to make a million jelly beans,

is pumped through warmed
pipes to the premix tank,

along with 50 litres of water to
make the syrup easier to mix.

So what do you use to set
the liquid - do you use gelatine?

No, we don't use gelatine at all
in the factory, Gregg,

the only gelling agent
we use is starch.

Really? Yeah.

How many bags of starch are you
going to put into that tank

right now? Four of them, Gregg.
Shall I have a go? Have a go, Gregg.

I like these machines. Right...

The bag lifter acts like a giant
vacuum cleaner...

Like that?

..using 440 millibars of pressure
to easily lift

the 25-kilo bag into place.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

Or that's the theory.

HE LAUGHS

How do you make it go...?

Oh, it wants to stay that height!
I gotcha.

What is this starch made from?
Maize.

But the glucose came from maize,
right? It did.

And the starch comes from maize?
Same source.

So what's the difference
between the two?

We need to go into the science
a little bit on this, Gregg,

but it's about your different
types of carbohydrates.

So in glucose, you've
a very simple carbohydrate,

but in your starch, you have
a more complex carbohydrate.

The starch, if you break it down
in its simplest form, is glucose.

But if you don't,
and it retains its body,

it then becomes
our thickening agent.

Along with the starch, we're adding
250 kilos of extra-fine sugar.

Why do you add more sugar
if you've already got glucose?

It's all about the texture,
Gregg, that you want to achieve.

Depending on your level of glucose
or your level of sugar,

you get either a firmer bite
or a kind of softer bite.

And what are you looking for?
In between.

As well as texture, the sugar adds
extra sweetness to the mix.

Altogether, there's nearly a tonne
of ingredients in here.

It gets a good stir for 20
minutes in the first tank,

before passing into
a second holding tank.

And in here,

we just want to bring the
temperature up to about 80 degrees

and make sure all of our ingredients
are completely dissolved.

So you've got a clear liquid?
Exactly, yeah.

As the mix is heated, the starch
granules absorb water and swell.

And then what happens to them?
Then we're going to cook it.

So we're going to send it
through our jet cooker.

So what does that do to it?

So the jet cooker is literally
high-pressured steam.

As the mix is piped into
the jet cooker,

an injection of steam flash-heats

the liquid to 140 degrees Celsius.

The intense heat ruptures the
already-swollen starch granules,

releasing long chains
of glucose molecules,

which trap and slow down water
molecules in a process called

gelatinisation.
And as the mix cools down,

the chains move slower and bond with
each other, forming a gloopy jelly.

Can you show me it in its gloopy
stage?

Yeah, of course.

Our cooked mass is just dropping
down through this pipe,

and then we're just going to
let it drip down.

You can see where it's starting
to gel.

It's not unlike
when you're making jam

and you're waiting for it to set.
Exactly.

Shall we lick that? If you
want to burn your tongue, yeah.

All right. Yeah, fair point.

The factory's 36 flavours of jelly
beans include mango and kiwi,

but today, we're making a batch
of my favourite - raspberry.

To transform my plain core,
we need colour and flavour,

and for my red beans, that requires
some surprising ingredients.

You're going to make me
quite an exciting salad?

These are all the components that
come together to make

up our red colour.

Just these fruits and vegetables?

We all presume there's
lots of chemicals and stuff added.

That's not true?
No, Gregg, it's concentrates

of fruit and vegetables.

You don't make this yourself,
though, you buy this in, right?

We buy this from Germany.

The factory in Germany creates
a secret blend of colour

from fruit and vegetables to create

what they think is the right
tone for raspberry.

I have to say, that doesn't look
particularly red,

that is kind of royal, regal purple.

Shall I show you how it should
look on a white background, even?

So as you spread a red, you're
getting a nice deep-colour red.

All right, that's red,
but where's our raspberry flavour?

It's here, Gregg, natural flavour.
That's clear? Yep.

So we want to make red raspberry
jelly bean.

Wouldn't it just be easy to sling
a load of raspberries in? No, Gregg.

Why not? You would then get a
raspberry flavour,

I can guarantee it. You'd need...
Do you know how I know?

Cos I've eaten raspberries. You'd
need a huge amount of raspberries to

flavour 434 kilos of jelly.

Right, so what do you use
instead of raspberries?

That's our biggest secret,

and we're not going to tell you
what's in our flavouring.

Can I taste that? No, you can't.
At this stage,

it's highly concentrated.
If I can't taste it, can I smell it?

Yeah, you can. Wow, that is
so strong! It goes beyond raspberry.

It's almost like when you're
sniffing a brandy. Yeah.

So when do we add the colour
and the flavour?

We're going to do it now, Gregg,
but I need you to mix it first.

Oh, that's actually it? Yep.
That's the actual colour.

So do you mix it here? Yeah.

That's a bit like a cocktail bar.

Put all the colour in. Wow!

Wow, that's nice.

And this high-tech factory uses
this low-tech mixing method

for every batch of its beans.

Shake it up, Gregg.

SHE CHUCKLES

Do you want to have a go?

Come on, give it a shake.

SHE LAUGHS

OK, so now we're going to add
this into our tank.

Come on, this is brilliant,
this is absolutely brilliant!

It's pure Willy Wonka!

SHE LAUGHS

Now, Gregg.

I am surprised that this small
amount of flavour and colour...

Whoa! Whoa!
Look how red it is, Gregg.

It's like pouring raspberry
juice over a rice pudding.

Just 900 ml of flavour and
100 ml of colour are enough

to turn the plain mix into half
a tonne of resplendent raspberry,

enough to make more than 500,000
jelly bean centres,

Every batch is coloured by hand,
and gets a fruity

boost from 4 litres of concentrated
fruit juice...

Gloopy!

..a mix of apple,
pineapple and orange...

You know what that is?
That's "a gloopy kind of love".

..plus a litre of citric
acid as a flavour enhancer.

We've got our mix, we've got
our flavour, we've got our colour.

I am loving it so far!
Show me some more.

Let's close the hatch first, Gregg.

I'm an hour and a quarter into jelly
bean production, and my newly

created raspberry mix flows
along heated pipes to keep it runny.

Now we're heading from the
sweet-smelling kitchen

to the moulding line...

It's all of a sudden got a bit
dusty.

..the bustling heart of the factory,

where jelly bean centres are created
one flavour at a time.

HE LAUGHS

Brilliant!

My raspberry mix is pumped into this
ingenious heated hopper,

which shakes to stop it setting.

HE LAUGHS

Underneath are seven rows of
nozzles, 60 nozzles per row.

And in less than a second,
they each deposit 1g

of the mix into moulds below.

So you've poured it into those
little moulds there,

and that shapes them?

That gives them their bean centre
shape. I understand.

But hang on a minute, these moulds
look soft! What's all this?

This is moulding starch.

This moulding starch is going to
make your shape to hold the jelly.

Quite extraordinary.

To create these incredible moulds,
plastic trays are filled with

the same corn starch
we used to make my raspberry mix.

Then a press creates
the jelly bean shape.

Why do you have to use starch,

why don't you just have metal
trays or plastic trays?

Starch is a wonderful ingredient,
and at this stage, Gregg, what it

does is, it's going to take water
out of the jelly bean centre.

How does it get water
out of the jelly?

Certain ingredients are hygroscopic,
where they want to take water in.

That's their job.

By absorbing water, the starch makes
the core not gooey but chewy!

At this stage, our jelly
is 76%-solid.

For us to bring it to the
next stage,

we need to get those solids to 86.5,
so we need to get water out.

We're ready now to send them
to the stove.

This is a turning
point for my jelly bean centres.

So far, the mix has been kept runny
so it will flow,

but now it's time for these little
sweets to harden up.

How long are they in the stove?

36 hours on heating
and then into a cooling cycle.

Inside the five drying rooms,

the circulating air is heated to 65
degrees Celsius,

and over a day and a half,

the starch slowly absorbs
some of the water from the cores.

Then the temperature is gradually
lowered to 30 degrees.

It's a lot of care and attention
for such a small bean.

And more than four
days into production,

the trays are tipped into a rotating
drum to demould the cores.

So what we have there is
a raspberry turnover.

My de-moulded cores travel on
through a steamer

that gently heats them just enough
to make them sticky,

before passing through another
rotating drum

where they're coated in sugar.

Now, there's a pretty thing.

It's got a lovely, soft,
raspberry flavour.

Not too sweet, proper raspberry.
But its texture's wrong,

it's soft, it's not got
a hard outside.

So we now have to bring it to the
next stage of the process.

And that's where I'm going next,
is it?

This is jelly bean-making on an
industrial scale,

but there was a time when families
across the nation were caught up

in a culinary craze for moulding
their own jellies at home,

as Ruth's been discovering.

The early 19th century was a time
of great disparity between the rich

and the poor when it comes to food.

There were certain flavours and
ingredients that you would only get

to savour if you were invited to
a party somewhere like this!

Owners of grand homes like
Harewood House

used food to demonstrate their
status.

One of these, for example,
could, in around 1800, set you back

the equivalent of thousands
of pounds in today's money.

Another food that would really
mark you out as being

a member of the elite was jelly.

Jelly was set with gelatine,

extracted from animal skin
and bones.

It was a laborious process,
and only the grandest houses

had enough kitchen staff to
devote the time to make it.

But, in 1839, the world of jelly
was transformed.

To find out how, I'm meeting food
historian, Ivan Day.

Cor, this looks interesting!

Well, I thought we'd explore an
amazing moment in the history

of British food, when George Nelson

got a patent for making instant
gelatine.

Nelson was an industrial
chemist from Warwick, and invented

a method of extracting gelatine
from animal bones using chemicals.

It was then set
and sold in flavourless sheets.

All of a sudden,
making jelly at home was easy.

"Soak 1 oz of opaque gelatine
in a half a pint of cold water.

"Add the same quantity
of boiling water."

And that's it, almost instant.
It's a revolution.

So, suddenly, everyone can do this.

The second jelly revolution
came with the mass production of

cheap jelly moulds in the factories
and potteries of Victorian England.

And literally millions of them

were made in the second
half of the 19th century.

So would these have been bought by
the working classes? Not very many.

They had better things to do
with their wages,

which were really low,
than make frivolous jellies.

So it's more of a middle-class
thing,

the sort of professional classes?
Yeah.

We're going to make a jelly using

one of these moulds that was
an affordable one.

Having been the preserve of the rich
for so long, shapely jellies

were available to burgeoning
upwardly mobile Victorians.

We're using the modern equivalent
of George Nelson's instant gelatine.

Milk's added, along with rose water
for flavour,

and red food colouring.

Right, here we go.

So we've got, like, the ceramic
ones. What about the metal ones?

I mean, presumably,
they were a lot more expensive?

Yeah, the copper ones were.

It's Victorian engineering.

You start to get these incredible
pneumatic presses

where the operator can put
a flat sheet of copper,

and this big, heavy press pushes

down on the hot sheet of copper

and instantly moulds it into that.

And designers were creating
even more elaborate

moulds for use in upper-class homes.

This is a Belgrave mould.

You've got a set of liners
and you end up with a perfect spiral

cavity, which you then can fill
with other jelly colours.

Shall we have a go?

I've already filled the mould

with the clear jelly.

We're now going to very carefully

pour in red jelly.

Making jelly in these expensive
moulds

was fiddly and time-consuming,

so only houses with skilled kitchen
staff could tackle them.

Once again, jelly was
a way for the rich to show off.

You can't hurry any of this,
can you?

In the meantime, though, I think
it'd be a good fun

to demould this guy here.

I've got to invert it over,
which is a tricky job, OK?

SHE CHUCKLES

So the reveal, you just lift...

Oh! It's quite amazing,

but you haven't actually seen
it perform yet.

SHE CHUCKLES

Oh, my goodness!

SHE LAUGHS

Have a go, go on.

Can you imagine the parties that
must have been centred around this?

You know, it's just fantastic,
isn't it, really?

I doubt the smart Belgrave
jelly will be so outrageous,

but here goes.

Wow!

HE LAUGHS

Look at that! Wobbles so very
marvellously.

We need to see these in a proper
setting, you know.

In the 19th century, a grand dinner
in a big house

could consist of up to eight
courses.

This is a bit more like it.

Jellies were served to re-stimulate

the appetite before the rich
dessert dishes.

Shall we try them? Yeah.

Light. It's just sort of almost
like eating scent.

I know jellies have really fallen
out of favour,

well, at least with adults,

but you can really see

why it is that the Victorians were
so keen on them.

I mean, they're a great bit of fun,

and what a great way to
show off at a party. Absolutely.

Back in Dublin, my jelly bean cores
have rested for two days to

allow the sugar surrounding them
to set.

But they're naked beans,
missing their shells.

To find out what happens next,

I'm following them
from the moulding line

to the intriguingly
named engrossing room,

where I'm meeting Ryan Travers.

All right, Gregg,
welcome to the engrossing room.

What does that mean - engrossing?
This is where we make the shell of

the jelly bean. We have the centre,
so now we're going to add a shell.

All right, we're going to surround
it? We're going to surround it.

In these? In these. This looks to me

like a very big,
fruity-smelling laundrette.

These 15 splendid
machines are called pans.

Each one holds a different-flavoured
bean.

These are blueberry,

there's lemon and lime,

and these are, mm, exotic mango.

Load these into the pan.

Just throw them in?
One tray at a time, yeah?

I'm cracking on with
my raspberry flavour.

Do you know how many
beans we've got in each tray?

Not in each tray,

but there's roughly 275,000 beans
going into each pan.

CHUCKLES: That's lovely.
That is just lovely.

Is that it, boss?
That's it. Now what?

Now, OK, so here's your ingredients.

Oh, that's a lot, innit?
It IS a lot.

On Ryan's trolleys are 12 litres
of the same raspberry-flavoured

syrup I used to flavour the cores,

plus great, big bags of sugar.

Has that all got to go in? All of
it. This will be yours for the day,

and this will be my mine.
For the day?

I'll get through this in about 20
minutes, son.

We'll see. Pan on.

And now just pour that slowly,
and cover as many beans

as you can as slow as you can.

Cover as many beans as you can?
As slowly as you can.

First job, pour the raspberry syrup
onto the beans' chewy cores.

This sticks to the sugar
they were dusted in

when they were unmoulded, creating
the first layer of the shell.

Oh, this is marvellous.
Look at that!

Everything's coming up raspberries.

I feel like I'm looking at this
through pink-tainted glasses.

I love this! This is like magic!

Maybe speed up a little bit, Gregg.

You told me to do it
as slow as I can!

I don't think you appreciate just
how slowly I can work, Ryan!

THEY LAUGH

The next layer of the shell is
formed from extra-fine sugar,

and Ryan judges by eye
when it's time to add it.

If you have a look,
take them with your hand,

you can't see much sugar on them
now. They're fairly wet.

As they're wet, you know it's going
to start adding some sugar.

So you're going to take this
and add two scoops into this,

and I'm going to do
the same on this.

I'm adding 25 kilos of sugar to the
pan, which absorbs the colour

and flavour of the raspberry syrup.

Now we can see the sugar on them.

And what you're waiting for is
that sugar to sink in.

As the sugar coats the bean on the
surface it fills in all the gaps,

and that's going to create
the shell. So that fine sugar

is going through the natural cracks
in the beans? Yes, that's it.

As the beans tumble in the pans,
the sugar crystals on the surface

become packed together to form
a smooth shell.

Eventually, they will dry out.

When they dry out, pour more
syrup on them to keep them wet.

It just keeps building up?
That creates the shell then.

So as this goes in, the shell
will just keep building

and building and building
from the core. Wow!

It's a slow, skilful process,

and Ryan and his fellow expert
engrossers do everything by eye.

When you have a look,
if you don't see sugar, add sugar.

So as soon as you can't see
white granulated

sugar on the outside of your bean,
it's time for some more?

You'll know it's time to add some
sugar in.

Wahey!

Wrist action, son,
good wrist action.

It's not unlike making a risotto,
a little bit at a time,

a little bit at a time. Yeah.

They look ready to go, yeah?
And that's the first layer done.

It takes 40 minutes for the sugar
to absorb the syrup.

When sugar crystals begin to
appear on the outside of the bean,

it's time for the next layer
of the shell.

More syrup, then more sugar.

The whole process is repeated again

until we've got three
layers of sugar and syrup.

It takes two hours before the beans
meet Ryan's approval.

These are happy beans. Yeah?
If you had unhappy beans,

they'd all be stuck to the back,
they wouldn't run as smooth.

These are happy beans.
I'm a happy bean! I can tell.

This is a big kid's playtime,
isn't it, this? It is indeed.

Right, what's next, boss? All right,

now we're going to move on
to add icing sugar.

This powdered sugar is much
finer than the sugar

we used to engross the beans.

What this will do now is,
it'll smooth the bean out,

give them a smooth shell at the end.

Are you sure that's right?
You've ruined them!

You're going to sort them out
on the next stage, down that way.

Cheers, mate.

Two hours to make my beans shiny,
and now he's gone and made them

dull again! Who'd have thought jelly
beans would be so complicated?

Once the beans have their icing
sugar coating,

they're tipped into trays and left
for another three whole days to dry.

Then they're moved
to the polishing room,

where they've got some very
similar-looking pans.

I'm meeting Marek Marciniack...

Good to meet you.

..who's going to give my beans
the finishing touch.

These beans are not shiny at all.
In fact, they look downright dull!

Yes, not yet, but we are going to
polish the beans.

Ha-ha-ha!

You are going to polish the beans?
Yes, indeed.

How do you polish the bean?
We have a couple of ingredients

we're going to apply on the product,
so that at the end of the process,

the product will be really shiny
and will be polished.

First, they get another
coating of the raspberry syrup.

What is the syrup for?

The syrup will remove all the icing
sugar from that bean.

But you need to do that really
slowly. Do I do the whole jug?

No, just a quarter.

And that is enough?

That will be more than enough.

The warm sugar syrup dissolves
the icing sugar, creating

the final layer of the shell,
so Marek can begin polishing.

He uses three different products
to create the perfect polish,

starting with beeswax.

And what does the beeswax do?

So it's really sticky

and the beeswax will cover any
imperfections in the shell.

Don't worry about imperfections, I
made those. All right. They're fine.

And we're going to have to do
that by the hand.

Oh! Can I do that? You can.

Take a small scoop and try to and
rub into the pan.

No way? Yes, by hand!

More!

Edible beeswax is very soft,
so it takes just a tiny amount

to quickly and efficiently give
the first wax coating to my beans.

And the friction of the beans

rubbing against each other begins
the polishing process.

You can see the beans are a bit
shiny, but still not perfect.

So you can rub the beans.
Just touch it, by the clothes.

And see the shine, it's appearing.

I am not shining every bean
on my arm!

MAREK LAUGHS

The next polishing product
is carnauba wax.

I've used it to polish my car,
but it also comes in edible form.

The carnauba wax will cover

the tiny spots that the sugar
creates during the process.

At the end, it will make the product
really smooth and nice.

Carnauba wax is made by melting

the wax coating on the leaves
of the Brazilian carnauba palm tree.

It's harder than beeswax
so it takes longer to add the second

coating to the beans...

Hard work for your arm!

..but it gives a better gloss
finish than the beeswax.

To seal the wax layers,
we're using confectionery glaze.

Pour it really, really
slowly on the top.

Just try to spread it out.

This glaze is another
name for shellac,

made from the secretion
of an insect called the lac beetle.

I feel like I'm spraying it
with holy water!

It's used in sweet-making,

baking, and even coats pills to make
them easier to swallow.

Look at that!

Shiny beans! You become the
really good polishing operator!

Thank you very much!

It'll take yet another day

for the shiny shells
of my jelly beans to dry.

Look at that for a contrast!
New bean, "has" bean.

I'm very happy!

Thank you much!

Carnauba wax is one of the key
ingredients in giving the

beans their shiny finish. It's used
in a lot of other products as well.

And one of them gives our Cherry
a shiny finish, too.

Brits spend more than £150,000,000

on lipstick every year.

Given the amount of food,
drink and hot air that passes

through my lips, I'm
amazed that this stuff stays put.

But what goes into lipstick to
make it, well, stick?

24 miles from The Jelly
Bean Factory in Dublin

is cosmetics company, Oriflame.

They produce 12 million lipsticks
a year, in dozens of colours.

A key ingredient is the wax
used on Gregg's jelly beans.

To find out how it could make my
perfect lipstick, I'm meeting

formulation manager, Leonie Soffe.

I want the colour to be really bold
and vibrant,

and I want it to be long-lasting.

Let's take a look at the raw
materials that go into a lipstick.

Carnauba wax has been used for many
years in lipstick formulations,

so it gives the lipstick
a very good, rigid structure.

It gives gloss to
a lipstick as well.

If you have a little feel of it
there, you'll feel it's...

It's weird, I would have thought it

would have felt more waxy. Yeah?

It doesn't at all,
it feels brittle.

Yeah, and that's due to the high
melting point that it has.

The high melting point of waxes
like carnauba helps lipstick

stay on the lips.

And the average 4 gram lipstick
could contain 30% waxes,

5% being carnauba.

Could you have a lipstick
just made of wax?

No, because it's just not going to
feel nice on the skin

because the melting
points are all too high.

So what we need to add
into the waxes then is what

we call emollient oils.

Now, emollients are deeply
nourishing to the skin

and they have a really nice texture.

Emollient is a posh
name for moisturiser.

Castor oil is a very traditional
emollient that we use.

Where does castor oil come from?
It comes from a castor oil seed.

It's got that lovely rich, creamy
feel... Yeah. That texture.

But you really wanted a long-lasting
lipstick, and castor oil

isn't really a very long-lasting
emollient. We need something

that isn't as thick,
isn't as creamy.

So, this is what we would use more
in long-lasting lipsticks.

This is a synthetic emollient.
It's not as creamy

so it will stay on the lips
for longer.

So, to give my lipstick its
soft staying power

we need both waxes
and a synthetic emollient.

A lipstick can contain
up to 30 ingredients -

including fragrance
and even sunscreen.

Now we need to get this melted. OK.

It takes ten minutes at 85 degrees
Celsius to melt the raw ingredients

but my new lipstick's
missing something.

It is a little bit beige.

OK, well, this is where the fun
part happens because this

is where we get to add the pigments
that give the lipstick the colour.

We use iron oxides that
are naturally-occurring.

Iron oxide that comes from
the earth? Absolutely.

Then that's refined and ground down.

These are more synthetic pigments.
They tend to have a brighter,

more vivid colour and tone.

There's less than half a gram of
pigment in an average lipstick.

So, you can already see that the
waxes are starting to solidify

because we've taken it
off the heat. Yeah.

So now we're ready to pour.

That's it. Keep going.
Keep going. Keep going.

Why so fast?
Because if you do it slowly

it won't give a nice smooth finish.

So what we do is we top up
the mould.

And this just make sure that we've
got a really strong lipstick bullet.

You call it a bullet?
Yeah. It's lipstick bullets.

It's every user's secret weapon.
Exactly.

We've been colouring our lips
for millennia

but the modern swivel-up
lipstick was only

invented in America in 1923.

After 15 minutes cooling
at zero degrees Celsius

I can't wait to see the new addition
to my make-up arsenal.

Oh, look!

That's a gorgeous colour.
That's deep and rich.

Ta-da!

Oh, wow.

So, the key to my long-lasting
lipstick is more carnauba wax

and synthetic emollient in the mix.

It's got staying power

and the colour is just beautiful.

That is my long-lasting
lipstick of dreams.

Thank you so much. Try it on.
Yes, please!

Are you happy?
It does make me feel good.

All I need now is to
test its staying power.

Back at the factory,
it's been ten days

since starting production on my
fabulous raspberry jelly beans.

For such a simple looking sweet,

it's been a long
and complicated journey.

Now dry, half a million of my beans
are heading from polishing...

..to mixing.

Ho-ho-hooo! Yes!

And I can't help thinking that's
the sweet smell of success.

Look at that!

It's more full of beans than I am.

I'm meeting mixing operator
Darragh O'Driscoll.

Darragh, good to meet you. You too.

Mate, this is a good place, isn't
it? Oh, yeah. What goes on?

This is where we store
and mix the jelly beans.

In this room we'd have 87.5 million

beans at any given time.

GREGG LAUGHS

Darragh, I'm sorry.
You shouldn't know that.

I shouldn't,
but it's something I know.

That makes you undoubtedly
a bean anorak.

Yep, unfortunately.

Each of the 36 varieties of beans

is kept in a designated lane -

so they can tell if any
flavour is running low.

Got lots of my raspberry ones!

Do you have a favourite flavour?

If I was to pick one
it'd be salted caramel, probably.

Are there any
flavours you don't like?

Um, we do have some
discontinued beans.

You can try some if you want. Ha-ha!

See if you can guess the flavour.
Really?! Yep.

That tastes like gravy.
LAUGHING: Yeah. What is it?

Gravy.
Is it gravy? Mate, that is...

Who makes a gravy sweet?!

What's next, armpit?!

Oh, it's very bitter. It tastes
a little bit like

sage and onion stuffing.
What's that one?

That's onion.
No! Did you honestly make these?

These are ones we used to produce
but we discontinued. Why?

They weren't as popular.

Listen, I've done 18 years
of MasterChef

and this is probably the worst
taste experience in my life.

My mouth is now alive with
unusual flavours.

Can I taste some of my raspberry?

Course you can.

Mmm...

Something sweet and fruity. Better.

Phwoar!

That's better!

Thankfully, none of those
horrendous flavours are going

into my gourmet tubes.

But I am going to need a combination
of all 36 colourful beans.

So, how do you get a perfect mix?

We pick them as individual flavours,
so then we have to put them on

the table and then the machine
will mix them together

so they're properly mixed.
Can I lend a hand?

Of course you can.
If you want to take this tray here

we're going to load it on this.
Just tip it in? Yeah, in it goes.

Ha!

Ha-ha! I'm good at this.

Coming through!

Whoa, look at the colours.

That is really attractive.

Really quite pretty,
almost psychedelic.

And it changes colour
with every single tray.

Yeah, as you keep loading it.

It's an edible kaleidoscope.

It takes 15 minutes to
unload 108 trays -

each containing 9,090 beans.

Last one!

Three trays of every flavour -
enough to make 12,000 tubes.

I'll go around to the front
and start the machine

and then I'll get you to release
the beans from here.

SHOUTS: Release the beans!

Gregg Wallace, what could go wrong?
Nothing.

That's good for you to release now.
Right. Release the beans!

Right, that one won't come out.

Whoa!

Whoaaaaa!

Oh...

Not quite as exciting as
I thought it was going to be,

to be honest, mate.

But, at the flick of a switch...

From the mixing table, a ton of
beans fall onto a conveyor belt

which carries them to a grader -

a giant spinning mesh drum which
mixes all the flavours together.

Now, who wouldn't find joy in this?

Perfect beans fall through the mesh.

Any wonky ones are used as pig food.

Lucky porkers!

Now we've picked our flavours
and mixed them together -

that reminds me of
something very special.

As a little kid,

it didn't get more exciting
than choosing my own sweets.

I remember going to
Rye Lane, Peckham

to get my weekly pick 'n' mix.

Ruth's been finding out
where this craze began.

RUTH: In 1945, six long years
of war finally came to an end.

But food was still scarce -
and rationed.

And unfortunately for the children
of Britain, that meant sweets too.

The rationing of these treats would
continue for a further EIGHT years.

The only way to get your hands on a
sherbet lemon or a raspberry drop

was one of these - a ration book.

Hello! Little pear drops, please.

Pear drops. According to my ration
book, it says here that

I can have 8 oz a month,

which is...three pear drops per day.

Sweet rationing finally
ended in 1953

to the delight of a
generation of children.

But even then
they weren't freely available

but were stored
safely behind the counter.

Customers would ask the shopkeeper
for a mix of their favourites

from the sweets on offer.

But in the 1950s,

a high street chain introduced
a brand-new shopping experience.

To find out how it affected
sweet lovers

I've come to the Milestones
Living History Museum to meet

confectionary historian
Alex Hutchinson.

There was a department store
called Woolworths who changed

everything in Great Britain.
They brought in self-service.

Instead of going to the counter
and asking each individual

salesperson in each department to
serve you, you could serve yourself.

From the 1950s, they brought in
pre-packaged sweets.

You had to have a pre-weighed,
pre-decided assortment

and those might not
be your favourites.

But shoppers wanted the option
of customising their selection,

so Woolworths invented a new style
of self-service sweet counter

- the pick 'n' mix!

When you're a kid, that whole being
allowed to choose, being free

to choose was an exciting thing.

Particularly if you're going
to try something new

and you're not sure whether
you're going to like it or not.

In the years following the war,
many new varieties of sweets

like these joined old favourites,
like liquorice allsorts.

I don't like the round yellow ones.
I like the round pink ones.

And you have to have a white mouse.

I mean, I think that's compulsory,
isn't it? Oh, I love those.

RUTH LAUGHS

In the '50s, pocket money
averaged 6p a week -

equivalent to around 60p today.

So, how much was
a quarter of sweets then?

In 1958, the cheapest sweets,
5p a quarter.

So that'd be pretty much your entire
week's pocket money.

And even if you couldn't have

a bag of pick 'n' mix every week,

it's still better than wartime.

Post-war, new factories were built
specialising in cheap sweets

aimed at the pocket money market.

Including favourites
like liquorice pipes

and jelly tots.

So, here we have our 5p
assortment from Woolworths.

This isn't about making
quality sweets.

This is about making
cheerful, cheap,

fun sweets.

The best example of a sweet
made for a pick 'n' mix

is the white chocolate mouse,
which doesn't contain

any chocolate. There's no cocoa
butter in the white chocolate mouse.

It's a mixture of fats and
milk powder, sugar,

maybe a little bit of corn starch
in there, but no chocolate,

because chocolate's a really
expensive ingredient.

But it's still wonderful.

It's not chocolate
but it's still my favourite.

So if this is the cheapest end of
the market, what else was available?

Well, toffees, they'd have
been about 7p a quarter.

And chocolates like these,
10p a quarter.

So you had three different
tiers of pick 'n' mix.

Right, sort of all laid out in
different stands in the shop?

You couldn't mix your
5p pick 'n' mix

with your 10p pick 'n' mix.

They were very much separate.

But these are still great
and I still love them.

So I suppose the proof of the
pudding is always in the eating.

What actually sold best?

Of course the children would
go for this assortment.

It was cheap, it was bright.

Of course it was the 5p assortment.

All of this was seen as just
a wonderful treat for children

and children themselves will have
seen this abundance of colour

and variety, flavour
and excitement.

And it must've just been,
after all those years of war

and privation, so exciting.

Here at the Jelly Bean Factory
in Dublin

there's absolutely no rationing.

Ten days into production of
these complex little sweets,

and I'm following a giant
hopper of 36 vibrant

colours and flavours from mixing...

..to packing.

Shazam!

I'm meeting packing room
line leader Monica Kostecka.

Hi, Gregg! Nice to meet you.

HE LAUGHS

What a lovely greeting!

How are you?
I'm good. Can I help you?

Yes, of course.
You can open the hopper.

Sure. But make sure that the beans
not fall on the floor.

So just open a little bit?
Yeah, just a little. Otherwise...

If not all the beans will be
on the floor. Trust me.

Yeah, OK.

I can see my reputation precedes me!

Little more. Little more?
Yeah, yeah.

Little more, little more.

Little bit more.

That's OK, it's perfect.
You can just leave that.

So, what happens here, please?

The beans go to elevator
to weighing machine.

I've seen those cups before
at other factories.

They give you exactly the right
weight. What weight do you want?

90 grams.

The beans tumble from the hopper
into 50 little buckets

at a rate of 100g
every 1.2 seconds.

The "bucket elevator" then carries
them up to a multi-head weigher

where ten weigh heads are
programmed to measure out exactly

90g of beans into a chute which
funnels them to the packing line.

Here, the beans fall into the tubes,

the lids are fitted,

and secured by a tapper.

Next the tubes pass to the sleever

to be wrapped in plastic film.

Then through the heat sealer

which melts and secures the seal.

The tubes travel to the
end of the line

where they're packed by hand into
cases ready for dispatch -

which is the final stop on
my jelly bean journey.

Hey. I've obviously found dispatch.
Are you Mick? I am indeed.

Mick Gill is the factory's
warehouse team leader.

Listen, I'm going to ask
you about numbers.

Right. Right.
How many tubes in a case, please?

24 tubes per case.

How many cases on a pallet? 300.

HE CHUCKLES

And how many pallets
can you get on a truck?

26.

Mick may be chilled about
these massive numbers,

but I've never made such a big
batch of anything.

On that truck there's over
15 million individual beans -

and more than 72,000 tubes
are sold every week.

Is that it? Last pallet?

Yes, that's it.
It's ready to go now.

Mick, honestly,
this has been one of the most fun,

enjoyable factories I've ever
visited. Well done. Thank you.

Nearly ten and a half days after
the production clock began

15 million tiny colourful bursts

of flavour are finally

heading out of the factory.

40% of the jelly beans are sent
to stores across the UK.

But these tiny candies have fans

right across the world -

from Canada to Australia.

There may be millions of them,
but every single one of these

colourful beans has been through the
most incredibly detailed process.

From starch-made moulds...

..to sugar-spun shells.

These jellybeans really do
get the star treatment,

and I'm just giving my ones
a little bit of extra polish.

The factory has come a long way

since its first
early assembly lines.

But how did we get from there
to where we are today?

Explore the history
and future of the factory

in an interactive timeline.

Go to...

..and follow the links to
The Open University.