Trying to save some money on buying Splenda packets by buying sucralose powder and mixing with water. This works great and is waaaay cheaper – 10x cheaper than buying the packets!
However, after two weeks, I noticed my solution, which I keep in an eye-dropper bottle, developed fungus floaties and so I had to pour the contents of the bottle down the drain.
Can anyone recommend a method of preventing things from growing inside my solution? Is there something people use for this sort of issue? Some kind of available food preservative? Obviously, whatever the solution turns out to be, it has to be safe for human consumption.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Best Answer
The easiest and best solution for the problem is to not dissolve it into water in the first place. Powdered sweetener keeps indefinitely. Dissolved sweetener falls smack in the middle of FAT TOM, so you have converted a shelf stable food into an unstable one.
Assuming that you want to keep it at room temperature, there is not that much you can do. You can reduce the water, but I don't know enough about the solubility of sucralose, it is possible that it is still susceptible to mold at the saturation point, just like sugar.
You could try acidifying it sufficiently to stop the mold from growing. But then it will taste much less sweet, so you will have to add a much larger amount to your drink, several time the amount you normally use. Alternatively, you can acidify it less and use sodium benzoate as a preservative. It is normally used for industrially produced food, so I cannot suggest the correct ratios of acid to sucralose to sodium benzoate. But note that simply mixing them in any old way won't give you a safe product, you may need industrial recipes for correct usage.