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OpenCola

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Re: OpenCola

#101

Post by crazygringo »

lock-the-spock wrote: post #100
crazygringo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No artificial flavors are listed. So whether there is kola nut or not, there isn't any replacement that is artificial: INGREDIENTS: CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CARAMEL COLOR, PHOSPHORIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS, CAFFEINE. https://us.coca-cola.com/products/coca-cola/original

This only means the flavours are derived from natural products like plants, bark, meat, milk, bone, etc. So not fully synthetic flavours (which are often from oil/gas), but still these will not be anything you would ever guess or recognise. Companies that use actual 'natural' flavours usually list them in the ingredientsas consumers take these as signals of the product being 'healthy' (e.g. fruit concentrates like ap…

But "natural flavors" are the entirety of what Coca-Cola uses for flavoring, including real vanilla and cinnamon and all the rest. Whether it uses actual kola nut or not, there's no way of knowing.

Things like fruit concentrates can't be listed as natural flavors, because they're still the actual full fruit.

Re: OpenCola

#102

Post by copperx »

wackget wrote: post #30

OpenCola always gets passed around but for me it just represents the tip of a very frustrating iceberg. There are tons of flavor formulations I'd love to know - not because I'm a chemist or a food scientist but just out of sheer curiosity and the desire to learn how stuff is made. I wish people would research other flavors, e.g.: * Bubblegum * Tutti Fruitti * Irn-Bru

I naively thought that mass spectrometry would make it easy to know what's in a secret formula.

I wonder why that's not the case.

Re: OpenCola

#103

Post by copperx »

dbbolton wrote: post #32

Unless you have access to coca leaves, your recipe is likely to taste like generic cola. Coca-Cola has special privileges to import raw coca leaves. They extract the cocaine (which is then sold for pharmaceutical use). The mostly-cocaine free extract is then used to flavor their cola. AFAIK Coca-Cola is the only entity in the US allowed to do this, so it is unsurprising that other cola brands taste significantly diff…

Pepsi doesn't taste the same, but it's a damn good recipe. They don't use coca leaves, right?

Re: OpenCola

#104

Post by Tanoc »

wackget wrote: post #30

OpenCola always gets passed around but for me it just represents the tip of a very frustrating iceberg. There are tons of flavor formulations I'd love to know - not because I'm a chemist or a food scientist but just out of sheer curiosity and the desire to learn how stuff is made. I wish people would research other flavors, e.g.: * Bubblegum * Tutti Fruitti * Irn-Bru

Personally I'd like to know the formulas for certain foods because lately there have been a lot of ingredient and process changes that have made the foods and drinks taste so much worse, and not just in processed foods. There's the overreliance on high fructose corn syrup, the switch from canola to much worse and more environmentally destructive palm oil, the rise of using acid concentrates instead of actual fruit juice, and so on. If it's not the ingredient changes, it's market consolidation that has killed the better product so the bigger one can survive, such as Cheez-Its killing Cheese Nips. If I knew the old recipes I'd make these things myself.

Re: OpenCola

#106

Post by mise_en_place »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #76
mise_en_place wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most soda is too sweet for me. I really enjoyed Club Mate, quite a bit more refreshing and way less sweet than Coca-Cola.

> way less sweet than Coca-Cola. And twice as much caffeine per ml.

Exactly, it's the engineer's cola

Re: OpenCola

#107

Post by pdn1 »

wackget wrote: post #30

OpenCola always gets passed around but for me it just represents the tip of a very frustrating iceberg. There are tons of flavor formulations I'd love to know - not because I'm a chemist or a food scientist but just out of sheer curiosity and the desire to learn how stuff is made. I wish people would research other flavors, e.g.: * Bubblegum * Tutti Fruitti * Irn-Bru

I just want true rootbeer again... Too bad the main ingredient is prohibited from being used

Re: OpenCola

#108

Post by pdn1 »

Bluecobra wrote: post #5
mngdtt wrote: post #3

It's really tough seeing the amount of sugar that this recipe has. Really puts things into perspective, compared to simply drinking the end product from a can.

A can of coke has almost 10 sugar cubes, it's pretty silly. The only winning move is not to play. https://www.zmescience.com/other/sugar-26072011/

I'd rather get cancer from diet coke

Re: OpenCola

#109

Post by BMc2020 »

Ctrl F "new coke" - not found

There is a conspiracy theory that 1987s introduction of new coke (in which all old coke was pulled from the market) was actually to cover up the taste difference when they switched from using sugar to high fructose corn syrup. When old coke came back people didn't notice the change as much.

You can still get Coke made with sugar (Mexico) give it a try and make up your own mind.

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