Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
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Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
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Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#2> aspartame has a half-life of about 300 days in solution at about pH 4, about the pH of soft drinks, but half life means that half if it as gone by that time. And if the cans are exposed to a hot storeroom or stored in a warm summer garage, they may deteriorate faster.
And they deteriorate a lot slower at cold temperatures. Hydrolysis practically stops if you freeze it.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#3> aspartame has a half-life of about 300 days in solution at about pH 4, about the pH of soft drinks, but half life means that half if it as gone by that time. And if the cans are exposed to a hot storeroom or stored in a warm summer garage, they may deteriorate faster. And they deteriorate a lot slower at cold temperatures. Hydrolysis practically stops if you freeze it.
Unfortunately freezing a can or bottle of soda introduces a different problem entirely.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#4Awesome! As someone who used to drink a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper (DDP) I could easily tell how close a given can (or bottle) was to its "use by" date. This makes for a great party trick [1] but otherwise has limited utility.
It also made for some socially awkward situations where, when visiting friends, they would want to have drinks on hand that their guests like and would go out of their way to get some DDP for me, not checking the date, and then serve out of date soda which tasted horrible.
Not surprising the rate of hydrolysis is temperature dependent so if you keep things refrigerated they last longer, but if you leave them out on the back porch in the summer where they get warm they go 'non-sweet' relatively quickly.
I switched to water (or tea if I want caffeine) with diet sweetener in packets (which doesn't go bad because no pesky water to 'unzip' it). I wrote to the Dr. Pepper company once and suggested they design their beverage so that the sweetener was dry and only released when you opened it (I got the idea from the way the Guinness folks started selling Guinness in cans with a gizmo to put a head on it when opened. Alas, nobody at the company was interested in "fixing" a non-problem, they responded (nicely) that I should just be sure to check the date and included a coupon for a free six pack. Of course at that time (and is still true around Reno) the bottler doesn't use an easily readable date code so it isn't much of a solution.
[1] And by "great" I mean the nerds all are fascinated by it and the non-nerds were nominally repulsed that someone could have such familiarity with the hydrolysis profile as to call it out by taste.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#5I once explained to a coworker that I brought in some soda that day because the diet soda at work was expired. They were skeptical and we proceeded to go down to the cafe to setup a blind taste test. I passed with flying colors and we had an interesting conversation about it. It was a fun 20 minutes of not working.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#6Awesome! As someone who used to drink a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper (DDP) I could easily tell how close a given can (or bottle) was to its "use by" date. This makes for a great party trick [1] but otherwise has limited utility. It also made for some socially awkward situations where, when visiting friends, they would want to have drinks on hand that their guests like and would go out of their way to get some DDP for me, n…
Your note about the sweetener packets makes me curious if diet soda syrup lasts longer. This has been a reason for me to hold off on putting together my own carbonation setup as, in spite of how much soda I drink, I still don’t think I could move through the requisite 2.5 gallons of syrup before the expiration date hit. I wonder if the aspartame suffers the same hydrolysis in syrup.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#7Awesome! As someone who used to drink a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper (DDP) I could easily tell how close a given can (or bottle) was to its "use by" date. This makes for a great party trick [1] but otherwise has limited utility. It also made for some socially awkward situations where, when visiting friends, they would want to have drinks on hand that their guests like and would go out of their way to get some DDP for me, n…
I think a problem with releasing a powder into a carbonated drinks is it would start to foam up and bubble out possibly.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#8Recently I went to my office for the first time since the pandemic started. The Diet Coke in the office fridge tasted HORRIBLE.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#9> aspartame has a half-life of about 300 days in solution at about pH 4, about the pH of soft drinks, but half life means that half if it as gone by that time. And if the cans are exposed to a hot storeroom or stored in a warm summer garage, they may deteriorate faster. And they deteriorate a lot slower at cold temperatures. Hydrolysis practically stops if you freeze it.
Unfortunately freezing a can or bottle of soda introduces a different problem entirely.
I would expect freezing a plastic bottle would be okay. We do it all the time with water. Which isn't exactly the same, I know.
Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis
#10Recently I went to my office for the first time since the pandemic started. The Diet Coke in the office fridge tasted HORRIBLE.
Sorry, that was me. Had a Zoom meeting and couldn't leave the kitchen where the meeting's start found me for like 3 hours.