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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

#11
post #4

Awesome! 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…

You can get unsweetened carbonated soda water that's "Dr." flavored. I've never tried adding a nutrasweet packet to one, but I wonder how close it would come to a "Dr." soda of the same brand.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#12
I noticed a similar thing with regular Coca Cola years ago. Some PET 2 l bottles went stale and tasted terribly, like mold. Other people thought that it wasn't so bad, but did detect the bad taste after being told about it.

I suspected it was an effect of sunlight on sugar, but had no way to know for sure. Nobody would admit that the bottles were transported or stored in inadequate conditions either.

Then I quit regular coke and later diet coke too, so no idea if it's still a problem.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The carbonation is the difference. It will explode as it becomes a slush and make a massive mess.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#15
post #12

I noticed a similar thing with regular Coca Cola years ago. Some PET 2 l bottles went stale and tasted terribly, like mold. Other people thought that it wasn't so bad, but did detect the bad taste after being told about it. I suspected it was an effect of sunlight on sugar, but had no way to know for sure. Nobody would admit that the bottles were transported or stored in inadequate conditions either. Then I quit regu…

Here in Norway I think "Pepsi Max" was the gold standard for years while diet Coca Cola mostly sold because of the brand name.

Then something happened: Coca Cola launched Zero and after a few iterations it tasted good! Meanwhile Pepsi Max always yaste stale now since the start of the pandemic or something.

I don't really know what happened and it could just be my taste changing but I don't think so.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#16
post #4

Awesome! 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.

It does! (less water, so less hydrolysis) "name brand" syrup however isn't particularly economical at retail however[1]. Not too surprisingly there has been a rash of restaurant bankruptcies during the pandemic and so buying "used" soda fountain gear is actually pretty easy (at least in the western US) these days. I actually have an Elkay "water machine" which does carbonation (as well as chilled and not chilled still water) although its carbonation chamber is too small to give a good fizz like the commercial units do. (more Perrier like, less fountain soda like). That said there are also relatively few powder mixes that take into account carbonated water. There was an AWESOME Grape Crush one (that was sugar free) but since it tasted poorly when mixed with still water it was discontinued (having a soda water tap is not the normal situation).

One of the more interesting ideas (and also impractical) are the "mini-syrups" that are used in the multi-beverage dispensers with the touch screen at places like Movie Theaters. Good luck getting hold of those. I briefly had a line on getting them from a local AMC because I knew the manager who wasn't averse to re-selling them to me at cost but she changed jobs when the pandemic made theaters non-viable. The existing Coke branded dispensers are so loaded up with various DRM/telemetry that even if you can get one at auction (which you normally can't since they are leased, not sold) it would be quite the reverse engineering process to get it to work "disconnected" from the Coke network.

[1] Funny story about how I spent four months trying to buy Diet Dr. Pepper syrup at the "restaurant" rate (which was about 1/4th the "retail" rate) elided.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#17
post #4

Awesome! 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.

Depends on the powder. The "Wyler's Lemondade mix" powders do fine with the carbonated water from my Elkay machine (not that they taste as good in carbonated water but they do work). I know there were powders that added fizz to still water to make them more soda like and those would be a problem on water that was already carbonated.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The carbonation is the difference. It will explode as it becomes a slush and make a massive mess.

And if it survives, it's just totally flat afterward.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#19
> If you unzip aspartame into the two amino acids and remove that methyl to become methanol, you have a tasteless mixture of pretty harmless compounds.

I'm somewhat surprised nobody has commented on this yet, so let me point it out: methanol is not harmless! It causes blindness or death.

(I don't say diet soda is harmful, only that methanol is.)

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#20

I 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.

You weren't goofing off, you were applying the scientific method while at the same time engaging in team building.

I'm not even kidding. That incidental silliness is valuable. A year later, you run across a problem where a customer explains a problem you don't understand, and then you have a flashback to that time when you did a blind taste test. You look at your colleague and whisper "Hey, remember that blind taste test we did that time?" and their eyes light up.

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