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DIY Soft Drinks

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Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#231

Post by krisoft »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #214
krisoft wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you are asking. The stone age way of making paint is to find some place where the ground has a weird colour, dig it up, clean it and you have a pigment. Even to this day many of our paint pigments are mined this way. Red/yellow ochre, umber, sienna. If what you are asking is the dirt in question geologically speaking a soil? Sometimes, sometimes not. It can be a sediment or a regolith too. But in the mo…

Yeah I’ll probably stick with coca cola corporation

Okay, but user070223 is talking about watercolour paints as an alternative use of gum arabic.

Now i’m just recognising this might be a language issue: watercolour paints are a type of paint to paint with on paper using a brush dipped in water. If you ever seen kids paint with brushes and paper most likely they were using watercolour paint.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#232

Post by potamic »

nulld3v wrote: post #21

I've also been dabbling in this recently in an attempt to avoid buying SodaStream syrups (which are on the BDS boycott list). Tips for working on sugar-free recipes: In some countries (like Canada), soft-drink manufacturers are required to disclose the exact amount of each artificial sweetener they use in the drink. So you can easily grab those numbers from Canadian product listings for use in your own recipes. E.g.…

> In some countries (like Canada), soft-drink manufacturers are required to disclose the exact amount of each artificial sweetener they use in the drink

Can you share some links? Neither amazon.ca nor walmart.ca seem to show this.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#233

Post by malloryerik »

jerf wrote: post #192
malloryerik wrote: post #162

I'd be interested in soft drinks that were unsweetened altogether and not just sugar free. Sometimes I have sparkling water + apple cider vinegar + lemon/lime juice and it's wonderful when well mixed.

I've got a couple of sweetener-free recipes I use with my soda maker, though I should warn you nobody else I've given them to likes them. But I like them well enough. One is a couple of squirts of vanilla, a couple of squirts of lemon juice, and a bit of salt. Salt is probably an underappreciated drink ingredient for this sort of thing. It turns out it isn't in your soft drinks just to make you want to drink more. Th…

Thanks, may try this.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#234

Post by amelius »

littlexsparkee wrote: post #202
amelius wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I wish aspartame was used more. I hate those stupid sugar alcohols, and stevia as well. Yuck.

I've found the taste of Monk Fruit to be preferable.

Monk fruit is quite expensive, so I'm afraid it will not become very popular in commercial products like candy bars and soft drinks. But for DIY it is certainly a nice option.

Thanks you for suggesting it.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#235

Post by kalleboo »

gorgonical wrote: post #122
collin128 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an Aarke (soda stream comp) and a CO2 hose. Now I use one of the 5lb tanks. It's great.

What do you mean? You use the 5lb tank via the Aarke instead of the CO2 cylinders? Or you refill somehow the CO2 cylinders? If it's the first one this sounds like the best of both worlds with the convenience of the countertop device and the cost-efficiency of the bulk CO2. It would be great if you elaborated some more!

I bought a hose from Amazon where one end screws onto the 5 kg CO2 tanks (I'm in Japan so metric) and the other end has the same male nozzle as a SodaStream cylinder so you screw it in where a cylinder would screw in, so the tank feeds straight into it. Just need a place on the floor near your countertop to put the big tank.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#236

Post by nchmy »

hattmall wrote: post #184
nchmy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bottles?

Looking for specific bottle recommendations and suppliers

youre overthinking this. use any bottle that you want.

glass, plastic, etc.. Buy some swingtop beer and you'll get the bottles for free. screwon - be it glass or plastic - also work.

There's also surely 1000 articles and videos on this very topic, but its not important

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#237

Post by dlcarrier »

BizarroLand wrote: post #200
jackdawed wrote: post #36

I went down this rabbit hole last year after buying a carbonator. Rather than mixing a bunch of oils together, I bought my flavors from Bakto Flavors (based in NJ, USA) which is founded by Dr. Daphna Havkin Frenkel who did her research in food sciences and biotechnology, focusing on vanilla. The cola flavor is really good, and I add acetic acid (Vitamin C) + electrolytes to it. If I'm feeling it, I'll add in vanilla,…

Are there any reasonably priced water carbonation systems that aren't sodastream adjacent? I know there are hacks for the older sodastreams where you can buy a large tank from a foodgas company, but what I really want is a machine in my house that I can bring a cup to and fill with soda without it costing me ~$1,000.

The only cheap way to carbonate water is in a batch process, like a SoadaStream or equivalent DIY method of releasing CO2 out of a straw into water in a pressurized vessel.

If you really want a faucet that dispenses carbonated water, the cheapest method is to buy just the part of a commercial machine that does the carbonating. It consists of a high-pressure tank with a carbonated water output, and separate water and CO2 tank inputs, as well as a pump that pressurizes the input water, to match the CO2 pressure, so that the water can enter the tank.

If you search Craigslist or eBay for "carbonator with pump" you can usually find something for ~$200. Throw in another ~$100 for a used tank, regulator, and faucet, and you can get a 1920's style seltzer fountain in your own home, then add syrups if you want flavored sodas, or throw in some milk and chocolate syrup and call it an egg cream, despite it containing neither.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#238

Post by dlcarrier »

genericuser256 wrote: post #152
wongarsu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One advantage of standard tabletop carbonators is that you can get versions with glass bottles. I quite like the 0.7l glass sodastream bottles. You could probably get them to work on a DIY setup with the right pressure regulator settings and the right adapter. But I'd like to avoid the flying glass shards if I get it wrong

Do you mind my asking which ones you use? The only ones I've been able to find (Canada) don't work with the standard soda stream

Search AliExpress, eBay, or Amazon for "SodaStream glass bottle adapter" and you'll find aftermarket adapters that allow filling the glass bottles from SodaStream models designed for plastic bottles. They're $5 to $15, depending on which store you get them from.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#239

Post by mattmaroon »

jfengel wrote: post #211
jolt42 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is it just not put caramel coloring in it? It didn't taste like actual Pepsi to me, which I suppose might be more difficult?

The OP said (in the last paragraph) that the ingredients that go into colas are the kind that make the drink cloudy. Crystal Pepsi was clear, even without the coloring. Presumably it's because they changed to use flavors that are completely water-soluble. That would explain a difference in taste. (I know they tasted different with my eyes open, but I never did a blind taste test between the two. It would be interesti…

Yeah, that would be my guess. Crystal Pepsi tastes noticeably different than regular, and caramel color is used in such small qtys that it is considered borderline flavorless.

If you look at popular grapefruit sodas Fresca is clear, but Squirt is cloudy because Fresca uses water soluble flavors and Squirt uses oils. (Squirt is the better product by far IMO because a lot of the grapefruit flavor is from the oil in the peel.)

It’s always possible the geniuses at the flavor houses Pepsi buys from have some magic I don’t know about though. But I’ve never heard of any way to make emulsified oils clear, since they refract light differently.

Re: DIY Soft Drinks

#240

Post by littlexsparkee »

culi wrote: post #59

So at some point I went on a loose leaf herbal tea buying spree and bought (and almost immediately forgot about) something called "catuaba". I tried making it into a tea and it was... an acquired taste. In my efforts to make the product more digestible I mixed it with some sparkling water. The result tasted shockingly similar to coca cola. So I did some research and it turns out that what's labelled as "catuaba bark"…

Fun fact - erythroxylum vaccinifolium makes for a potent aphrodisiac.
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