One thing I noticed was: Where's the phosphoric acid? Does the use of gum arabic eliminate the need?
DIY Soft Drinks
51–60 of 253 posts
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#52If you want to carbonate water but don't want to buy a countertop carbonator or its overpriced CO2 refills, you can get a ball lock valve cap that screws onto 1L or 2L soda bottles for around $8-16. That valve will attach to a standard female fitting, which you can put on the end of a hose coming from a pressure regulator, which will attach to a full-size CO2 cylinder available from a brewing or gas supply shop. CO2…
I bought an Aarke (soda stream comp) and a CO2 hose. Now I use one of the 5lb tanks. It's great.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#53I switched to zero sugar about a year ago, but all the zero sugar sodas use aspartame (yeah yeah not proven to cause cancer, but still not a great sweetener) for now (out of laziness), I just grab plain sparkling water and add Stur drops Also didn’t expect to be pulling recipes off GitHub, but I’ll take that any day over those paywalled sites Definitely want to give this a try!
> aspartame (yeah yeah not proven to cause cancer, but still not a great sweetener)
Compared to what? Aspartame is almost certainly the most studied artificial sweetener in existence, and the safety profile looks very good.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#54If you want to carbonate water but don't want to buy a countertop carbonator or its overpriced CO2 refills, you can get a ball lock valve cap that screws onto 1L or 2L soda bottles for around $8-16. That valve will attach to a standard female fitting, which you can put on the end of a hose coming from a pressure regulator, which will attach to a full-size CO2 cylinder available from a brewing or gas supply shop. CO2…
I’ve done this for years and never ruptured a bottle, I set the regulator to 60psi.
I’d like a metal bottle too but haven’t found one - I presume spraying some co2 into it would be enough to get the plain air out since you obviously can’t squeeze the air out.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#55I'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.…
I Googled the BDS Boycott list at a glance...the top link ( https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott ) mentions a bunch of companies, including Sodastream. The immediate issue I see is that Sodastream is owned by PepsiCo, Inc. That immediately makes them complicit as well. PepsiCo was also facing a lawsuit regarding a partnership with Walmart for price fixing ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/01/08/walm…
>Most of the time it takes full on government intervention, lawsuits, etc. to change things.
That's the S.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#56This is really interesting. I have been making my own "instant cola" with several large dashes of angostura bitters and a can of seltzer in a pint glass. The liquid should be very pink/orange. and, if I want sweetness a drop of liquid sucralose sweetner is all I need, just sweet enough for me without aftertaste. This mix scratches my cola itch very well and can be made in about 20 seconds.
Try walnut or cherry bitters sometimes for a similar but different enough to be interesting flavor.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#57Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola (It Took Me A Year) - LabCoatz : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc This content creator used a mass spectrometer to find the flavoring used in Coca-Cola.
GCMS is neat, we have a really nice one at work but don't use it to reverse engineer soft drinks. Although, if we had a bit more time we probably could.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#58I'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.…
I Googled the BDS Boycott list at a glance...the top link ( https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott ) mentions a bunch of companies, including Sodastream. The immediate issue I see is that Sodastream is owned by PepsiCo, Inc. That immediately makes them complicit as well. PepsiCo was also facing a lawsuit regarding a partnership with Walmart for price fixing ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/01/08/walm…
Boycotts definitely have their limitations, but the Sodastream boycott seems to have had some sort of effect: https://www.timesofisrael.com/victory-for-bds-as-sodastreams..., though whether the intended effect was achieved is debatable...
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#59So 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" actually refer to a couple different unrelated herbs. But ONE of the sources of "catuaba bark" is Erythroxylum vaccinifolium. Erythroxylum is the coca genus. I have no idea if this specific species contains cocaine but what I CAN confirm is that there are sellers within the US that grow and sell this "herb". Which means you don't have to worry about customs intercepting your order at the border.
Re: DIY Soft Drinks
#60I'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.…
>BDS boycott list Looks like a great initiative. Anyone knows about a similar list, but for companies that support Russia and occupation of Ukraine?
BDS has been around since 2005 and organizing on a global scale.
Russia is under heavy sanctions so I doubt there's much more regular consumers can do to boycott if they live in countries compliant with those sanctions.
But there's an app that's (unfortunately) named BoyCat that currently mainly works for BDS. You scan a product and it tells you if it's directly or indirectly tied to a product on the BDS list. I heard they are trying to expand functionality to allow anyone to make and organize around a list
TBH this is an idea I've personally wanted to work on for a long time. I think the boycott is an underrated tool for social change and tools that can make it easier to organize around them can be a really powerful force for good