[HN Gopher] OpenCola
___________________________________________________________________
OpenCola
Author : andsoitis
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-12-13 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Ingredients located at [0], full recipe at [1]. If true, it's
| interesting. I don't have these oils on hand but seemingly they
| wouldn't be too difficult to procure.
|
| According to the _This American Life_ episode [2] where they made
| a batch, the taste testers were able to detect real Coke 28 out
| of 30 times. So maybe it 's not a perfect match! Still, it's
| cool.
|
| 0:
| https://github.com/cognitom/OpenCola/blob/master/recipe.mark...
|
| 1: https://cube-
| cola.org/index.php?route=information/informatio...
|
| 2: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/427/original-recipe
| prewett wrote:
| I'd think that a cola recipe ought to at least have cola-nut
| extract, which this recipe does not.
| Geee wrote:
| "These days, the Coca-Cola recipe is a closely guarded
| secret. But it's said to no longer contain kola nut extract,
| relying instead on artificial imitations to achieve the
| flavour." [0]
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160922-the-nut-that-
| hel...
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| 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 apple concentrate or
| various citrus extracts, root extracts, leaf extracts,
| etc)
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| Kola nut is the original caffeine ingredient in original
| coke. They replaced thus long ago with coffee-extracted
| caffeine, so there is little reason to still use kola nuts.
| mngdtt wrote:
| 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.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| That's the recipe for the _syrup_ [0], not the final beverage.
| The final beverage would obviously be diluted, to the given
| ratio of 7:1 in favor of carbonated water.
|
| The water/sugar ratio for the OpenCola syrup is nearly 1:1,
| which is the same ratio as simple syrup [1].
|
| 0:
| https://github.com/cognitom/OpenCola/blob/master/recipe.mark...
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrup#Inverted_sugar_syrup
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Coke is still ~40 grams of sugar per 12oz can. That's
| insanity and a quick way to give yourself diabeetus.
|
| No matter how bad you think artificial zero calorie
| sweeteners are, they are nothing compared to the damage that
| too much sugar does to your body.
| safety1st wrote:
| I'm gonna poke at this only because some people take the
| anti-sugar message too far and use it to rationalize away
| the stuff that's really killing them.
|
| Refined sugar is certainly not good for you, but a 12oz can
| of Coke - is 140 calories. That's about 6% of the
| recommended daily caloric intake.
|
| Calories RDI is about 2000-2500 for most people. But most
| Americans eat more like 3000-3500 and don't exercise.
|
| You can drink a 12 oz can of Coke every day and it's not
| even a blip on the radar. (A 64 oz tub of it, of course, is
| a different story.) What people need to do to be healthy is
| not overeat by 1,000 calories a day while never exercising.
| That combo will send you to an early grave, the can of Coke
| in a diet that otherwise hits the right macros, will not.
| 3523582908 wrote:
| For me, the issue with Coke isn't that one Can can kill
| you. It's that I never seem to be able to drink only one
| can.
|
| When I drink Coke, it becomes the primary way I hydrate.
| So five, six cans a day is not uncommon.
|
| I can't speak for everyone, but I've known plenty of
| other people who end each workday with 5+ cans of Coke on
| their desk.
|
| Personally, when I was drinking coke regularly, I was
| >30% body fat. Now that I've cut Coke completely from my
| diet, I am ~15%.
|
| Honestly though, I would love for these facts to not be
| true for me. I miss Coke dearly. It's my favorite drink.
| fzeindl wrote:
| > You can drink a 12 oz can of Coke every day and it's
| not even a blip on the radar.
|
| Only that blood sugar levels also affect hunger, psyche
| etc.
|
| So no, you cannot just sum up calories in that case.
| billyzs wrote:
| RDI for added sugar itself is 24-36 grams which a single
| 12oz can of Coke exceeds. Measuring in Calories, it's
| recommended to limit daily intake from added sugar to
| below 100-150 Calorie. [0]
|
| % of Caloric RDI isn't the whole story. A can of Coke is
| less of a blip on the radar as you suggested.
|
| [0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohyd
| rates/a...
| throwup238 wrote:
| 12oz is about 355 milliliters or 355 grams of liquid,
| meaning that 12oz can is more than 11% sugar by mass.
| unwind wrote:
| Standard in Sweden (Europe?) is 10.6% sugar. This is
| printed on the can, in the standard nutrition info table
| that is on all packaged foods.
|
| I'm surprised this is not common knowledge, but I guess
| people in general don't read labels.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| 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/
| mngdtt wrote:
| Yes, I agree. I feel sick at the thought of eating 10 sugar
| cubes but I can happily drink a can. Silly is an appropriate
| word.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Luckily for me I only drink the small 7.5oz cans... so I only
| ingest 6 cubes of sugar... oof. Still an improvement over my
| younger years. I don't have many 'addictions' in my life, but
| this vice has been with me for a long long time.
| nataliste wrote:
| Acid-sugar taste-hacking is something that has bothered me
| for quite a while.
|
| We know that sodium consumption can be drastically reduced by
| adding salt at table rather than adding it directly to food.
| Why doesn't this happen with sugar? Why not make desserts
| that take advantage of the fact that surface sugar will make
| it seem to be sweeter than it actually is and just have table
| sugar?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You can make fine powdered sugar at home with a coffee-
| grinder, but it will absorb moisture over time so the
| industrially-made variety has additives to prevent that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I actually do this instead of buying powdered sugar. I
| make my own brown sugar instead of buying it as well.
| Both are very easy to do, so I just make it on an as-
| needed basis. That way, I don't have to worry about
| storage and the considerations that come with it.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| That would require the company to
|
| 1) Care about their customers' health, which they have no
| reason to
|
| 2) Be willing to risk brand damage by exposing how much
| sugar is in their garbage
|
| 3) Be willing to "burden" users with the task of adding
| sugar which isn't "convenient"
|
| It's far easier to just feed people garbage while you're
| making $$$
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > 3) Be willing to "burden" users with the task of adding
| sugar which isn't "convenient"
|
| Some people like rituals with their addiction.
|
| Seeing the sugar being added may create the perception of
| more sweetness than there is. (But also guilt, so it can
| go both ways).
| crazygringo wrote:
| First of all, surface salt doesn't taste nearly as good as
| food that is salted throughout. Every chef knows this. Not
| to mention that salting foods before cooking changes their
| texture as well. This is why a steak that is salted an hour
| before grilling is _far_ more flavorful and has a better
| texture than one cooked without salt, but salted at the
| table. And it 's not a subtle difference, either -- we're
| talking night-and-day.
|
| And dessert basically goes the same way -- I honestly can't
| even imagine what something like a cherry pie would be if
| it were cooked without sugar, and then you were expected to
| dump sugar on top. But it would not be good.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| That might be true, but it takes toooo much salt. So I
| prefer to salt after cooking, right before eating because
| it requires way less and gives roughly the same effect.
|
| The reason a chef "knows this" is because if you judged
| their food with or without salt, the salt one would win,
| so in the end they're required to add waaay to much salt,
| when the tongue just needs those surface crystals.
|
| Healthier to salt after, and therefore cook your own
| food.
| ink_13 wrote:
| > gives roughly the same effect
|
| It does not, and that can (and has been!) be empirically
| shown. Salt gets into the food and changes both chemical
| properties and how it responds to cooking. Pre-seasoned
| meats, for example, are more tender.
|
| If you prefer to salt at the table, by all means, eat
| your food however you like it, but it is simply false to
| claim that there's no difference or "chefs just add too
| much salt".
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Healthier to salt after_
|
| It's not. Unless you have hypertension or some other
| medical condition around salt, there's no reason to
| restrict your salt intake.
|
| For the average person, the level of salt in restaurant
| food has no unhealthy effects whatsoever. Amounts in
| excess of your daily requirement are simply excreted in
| urine.
| timeon wrote:
| I drink it only 1-2 times per year. It is helpful on long
| distance rides. I like sugar more than I like Cola.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I went from consuming nearly no sugar to consuming really
| quite a lot when I started cycling seriously. Compromise
| I'm at now is to do sugars for the purposes of energy for
| workouts, high quality calories everywhere else.
| bdcravens wrote:
| After drinking Coke for about 32 years, I switched to Coke
| Zero (I have cystic fibrosis and scarring of the pancreas
| eventually leads to diabetes). After 14 years, drinking a
| regular Coke tastes like I'm drinking maple syrup.
|
| I'm aware that aspartame isn't ideal, but I'm not brave
| enough to give up sweet-tasting beverages yet. :-)
| macinjosh wrote:
| I had the same reaction. Makes one realize how cooking for
| yourself can greatly impact calorie intake. If I made my own
| soda instead of grabbing one from a machine I'd certainly balk
| at the amount of sugar I see, but the number on the side of the
| can tells me the same info but with less psychological impact.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| When I was younger and drank more soda, I discovered I could
| grab a can of coke, pour it into a 24oz cup I had, then fill
| the can with water and pour that in and it tasted the same to
| me. If I focused on the flavor it was very subtly different, in
| a way that felt more refreshing -- but most of the time I was
| just drinking it without full focus and couldn't tell the
| difference.
|
| Back then I was also packing lunches for my wife, and she
| wanted a bottle of commercial fruit juice to have with lunch.
| We'd buy a large bottle to save money and pour some into a
| smaller bottle for transport. I mentioned my experiment and she
| said "I'd like it if you had me try it with the juice" -- so I
| started doing it. A few days later she brought it up again,
| "Can we start diluting my juice I'm taking in?" and I told her
| she'd already been having diluted juice.
|
| These days I fall into "water is the real adult beverage" but I
| always keep in mind just how sweet things are commonly made.
| bityard wrote:
| To my taste buds, North American candy, soda, and other
| sugary snacks have gotten twice to three times sweeter since
| I was a kid. To the point that in most cases, all you can
| actually taste is the sugar and nothing else. It would be
| interesting if someone were able to dig up a 30-year-old can
| of Coke or whatever and compare its carbohydrate content to
| modern Coke. (You can't just use the Nutrition Facts label,
| because that is not only a recent invention, but also
| companies free use it to lie about their products.)
|
| We have a 1st-gen Coke freestyle machine in my workplace. On
| the rare occasion I go for it, I pick a zero-sugar variant,
| and I dilute it with 50% sparkling water otherwise every
| single flavor is way, WAY too sweet for me.
| jowdones wrote:
| That's exactly what I wanted to say. Both Cola and Pepsi
| are too damn sweet. On the rare occasion at the right
| temperature and amount of thirst on my side I can drink a
| 330ml bottle and actually enjoy the taste. But most of the
| times it feels like too sugary so either I drink just a
| small glass and lots of water afterwards or just mix it
| with carbonated water directly. Bottom line: usually feels
| too sweet for me.
|
| Like coffee: I like a hint of sweet in my espresso, but
| Cola is like dumping 4-5 spoons in a small cup of coffee.
| Becomes sugar syrup and that's all one can taste anymore.
| naremu wrote:
| I know it should be a warning sign to just not drink
| coke, but I've instead taken it as a "this is literally
| for filling a glass already prefilled to the brim with
| ice like in the ads" kind of thing.
|
| Because undiluted coca cola is just honestly not very
| good, and extremely uh, I'm not sure how to put it,
| practically pungent
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _have gotten twice to three times sweeter since I was a
| kid._
|
| They definitely have not. You just like sugary things
| better as a kid.
|
| It's kind of like, the summer camp I went to as a kid, and
| recently revisited as an adult -- they shrunk all the
| buildings and fields in size by half! Or so it certainly
| seemed, I could have _sworn_...
|
| I can't eat the candy I ate as a kid either. Now, 85% dark
| chocolate on the other hand...
| earthling8118 wrote:
| Interesting experience, but I tend to notice even a small
| amount of water mixed in. Different senses I guess.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| This is true, but the thing is, you don't have to follow the
| recipe. When I made a batch of this, I just bought the 7x
| concentrate from Cuba-Cola (https://cube-
| cola.org/index.php?route=product/category&path=...) and then
| added like half the amount of sugar it called for when making
| the concentrate, so that it was more like a 1:1 sugar:water
| ratio ("simple syrup") rather than a 2:1 ("rich syrup"). It
| didn't taste as sweet as commercial Coke, but it tasted fine.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I stopped drinking soda many years ago because it's all just
| far, far too sweet for me. But a couple of years back, I
| started making my own (real) root beer because making my own
| means that I can control how sweet it is. I prefer mine with
| about 1/3 the sugar that is in most soda.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Similar when you bake a cake. Sugar galore. Inflammation
| galore.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| People repeatedly say online that we know the Coca-Cola recipe,
| it's been leaked, etc., so it's not a secret, but it's clear
| doing some casual afternoon reading that whatever the exact
| composition is, it's not public knowledge.
|
| All of the recreations that you can find readily available online
| and through videos "come close" or are "their own thing, but
| pretty decent," etc. At best, what we think we know of Coca-Cola
| is some long historic recipe that hasn't been used for decades.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Even if you had the recipe, you can't get decocainized coca,
| which only the Coca Cola company can import.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Actually, it's the Stepan Corp. in New Jersey that holds the
| importation license. After ridding the coca leaves of methyl
| benzoyl ecgonine, they supply Coca-Cola with the denatured
| product for use in formulating the beverage.
| amelius wrote:
| My guess is that there's a lot of cinnamon and sugar in it, and
| caffeine.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I bought from Cuba Cola in the past. It wasn't bad. It basically
| tasted like grocery-store-brand Coke. I kept the 750ml syrup
| concentrate in the fridge at would add an ounce or so to my water
| carbonator whenever I felt like having a cup of soda.
|
| It was intended to ween me off Coke, but, I'm sad to say that
| Coke won. I didn't bother purchasing another batch when we
| finished the first one. I instead graduated to buying the mini
| cans of Coke rather than the full-sized ones.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I instead graduated to buying the mini cans of Coke rather
| than the full-sized ones.
|
| You're a better person than I--I find those mini cans
| frustratingly unsatisfying.
| lbourdages wrote:
| To me they are perfect. I enjoy a Coke from time to time, but
| I get tired of it pretty quickly - too sweet. The small cans
| are just perfect.
| phcreery wrote:
| I know nothing about the Cola recipe, but this fork seems to
| change some things up [1]. README says it is from "This American
| Life" [2] but it looks like it is closer to that of colawp.com
| [3].
|
| 'TAL' calls for FE Coca, Alcohol, and Vanilla but 'colawp' does
| not.
|
| 1: https://github.com/mmichelli/Coca-
| Cola/compare/master...cogn...
|
| 2: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the-recipe
|
| 3: https://www.colawp.com/colas/400/cola467_recipe.html
| chewbacha wrote:
| plain granulated white table sugar: 2.36 kg
|
| whoa.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Does the granulation really matter here?
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Not really, since you're gonna boil it until it dissolves.
| But I'm assuming the recipe says granulated sugar instead of,
| say, confectioner's sugar, because the latter often adds corn
| starch or potato starch to the sugar as an anti-caking agent,
| so you might not be getting the correct amount of actual
| sugar in the solution.
| wackget wrote:
| 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
| rdlw wrote:
| There's a great recent Thought Emporium video where he
| synthesizes chicken noodle soup from pure chemicals:
|
| https://youtu.be/sR8M4zARBXY?si=CFFmCb26yBY1YUlB
| Scoundreller wrote:
| "Artificial flavor" and "natural flavor" is an exemption on
| labelling I'd like to see disappear.
|
| Once I bought "cinnamon spread" and it didn't have cinnamon in
| the ingredients. The company refused to tell me if "natural
| flavors" included cinnamon. (I'm sure it did because cinnamon
| is cheap, but c'mon).
|
| And yeah, a lot of alcohol products get exempted from
| ingredient labelling for some reason. Should be treated like
| food is.
| wyre wrote:
| AFAIK real cinnamon isn't included in the umbrealla of
| "natural flavors" which are isolated compounds. If it
| contained real cinnamon it would list cinammon, or at least
| "spices"
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I could be misremembering. Looking at what is probably the
| product, yes, it says "spices" and also "artificial
| flavour", but no cinnamon by name:
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Imperial-Cinnamon-
| Spread-250g/dp/B00FO...
| waltbosz wrote:
| I once worked on a project for a company that made food
| flavoring products. I helped build their digital cookbook.
|
| They had different recipes for the same flavor depending on the
| usage. For example, ranch chip powder and ranch dip would have
| different ingredients and cooking instructions.
|
| Also that had so many different ways just to make vanilla
| flavoring depending on the customer's needs. So two soda makers
| might use different artificial vanilla flavorings.
| supermatt wrote:
| IrnBru is made from girders:
| https://youtu.be/SD3LippIN40?si=f7Bkqn9cmUNKD3PW
| doublerabbit wrote:
| They replaced the sugar with aspartame due to UK sugar tax
| and what made IrnBru is gone.
|
| I miss Dr Pepper too, with aspartame or that other chemic
| it's just not the same.
| supermatt wrote:
| Ok so recipe: Girders Aspartame (or
| sugar for orig flavour) Water(?)
|
| I feel like we are getting somewhere
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Has to be Scottish Water. Vastly superior to any other
| water in the UK.
| BenFeldman1930 wrote:
| Moving to Buckfast, then?
| copperx wrote:
| 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.
| Tanoc wrote:
| 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.
| dbbolton wrote:
| 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 different.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| So they have regulatory capture to ensure a near monopoly.
| Terrible
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Do they export all the cocaine-free extract from the US? I
| can't imagine that they could secure such privileges all over
| the world.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's hard to find the right information, but there is very
| limited manufacturing of the pure flavor concentrate which is
| then exported to bottling factories around the world, the
| bottling factories add water, sweetener, and carbonation and
| are generally owned separately.
| billfor wrote:
| https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/nj-factory-imports-cocaine-pla...
| copperx wrote:
| Pepsi doesn't taste the same, but it's a damn good recipe. They
| don't use coca leaves, right?
| prakhar897 wrote:
| selling kits of ingredients with recipe could be a really viable
| business.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| I can't stand canned US coke. I have to drink mexican coke, which
| is sold at Homedepot near me. They seem to be selling those at $1
| per bottle pretty well.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I believe, but could be wrong, that the differentiating factor
| is that coke from Mexico is made with sugar.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Cane Sugar vs high-fructose corn syrup, yes. That's the
| conventional wisdom.
|
| J. Kenji Lopez-Alt did a study where he concluded that people
| who think they like Mexican Coke more than Regular Coke
| simply enjoy tasting Coke out of a glass, and the perceived
| cane-sugar vs HFCS may just be a placebo:
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/coke-vs-mexican-coke
|
| But YMMV. Even having read that study, I still prefer Mexican
| Coke.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| I would love to do a blind taste test. It could also be the
| aluminum can.
|
| Even if a placebo, it's still true - I can't stand canned
| coke. I can't drink it, the taste to me is horrible.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| If you had the energy to do so, you could try to
| replicate his results, i.e. buy a Mexican Coke, an
| American Glass Coke, and an American Can Coke, and decant
| them all into glasses or cups at home, then see if you
| can taste the difference.
|
| If all your brain/tongue perceives as horrible is the
| taste of the aluminum can, you could always switch to
| buying Coke in glass bottles, which are more expensive
| than cans but still cheaper to buy in bulk than Mexican
| Cokes, and can be found at most grocery stores.
|
| Or, if being limited to Mexican Coke means it reduces
| your overall soda consumption because you're only able to
| drink it when you're near a Home Depot, keep doing what
| you're doing. You'll probably be healthier for it.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| > If all your brain/tongue perceives as horrible is the
| taste of the aluminum can, you could always switch to
| buying Coke in glass bottles
|
| Or just pour it in a glass?
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| That would be a different test, methinks?
|
| You're assuming that the taste is only affected by what
| it's being served in, not how the liquid was transported.
| For all we know, aluminum imparts some sort of off-flavor
| into the Coke itself that the OP doesn't like, in which
| case it wouldn't matter if he decants it into a glass
| first--it would already have been "tainted" by being held
| in the aluminum can.
| naremu wrote:
| It may again be placebo effect, but I can still taste the
| difference in bottled water poured into my steel water
| bottle and my usual filtered tap water.
|
| I also can't stand plastic bottled sodas, and can tell
| they've been sitting in one even if drank out of
| something else after opening.
|
| I fear the bottling/canning process and length of time
| spent in it gives it a bit of a whiskey-barrel style
| finishing taste alteration.
| davio wrote:
| Also need to add McDonald's fountain Coke for sake of
| science.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Most soda is too sweet for me. I really enjoyed Club
| Mate, quite a bit more refreshing and way less sweet than
| Coca-Cola.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _way less sweet than Coca-Cola._
|
| And twice as much caffeine per ml.
| quercusa wrote:
| Wait for Spring and find some yellow-capped 2L bottles of
| Coke. Those are Kosher for Passover so they don't contain
| any grain (corn), just cane sugar.
| wyre wrote:
| I learned/realized recently it's only because of the US's
| deeply entrentched subsidies on corn that allows for HFCS to
| be cheaper than sugar and why it's so heavily used in
| processed foods.
| freedomben wrote:
| Same with ethanol gas. If not for the corn subsidies, it
| wouldn't be cheaper. Also much more gas is burned
| growing/harvesting the corn and electrical powering the
| process than is saved in emissions (there was a great piece
| on HN of this some time ago), so it's a net negative to the
| environment. It's so dumb it hurts, but Iowa is an early
| presidential election state, so good luck finding someone
| who will go in and tell those early voters that they're
| gonna slow the gravy train...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The actual reason we stay on ethanol as a fuel additive
| is not about saving the planet: It's simply a good octane
| booster for the kinds of reliable octane you need in
| modern engines. Before, we had leaded gas which is bad,
| then MTBE which kept poisoning water tables.
|
| In contrast, using 15% ethanol uses 15% less gas at a
| time when we were desperately trying to not be held by
| the balls by the middle east gas sellers, it's trivial to
| produce at scale, it was a simple handout to corn
| growers, which the US cares deeply about, and refineries
| didn't mind that it reduced the energy density of fuel by
| a couple percent, requiring you buy more gas for the same
| amount of energy, and it would never end up with a 60
| minutes special about how it has been poisoning all of us
| for decades. We should have been using it the whole damn
| time.
| 0110101001 wrote:
| Having done triangle tests with Mexican Coke and HFCS Coke, I
| find it unbelievable someone "can't stand" one and enjoys the
| other.
|
| Mexican Coke doesn't use cane sugar anymore. But when it did,
| I'd read that the sucrose in peak-era Mexican Coke broke down
| into a HFCS-similar mix of fructose and glucose in the
| drink's acidity anyway.
|
| I'm convinced the Mexican Coke thing is just some hipster
| thing, and Coca-Cola is glad to exploit it.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Having also done blind taste tests, I can pretty reliably
| pick out the mexican coke, but I agree that it's unlikely
| that someone would love one but not the other _in a cup_.
|
| I think the real differentiator is drinking out of a glass
| bottle vs. a can.
| 0110101001 wrote:
| I could still taste the difference after decanting to a
| cup. I felt like it was still mostly can/bottle, but
| didn't have an American bottle to use as a control.
|
| There definitely is a subtle difference. I was about to
| pick out the different drink reliably. It's just hard to
| imagine the difference is make-or-break between enjoying
| and intolerable for anyone. And it less likely comes from
| the sweetener and more from the Mexican water versus the
| water at your local Coca-Cola bottler.
|
| West coast Coke vs East coast Coke would be an
| interesting test I've never thought about doing.
| clothesline wrote:
| Hello Rishi, nice to have you lurk around.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I can reliably pick out the difference between bottle, canned,
| and fountain Coke and Pepsi (all 6 variations). Out of the
| fountain, Coke and Pepsi are sweeter than their packaged
| counterparts (because the syrup is usually fresher and more
| concentrated); Pepsi tastes somewhat like a blend of Coke and
| watered-down Dr Pepper. Canned Coke and Pepsi have a metallic
| taste not found in its bottled or fountain counterparts (and
| this taste remains even if poured into a cup).
|
| For bottled Coke, HCFS Coke and Mexican/Kosher Coke taste
| similar but not the same: HCFS Coke has stronger/bolder (one-
| note type of) sweetness but sugar Coke has a broader sweetness.
|
| All versions of regular Pepsi have a cloying aftertaste.
| golergka wrote:
| I was hoping to find the original recipe with coca leaves. I've
| just spent almost three months in Columbia and Peru, where coca
| tea is everywhere -- it's much gentler and better alternative to
| coffee. I really wish it was exported to the rest of the world.
| prvc wrote:
| How does this differ from a typical generic cola recipe?
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Open Cola_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546439 -
| Sept 2016 (66 comments)
|
| _OpenCola Soft Drink_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5809564 - June 2013 (35
| comments)
|
| _Open Source Cola_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2057321 - Jan 2011 (14
| comments)
| schoen wrote:
| I still have an unopened can of the commercially-brewed OpenCola
| personally given to me by Cory Doctorow about twenty years ago!
| (Plus two opened cans, which I saved after I drank the contents.)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Coke's success isn't due to their formula, it's due to their
| brand. You could release a perfect Coca-Cola clone and you'd
| probably struggle to sell it.
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