
OpenCola Soft Drink - duggieawesome
http://www.colawp.com/colas/400/cola467_recipe.html
======
DigitalSea
I made a batch of OpenCola a few years back, I actually prefer the taste in
comparison to that of Coca Cola. Brew up the syrup and get yourself a Soda
Stream or any other carbonation device and you've got a tasty cola you made
yourself.

Word of warning, making this stuff is SUPER expensive compared to just buying
some Coke from the shop. All of those oils are not only hard to find
(especially in Australia), but can be quite pricey when you total them up.
Neroli oil is expensive in itself (about $25 AUD for 10mls of the stuff)
follow the recipe right down to every warning (you could easily end up
poisoning yourself if you make it incorrectly). Remember to get food grade,
100% undiluted oils or you could make yourself really sick or as I said,
poison yourself.

I skipped the caffeine in mine and it seemed fine without it, but probably
would taste better with it. I did notice something was missing, not sure if
that's due to the lack of caffeine though I skipped primarily because the
dangers of caffeine and the fact small amounts can actually kill you.

Don't go making this if you're expecting a 1:1 Coke copy. This has its own
unique taste, slightly syrupy. I think the recipe definitely needs more work,
but considering it's a free and open sourced recipe it's pretty good as it is.

~~~
lobster_johnson
> _Word of warning, making this stuff is SUPER expensive compared_

Not really. Sure, 5ml of neroli oil costs about $40. But that is enough for 20
batches of 7X formula.

I haven't calculated exactly, but a batch should yield about 40-60 liters of
cola. The other ingredients are maybe around $40 in total. So 800-1200 liters
of soda for maybe $80-90. That's pretty cheap.

As for oils being hard to find: That must be Australia. I ordered all of mine
from G. Baldwin & Co. [1] in the UK. There are plenty of good sources in the
US, too.

[1] <http://www.baldwins.co.uk/>

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lobster_johnson
I love this recipe. I make it now and then so that I have a glass of syrup in
the fridge that I can mix with carbonated water from a cartridge system.

(For a while we had the cola on tap in the office via a carbonator, alongside
a colleague's home-brewed beer. It was very popular.)

I easily prefer this recipe to commercial Coca-Cola. On the one hand, it does
lack a certain something that Coca-Cola has, and I attribute this mainly to
the fact that I don't use any coca-leaf extract; you can get this online, and
it ultimately comes from the same source as Coca-Cola uses, but I haven't
bothered.

But on the other hand, it just tastes _better_. Fresher and more vibrant. Very
different from off-the-shelf cola syrups such as SodaStream's. It's closer to
a "indie" cola like Fentimans or Boylan's. My hypothesis is that Coca-Cola's
current "natural aroma" ingredients are no longer natural essential oils, but
synthesized versions of these, although I have not been able to confirm this.

~~~
eightyone
It's illegal to possess cocoa leaves and extracts of cocoa leaves in the
United States of America without a DEA license or prescription. [1]

[1] <http://www.erowid.org/plants/coca/coca_law.shtml>

~~~
lobster_johnson
I am talking about denatured ("decocanized") leaves and leaf extract. In the
US, these are ultimately from Stepan, who is the sole American company
authorized by the DEA to import and process cocoa leaves. This is
coincidentally the company that Coca-Cola buys their denatured coca leaves
from.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Company>

~~~
eightyone
Thanks for the clarification. I've Googled around and can't find any
decocanized sources online. Seems like it would be an interesting business
opportunity for someone in South America. I bet Coca-Cola would find some way
to put a lot of pressure on you, though.

~~~
lobster_johnson
There is this [1] source. Apparently it's intended for weight-control
supplements [2]. Unfortunately, it's $1,000 per kilogram, with a minimum order
of 5 kg.

It's possible that coca tea would work. [3]

[1] <http://www.macoca.com/>

[2] [http://www.nutraingredients-
usa.com/Suppliers2/Decocainized-...](http://www.nutraingredients-
usa.com/Suppliers2/Decocainized-coca-leaf-extract-debuts-for-weight-
management-sector)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-
key...](http://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-
keywords=coca+tea)

[4] Hacker News really needs to get Markdown link syntax.

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zaius
The author mentions the soda stream carbonation doesn't really produce the
desired effect. A tangentially related question: How does commercial
carbonation work? Is it just keeping the liquid under pressure for a while
with CO2 present? Is it done on a per bottle / can basis, or is it done in big
vats and then sealed quickly afterwards?

~~~
lobster_johnson
Commercial carbonation is simply done by pressurizing water together with CO2.
It's done in big vats, and the bottles are filled and immediately sealed.

For a while we had our cola on tap in the office (and we'll probably do it
again). We used the same carbonator system we use for the beer tap, which is
basically a CO2 tank hooked up to the source liquid, like this [1], and which
injects the CO2 into the water on demand. It's the same principle used in soda
fountains. It doesn't scale to real bottling operations, though.

As for the article, I disagree that "the soda stream carbonation doesn't
really produce the desired effect". I have an off-the-shelf carbonation system
that's similar to SodaStream, and it works really well. But these units vary a
lot in carbonation quality, so it may be that the author of the article did
not have a good enough carbonator. The important factor is the size of the
bubbles; smaller bubbles means they last longer and provide a "fuller"
effervescence.

[1] [http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-06/how-make-your-
own-...](http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-06/how-make-your-own-home-
carbonation-system)

------
Aardwolf
If neroli oil is so expensive, why add it at all? There are so many different
oils in it, is a single one of them that important for the whole taste?

~~~
stfu
This stuff is super tricky. I tried experimenting around, e.g. doubling the
amount of orange oil to make it more organge'y tasting. But it had in my
opinion very little impact on the overall taste. It is really hard to get that
stuff right. If you have a few $ to spare give it a try.

It is fun, but very very time consuming because you need to stretch ~10ml into
7gallons of water until you can know if you are on the right track.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Personally, my only change to the recipe was to subtract 0.25ml of cinnamon
oil, because otherwise the cinnamon is somewhat dominant.

I have also experimented with adding vanillin, which I believe commercial
Coca-Cola contains, but which is curiously absent from the OpenCola recipe.
It's great, though you end up pretty much with Vanilla Coke.

As for those 7 gallons: If you want to experiment you can scale down the
formula/syrup quite a bit to avoid that problem. Just add a drop or two of
formula to a certain amount of water, and then add the same weight of sugar
(eg., 100ml water = 100g sugar), and then continuing adding another drop of
formula until the syrup balance is right. The citric acid and caramel colour
isn't needed for taste experimentation. Now you can either mix some syrup with
carbonated water to taste the mix, or you can just taste the syrup directly.
(I bet a real flavourist with a sensitive palate will be able to just mix the
formula with some still water and taste that without any sugar, though.)

The real problem is that you have to properly emulsify the formula when
changing the balance of ingredients. But you can make the process easier by
doing a base emulsion and using that to branch off of. For example, if you
want to see how it tastes with more orange and less neroli, make a base
formula with everything in place except no neroli, then pour off some of the
formula, add a bit of orange, re-emulsify, and then make a small syrup batch
from that. Time-consuming, sure, but doable.

~~~
suredo
100g of sugar for 100ml of water? that would be way too sweet... coke for
example has only ~40g per 355ml (or about 11g per 100ml)

~~~
DanBC
That is to make a syrup concentrate, which you then dilute further.

------
EvanAnderson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCola_(drink)>

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akeck
It looks like these indie cinema folks worked out the GPL recipe. They sell
the concentrate through their web store. <http://cubecinema.com/cola/>

------
te
~2 kg (!) of sugar to just ~2 liters of water? I know there's a lot of sugar
in cola, but that just seems like ... a lot.

After some googling, I'm guessing it's off by an order of magnitude and it
should be 0.236 kg of sugar ...

~~~
lobster_johnson
The recipe is correct. The concentrated syrup is 50% sugar by weight, but it's
mixed 5:1 with carbonated water, so you end up with about 100g of sugar per
liter of finished soda, which is pretty much the same as in commercial Coca-
Cola.

------
stfu
A few month ago I tried brewing this stuff myself. It "kinda" works, but it
tastes inmho very different from "regular" Coke. It tastes a bit more along
the lines of RedBull Cola.

~~~
eksith
It does have a tinge of "not-cola" about it that's hard to describe. Almost
like a carbonated cough syrup vibe to it that's not quite right.

More hacking required!

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Thiz
Is it possible to make a powder out of this formula so we only add carbonated
water at home?

Easier to transport and store instead of moving millions of gallons of water
around the world.

Just an idea for a startup.

RockaCola?

~~~
weego
You could add the oil mixture to maltodextrin to turn it into a powder until
it is hydrated where it will turn back into a slightly sweeter version of the
oil mixture. Maltodextrin is really quite cheap. It's not a startup idea
though...

------
_pmf_
How does it compare to Red Bull Cola (which some revile; I think it's really
nice and different from everything else)?

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samweinberg
"Free as in beer, not free as in speech."

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer>

~~~
vacri
The rest of the food world would call this a 'recipe', rather than 'open
source food'.

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niknak24
I can't help thinking it would be a lot cheaper to just drink normal cola.

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fasteo
Great, expanding crap-food to the open source world.

