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.
"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]
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.
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.
“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.
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"
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.
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.
Preface, flavoring and perfumery are very nearly the same practice. You can view the back catalog of the trade rag Perfumer and Flavorist, which will include formulae and articles of ingredients or industry developments. Of course there are books on the topic. The Good Scent Company is a free online database of aromachemicals. Further, you can buy these ingredients from places like Perfumer's Apprentice, if you wanted to get to know some of them.
For natural ingredients, you can usually just google the name of it plus "gcms" and get a list of known compounds in it with percentages.
Not an easy profession or hobby to get into, though.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Readit News
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
[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160922-the-nut-that-hel...
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
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.
Buddy they're substituting lead for cinnamon in applesauce to save a penny or two. Cheap doesn't matter at scale if you can find a way to go cheaper.
I miss Dr Pepper too, with aspartame or that other chemic it's just not the same.
https://youtu.be/sR8M4zARBXY?si=CFFmCb26yBY1YUlB
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.
For natural ingredients, you can usually just google the name of it plus "gcms" and get a list of known compounds in it with percentages.
Not an easy profession or hobby to get into, though.
I wonder why that's not the case.
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.
'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
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.
You're a better person than I—I find those mini cans frustratingly unsatisfying.
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)