COCA COLA: THE POT AT THE RAINBOW'S END (Patreon)

After around 50 trials, I've come to realize that making Coca Cola is like trying to find the gold at the end of a rainbow: as soon as you get over one hill, you realize you haven't actually gotten closer to the end!

Okay, that might be a bit dramatic. Despite running into new flavor-related hurdles, I have actually made pretty great progress. At this point, I have a passable cola that easily surpasses other cola clones like OpenCola, the "Glen and Friends Cooking" squozen cola, and Cube-Cola...which might sound a little weird, since I basically said that in my last post, lol.

It turned out that my previous excitement was a bit misplaced. I had tasted so many sodas that day that basically everything felt similar to coke, but when I tasted my best sample the next day, the differences were glaringly obvious. The floral notes were very noticeable, even though the neroli and lavender were both at or below 1%. Further testing (and two different mass spectrums) revealed that neither of these are important to modern Coca Cola! The amount of orange I used was also a bit extreme, since coke has more of a sour lemon flavor. The changes I made were as follows:

1. Tea tree oil was reduced and a-terpineol was added. Tea tree oil is mostly 4-terpineol, and Coca Cola seems to be mostly a-terpineol (with noticeable 4-terpineol still present), so I basically modified the ratio from 20% tea tree to 8% tea tree and 10% a-terpineol.

2. Citrus ratios were changed from mostly orange to a more even mix (18% orange, 15% lime, 17% lemon)...still need to tweak it though

3. The pressed coriander oil (which contained unnecessary fatty oils) was swapped for coriander essential oil, and reduced to 9% due to its higher potency

4. Nutmeg was boosted to 14%, black pepper was dropped slightly to 4%, and cassia (cinnamon) remained the same (5%)

The flavor was also much too strong: despite the other recipes using close to 90uL of essential oils per liter of soda (enough for them to form droplets on the surface), I found that 20uL or less gave the correct strength.

Currently, this recipe is excellent; not just as a goofy homemade clone, but as a beverage in general. The oils completely dissolve (unlike the other versions that are basically just semi-stable emulsions), its not overpowering or gross, and it's fine the next day....but it does have a few weak areas. The lemon flavor is a bit too potent, making the final product more akin to a lemondrop candy. The essential oils in their current ratios also seem to leave a different mouthfeel: again, Coca Cola is like a lightly-spiced sour lemon tea, while mine is more sweet despite having the same amount of sugar. This might be due to the coriander seed oil, which is mostly linalool like neroli and lavender, albeit as a different enantiomer with a different flavor...its still a sweet, floral alcohol though, so I will be reducing it. I also purchased pure caffeine from Carolina Chemical, and I have green tea extract, so toying with these might help bring up the astringency a little!

This is where the pot-of-gold reference starts to come in. No matter how much I seem to tweak, there is always something obviously different about Coca Cola. Increase the tea oils and alcohols? It tastes vaguely tea-like. Increase different citrus notes? It tastes more like a lemon drop or floor cleaner. More nutmeg or coriander (both smell a lot like cola)? Forget it, the mess either develops an aftertaste or just gets weird. I guess I could increase the pepper oil, or maybe the cassia, but idk. Maybe it's the fact that they don't use random tea oils and extracts instead of decocainized coca leaf extract?