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Ever wanted to make a cool soda flavour? This video will guide you through the basics of using essential oils and other ingredients to make your own soda syrup.

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How to Make a Flavour Essence for Soda Syrup and Cocktails

Some of the best sodas, think Pepsi, Coke and rootbeer, are made using the essential oils from fruits and spices as a flavouring. Using all-natural essential oil is a perfect way to capture the essence without the bitterness and astringency from extraction methods. However, oil and water do not mix and when most people try to make their own sodsa this way they end up with a cloudy syrup. Though that doesn't affect the taste, it can look less than appealing. The method makes a clear flavour syrup made from essential oils and it is the same technique pharmacists used at soda fountains in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was a point of pride to make clear syrups. This method is simple, only requires a few ingredients and a bit of patience. If you are unsure what essential oils are considered safe, please refer to the FDA's Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) database. This link is to a PDF of GRAS products and their general usage rates. https://www.femaflavor.org/sites/default/files/GRAS3.pdf Art of Drink https://www.artofdrink.com Fix the Pumps https://www.amazon.com/Fix-Pumps-Darcy-S-ONeil/dp/0981175910 #soda #science #flavour #drinks

Comments

Anonymous

Re: the Magnesium Carbonate step. If you're not concerned about creating a perfectly clear syrup, is there any reason to clarify your flavor essence? Also, regarding the question of terpenes/higher oil content essential oils - will this clarification step remove those flavors altogether? Or just remove the oils from the essence, but leave behind the aromatic molecule (assuming it has been successfully extracted into the alcohol?)

Darcy S. ONeil

The magnesium carbonate helps to emulsify the oil into the water. It breaks the oil up into small particles of about 10 microns, keeping them in solution longer (weeks to months) before they float to the top. You need some form of mixing to break the oils up, otherwise, you'll just get larger drops of oil in the water and the taste will be much weaker. I have a video coming up in a few weeks on emulsions to help explain what is happening and why. The clarification removes most of the terpenes, but not all of them which helps with flavour. For perfectly clear solutions, you need to remove the terpenes or specific emulsifiers (I'll explain that in the Crystal Pepsi video that's coming up, after emulsions, because the two go hand-in-hand). If hazy solutions don't bother you then you don't need to be exact, but the magnesium carbonate is an important emulsifying step that needs to be done. Otherwise, your soda will often not have the flavour level you expect. If your oils are more soluble in water, like estragole in tarragon, then mixing with MgCO3 isn't necessary. But you'll need to look up each component's solubility to figure out which ones work,. Hint, citrus oils always need emulsification or at least separation of the terpene content. Future videos will explain all this in more detail.

Anonymous

Is there a website that has reliable recipes for making copycat common soda flavors, such as mountain dew, doctor pepper, or coca-cola?

Darcy S. ONeil

Not that I know of, there are not a lot of people who have the skills to make proper soda, let alone reverse engineer a complex secret formula. But over time I'll build up a collection of different soda formulations.

Anonymous

I would like to know the quantities of vanillin and ethyl vanillin powder should be used to make the cream soda syrup in the video...quantities of all of the other ingredients are given. Thanks for the great tutorials.

Casey Stuck

Would you follow the same procedure for making and using a cinchona bark extract?

TOBIAS HOGAN

Curious, I'm making extractions with the percolator and have a flavoring base for an Amaro type beverage but it's cloudy as soon as I try to dilute the base extract. Should I add the volume of alcohol I want, then dilute with water and sugar finally clarifying with the Magnesium Carbonate,

TOBIAS HOGAN

Or, should I mix the alcohol then clarify and finally add the sugar and dilution water? I'm not super clear on this (pun he he)