8 ms·

Open Cola

146 points by vasanthagneshk 10y ago

lgbr 10y ago
I'm actually dreading the day that I go to the store and find that my favorite soda syrups have been discontinued. I prefer diet sodas over coffee for my daily caffeine intake. I started using a SodaStream a couple years ago, and I've come to really enjoy a few of the flavors that they offer, but some of them are already completely impossible to get anymore. This seems mostly due to them being acquired by Pepsi, and this has caused them to redo their entire lineup due to either lackluster sales or corporate politics. I would love it if Open Cola were not only available from manufacturers, but also covered more flavors, because it seems like making soda at home is really catching on (one only needs to look at the sales of the carbonator cap on Amazon to see this) but the availability of syrups is presenting some serious supplier risk. Edit: SodaStream wasn't acquired by Pepsi, they merely had a distribution deal. My mistake.
- dspillett 10y ago
  > it seems like making soda at home is really catching on ... but the availability of syrups is presenting some serious supplier risk. Wouldn't the answer there be to try making your own of those too? I'd bet good money that a "plain" syrup isn't difficult to make and that relevant flavouring agents are easy to come by.
  - lgbr 10y ago
    > Wouldn't the answer there be to try making your own of those too? The difference with carbonation is that I can get CO2 and carbonation equipment really easily, and in different forms from different suppliers. I could even get some yeast from my local store and make it. Carbonating water takes less time and effort than making a cup of coffee. The problem with syrups is that, as you can see from the recipe here on Open Cola, I would spend a lot of time and effort making it. The only syrup I know of that doesn't have this problem is root beer. Most grocery stores in the US seem to carry concentrate which need only be mixed with sweetener and carbonated water. Cola, lemon lime, orange, or other syrups don't have this kind of availability, apart from those from SodaStream.
    - petra 10y ago
      >> Cola, lemon lime, orange, or other syrups don't have this kind of availability Sure, they're not on every grocery store. But Amazon has them, and it's a great distribution channel for that.
    - kbutler 10y ago
      We have a little snow cone maker (ice shaver) that the kids love. We also do Italian sodas periodically. We buy just-add-water punch mix by the gallon in various flavors at our local grocery store. Should work for home-mixed sodas. The Torani flavors in the italian sodas are a good option, but probably expensive for mass soda production?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Cola, lemon lime, orange, or other syrups don't have this kind of availability Cola and lemon-lime as a mix, maybe; orange, as well as lemon and lime individually -- and also raspberry, vanilla, chocolate, hazelnut, and others -- are very commonly available flavoring syrups in most grocery stores I've seen.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Given you drink diet sodas, you must care about your health, but drinking diet sodas is more unhealthy than coffee. For one, you're clearly concerned about sugar intake (and you should be), but you see one problem with our sugar intake is that it makes our taste buds tolerant to sugar, so in time it dulls our senses for fruits or milk or other healthy foods with naturally occurring sugar. And the problem is that artificial sweeteners can make this problem even worse. This is like nicotine addicts switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes. It might be slightly healthier, but doesn't do anything for your addiction. If you're a diabetic, there have been studies suggesting that some artificial sweeteners can raise your blood sugar and can trigger an insulin response. If you're concerned about your weight I saw a study suggesting that artificial sweeteners can lead to weight gain. Of course, you know how nutrition studies are - most of them are flawed or questionable, but clearly it's a warning sign. And sugar is not the only bad ingredient in sodas. Another problem is citric acid, linked to tooth decay. Phosphoric acid has been linked to osteoporosis and also tooth decay. Coca Cola has been using Aspartame in their diet products, which has been found to cause cancer. The list goes on. I'm in the same boat as you, I simply want something to drink. Personally I drink plain water (which tastes really good after you cut your sugar intake), coffee with milk in the morning and tea during the day, all without sugar. And I eat fruits for my sugar intake. Grapes taste great this time of year. Or when I have a craving for Coca Cola, which happens from time to time, I simply drink the one with sugar in it, because it tastes better. If my health is going to suffer, at least it has to be worth it.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    (citation needed)
  - chrxss 10y ago
    Actually, this is scientifically wrong. The myth that artifical sweeteners are a bad as sugar has been disproved some time ago. For the harm, e-smoking may pose, one cannot really tell. However, the sole intake of nicotine is not as harmful as smoking tobacco. This difference is mostly due to the presence of MAOI in tobacco. Citric acid actually is worse than phosphoric acid, but how many sirups are made with citric acid? Also, if you limit your intake, you should be fine. Alas most juices comprise in part of citric acid.
- willcodeforfoo 10y ago
  Wait, when was SodaStream acquired? Last I knew they were a publically traded company.
  - dagw 10y ago
    It still is as far as I know. There where some rumors a while back that Pepsi might have been interested in putting in a bid, but nothing came of it.
  - adventured 10y ago
    They have not been acquired by Pepsi. SodaStream has a distribution deal with Pepsi.
- wccrawford 10y ago
  I really disliked their diet flavors, and most of the non-diet ones. I managed to find a great rootbeer syrup from someone else, but it still had sugar. Now, I usually either go for an energy drink syrup if I want caffeine (Mio or Power Ade have some good ones) or Koolaid liquid for no-sugar no-caffeine. I make them much stronger than my wife likes, but that's just another feature... You can customize the taste a lot. Losing your favorite flavors sucks, but the silver lining is that it pushed me to look for other flavors, and I definitely found some that I liked.
JorgeGT 10y ago
This reminded me of this Ubuntu Cola that I saw the other day: http://i.imgur.com/tsbvnuk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tsbvnuk.jpg. Sadly, it appears to be closed source!
dangravell 10y ago
It'd be cool if they published it on GitHub and allowed people to improve or adapt the recipe with PRs. Bit tenuous, but...
- MrZeus 10y ago
  I was thinking the exact same thing, so it's not tenuous. +1 to OpenCola On GitHub idea :-) Although: https://github.com/search?q=open%20cola https://github.com/search?q=open%20cola https://github.com/NeuralSandwich/OpenCola https://github.com/NeuralSandwich/OpenCola
- BattyMilk 10y ago
  I really like the way the community does it with Soylent (https://diy.soylent.com/recipes https://diy.soylent.com/recipes). Would love to see a community get behind something like this with Cola and improve on it / come up with variations. There is a "base" recipe and people experiment, publish their own spin (ie we could see a cherry cola, vanilla, etc) people up vote it and the cream rises to the top and you get some great recipes.
- michaelfeathers 10y ago
  I'd want to see an automated test suite for the build.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    Jenkins with diabetes?
rjl 10y ago
Has anyone tasted this? What was it like?
golemotron 10y ago
The picture on the wikipedia page makes it look very sickly compared to any other cola. It looks like cloudy tea and there's no visible carbonation.
- kendallpark 10y ago
  I believe that most soda companies add caramel coloring to their cola.
- linsomniac 10y ago
  You can adjust that if you make it. When I made it, I didn't put any caramel coloring in it, and it came out cloudy white. As far as carbonation, mine was WAY more carbonated than store bought soda, I was carbonating it to 50psi in the bottles, and shaking up and recarbonating until it wouldn't take any more carbonation. Then I'd let it sit a couple minutes, it was super carbonated.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    What did it taste like and where did you buy the materials for carbonating?
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    I love carbonated water. I drink flavorless, heavily carbonated water for fun. Or did, until our SodaStream broke. So honestly, I don't know if I'd actually make Open Cola if given the chance. I might just drink the water.
apatters 10y ago
This is such a cool idea. Since distribution is the real secret behind the success of Coca Cola and the beverage giants, I bet this would pair well with a Dollar Shave Club type of business model. Deliver a crate of Open Cola to people every month. Undercut the outrageous markups the big guys apply to fizzy sugar water in order to maintain their distribution monopoly. Pass the savings along to the customer. Heavy cola drinkers would love it. Massive and global market. Need to figure out what to do about the product getting a bit shaken up in the mail though :)
- GFischer 10y ago
  As other posters suggested, maybe sell the Open Cola syrup and pair with a carbonator. I want to try the Dollar Shave Club model in my country (Razors particularly have an incredible markup), but the import and tax logistics, plus starting capital requirements, are insurmountable for me. I guess I'll stick to software :)
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  If you shake a bottle and let it rest, it will "unshake" itself. So that is not really the problem. The problem is people are religious about their Cola and basically nobody has managed to convince consumers that theirs taste as good as the big brand. There are plenty of very cheap store brand cokes available in stores, none of them have managed to compete with Coca Cola.
  - kbutler 10y ago
    Even Coca Cola couldn't compete with Coca Cola...
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Here's the only problem: It's still not Coke. I may love Open Cola, I don't know, but if you're setting yourself up to compete directly with Coke, you're setting yourself up for failure. I'm pretty sure it's actually more popular than Pepsi, too.
beefield 10y ago
I think there should be some kind of open source licence for branding stuff like this. So that anyone would be allowed to sell a drink under Open Cola brand as long as it is produced as defined in the specifications, and especially face legal penalties if someone tries to sell something else as Open Cola. Then we would need an app that tells where is the closest place to get open burger with cheese and fries to compete with the convenience of knowing the quality I am getting when I opt for Big Mac.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  Basically Open Source Franchises? An interesting idea...
  - beefield 10y ago
    Yes, but not only foodstuff and restaurants, but also clothes, tools etc.
  - ctack 10y ago
    The big thing behind franchises is standards enforcement. Could you enforce standards without a centralised storehouse and tons of onsite training?
brianwawok 10y ago
> 2.36 kg plain granulated white table sugar http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guid...
- robotmlg 10y ago
  Let's see: 2.36 kg of sugar makes enough syrup for 24L of OpenCola, according to the wiki article. So, 12oz of OpenCola contains 34.9 grams of sugar [1]. 4 grams less than the equivalent amount of Coke [2]. Not to say that this isn't still a lot of sugar, just that it's comparable to the product it's trying to emulate. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+for+x:+2.36+kg+%2F+x+%3D+24+L+%2F+12+fl+oz http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+for+x:+2.36+kg+%2... [2] http://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/coca-cola/ http://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/c...
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Yes it's not WORSE than cola.. but even 12 ounces has more sugar than WHO suggests for the entire day[0]. So while the concept of "OpenCola" is cool, it's closer to "OpenDiabetes". [0] https://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/ https://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/
    - robotmlg 10y ago
      I mean, it's a non-diet soda. What did you expect?
linsomniac 10y ago
I made Open Cola years and years ago, and here's the thing that surprised me most: You won't drink it and say "Hey, this tastes just like Coke!" It tasted good, it had some of the same sorts of flavor things going on that Coke does (sweet/tangy, neroli finish), but you would never mistake it for another cola. The basic set of oils costs around $75 (most of that the neroli, IIRC), the carbonation setup I was able to do for around $100 (most of that the pressure regulator).
- gravypod 10y ago
  Approximately, for your 75$ initial investment, how many cans of cola did you make? Also would you make it again?
- teslabox 10y ago
  > You won't drink it and say "Hey, this tastes just like Coke!" The Coca-Cola company has a monopoly on coca leaf extract [1], so nothing tastes 'just like a Coke'. ;) [1] https://mises.org/blog/coca-cola-cronyism-and-war-drugs https://mises.org/blog/coca-cola-cronyism-and-war-drugs
- Question1101 10y ago
  Did you try the Red Bull Cola? Did it taste like it?
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
This is pretty cool. I don't know if it tastes any good, though, so it's not supplanting coke for me until I can ascertain that.
Nursie 10y ago
This is making me want a sodastream.
a-no-n 10y ago
If there were an open-source low/no calorie formulation of MegaBrand Zero that didn't contain carcinogens, I'd try that out.

146 points by vasanthagneshk 10y ago

lgbr 10y ago

I'm actually dreading the day that I go to the store and find that my favorite soda syrups have been discontinued. I prefer diet sodas over coffee for my daily caffeine intake. I started using a SodaStream a couple years ago, and I've come to really enjoy a few of the flavors that they offer, but some of them are already completely impossible to get anymore. This seems mostly due to them being acquired by Pepsi, and this has caused them to redo their entire lineup due to either lackluster sales or corporate politics. I would love it if Open Cola were not only available from manufacturers, but also covered more flavors, because it seems like making soda at home is really catching on (one only needs to look at the sales of the carbonator cap on Amazon to see this) but the availability of syrups is presenting some serious supplier risk. Edit: SodaStream wasn't acquired by Pepsi, they merely had a distribution deal. My mistake.

dspillett 10y ago
> it seems like making soda at home is really catching on ... but the availability of syrups is presenting some serious supplier risk. Wouldn't the answer there be to try making your own of those too? I'd bet good money that a "plain" syrup isn't difficult to make and that relevant flavouring agents are easy to come by.
- lgbr 10y ago
  > Wouldn't the answer there be to try making your own of those too? The difference with carbonation is that I can get CO2 and carbonation equipment really easily, and in different forms from different suppliers. I could even get some yeast from my local store and make it. Carbonating water takes less time and effort than making a cup of coffee. The problem with syrups is that, as you can see from the recipe here on Open Cola, I would spend a lot of time and effort making it. The only syrup I know of that doesn't have this problem is root beer. Most grocery stores in the US seem to carry concentrate which need only be mixed with sweetener and carbonated water. Cola, lemon lime, orange, or other syrups don't have this kind of availability, apart from those from SodaStream.
  - petra 10y ago
    >> Cola, lemon lime, orange, or other syrups don't have this kind of availability Sure, they're not on every grocery store. But Amazon has them, and it's a great distribution channel for that.
  - kbutler 10y ago
    We have a little snow cone maker (ice shaver) that the kids love. We also do Italian sodas periodically. We buy just-add-water punch mix by the gallon in various flavors at our local grocery store. Should work for home-mixed sodas. The Torani flavors in the italian sodas are a good option, but probably expensive for mass soda production?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Cola, lemon lime, orange, or other syrups don't have this kind of availability Cola and lemon-lime as a mix, maybe; orange, as well as lemon and lime individually -- and also raspberry, vanilla, chocolate, hazelnut, and others -- are very commonly available flavoring syrups in most grocery stores I've seen.
bad_user 10y ago
Given you drink diet sodas, you must care about your health, but drinking diet sodas is more unhealthy than coffee. For one, you're clearly concerned about sugar intake (and you should be), but you see one problem with our sugar intake is that it makes our taste buds tolerant to sugar, so in time it dulls our senses for fruits or milk or other healthy foods with naturally occurring sugar. And the problem is that artificial sweeteners can make this problem even worse. This is like nicotine addicts switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes. It might be slightly healthier, but doesn't do anything for your addiction. If you're a diabetic, there have been studies suggesting that some artificial sweeteners can raise your blood sugar and can trigger an insulin response. If you're concerned about your weight I saw a study suggesting that artificial sweeteners can lead to weight gain. Of course, you know how nutrition studies are - most of them are flawed or questionable, but clearly it's a warning sign. And sugar is not the only bad ingredient in sodas. Another problem is citric acid, linked to tooth decay. Phosphoric acid has been linked to osteoporosis and also tooth decay. Coca Cola has been using Aspartame in their diet products, which has been found to cause cancer. The list goes on. I'm in the same boat as you, I simply want something to drink. Personally I drink plain water (which tastes really good after you cut your sugar intake), coffee with milk in the morning and tea during the day, all without sugar. And I eat fruits for my sugar intake. Grapes taste great this time of year. Or when I have a craving for Coca Cola, which happens from time to time, I simply drink the one with sugar in it, because it tastes better. If my health is going to suffer, at least it has to be worth it.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  (citation needed)
- chrxss 10y ago
  Actually, this is scientifically wrong. The myth that artifical sweeteners are a bad as sugar has been disproved some time ago. For the harm, e-smoking may pose, one cannot really tell. However, the sole intake of nicotine is not as harmful as smoking tobacco. This difference is mostly due to the presence of MAOI in tobacco. Citric acid actually is worse than phosphoric acid, but how many sirups are made with citric acid? Also, if you limit your intake, you should be fine. Alas most juices comprise in part of citric acid.
willcodeforfoo 10y ago
Wait, when was SodaStream acquired? Last I knew they were a publically traded company.
- dagw 10y ago
  It still is as far as I know. There where some rumors a while back that Pepsi might have been interested in putting in a bid, but nothing came of it.
- adventured 10y ago
  They have not been acquired by Pepsi. SodaStream has a distribution deal with Pepsi.
wccrawford 10y ago
I really disliked their diet flavors, and most of the non-diet ones. I managed to find a great rootbeer syrup from someone else, but it still had sugar. Now, I usually either go for an energy drink syrup if I want caffeine (Mio or Power Ade have some good ones) or Koolaid liquid for no-sugar no-caffeine. I make them much stronger than my wife likes, but that's just another feature... You can customize the taste a lot. Losing your favorite flavors sucks, but the silver lining is that it pushed me to look for other flavors, and I definitely found some that I liked.

JorgeGT 10y ago

This reminded me of this Ubuntu Cola that I saw the other day: http://i.imgur.com/tsbvnuk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tsbvnuk.jpg. Sadly, it appears to be closed source!

dangravell 10y ago

It'd be cool if they published it on GitHub and allowed people to improve or adapt the recipe with PRs. Bit tenuous, but...

MrZeus 10y ago
I was thinking the exact same thing, so it's not tenuous. +1 to OpenCola On GitHub idea :-) Although: https://github.com/search?q=open%20cola https://github.com/search?q=open%20cola https://github.com/NeuralSandwich/OpenCola https://github.com/NeuralSandwich/OpenCola
BattyMilk 10y ago
I really like the way the community does it with Soylent (https://diy.soylent.com/recipes https://diy.soylent.com/recipes). Would love to see a community get behind something like this with Cola and improve on it / come up with variations. There is a "base" recipe and people experiment, publish their own spin (ie we could see a cherry cola, vanilla, etc) people up vote it and the cream rises to the top and you get some great recipes.
michaelfeathers 10y ago
I'd want to see an automated test suite for the build.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  Jenkins with diabetes?

rjl 10y ago

Has anyone tasted this? What was it like?

golemotron 10y ago

The picture on the wikipedia page makes it look very sickly compared to any other cola. It looks like cloudy tea and there's no visible carbonation.

kendallpark 10y ago
I believe that most soda companies add caramel coloring to their cola.
linsomniac 10y ago
You can adjust that if you make it. When I made it, I didn't put any caramel coloring in it, and it came out cloudy white. As far as carbonation, mine was WAY more carbonated than store bought soda, I was carbonating it to 50psi in the bottles, and shaking up and recarbonating until it wouldn't take any more carbonation. Then I'd let it sit a couple minutes, it was super carbonated.
- gravypod 10y ago
  What did it taste like and where did you buy the materials for carbonating?
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I love carbonated water. I drink flavorless, heavily carbonated water for fun. Or did, until our SodaStream broke. So honestly, I don't know if I'd actually make Open Cola if given the chance. I might just drink the water.

apatters 10y ago

This is such a cool idea. Since distribution is the real secret behind the success of Coca Cola and the beverage giants, I bet this would pair well with a Dollar Shave Club type of business model. Deliver a crate of Open Cola to people every month. Undercut the outrageous markups the big guys apply to fizzy sugar water in order to maintain their distribution monopoly. Pass the savings along to the customer. Heavy cola drinkers would love it. Massive and global market. Need to figure out what to do about the product getting a bit shaken up in the mail though :)

GFischer 10y ago
As other posters suggested, maybe sell the Open Cola syrup and pair with a carbonator. I want to try the Dollar Shave Club model in my country (Razors particularly have an incredible markup), but the import and tax logistics, plus starting capital requirements, are insurmountable for me. I guess I'll stick to software :)
wodenokoto 10y ago
If you shake a bottle and let it rest, it will "unshake" itself. So that is not really the problem. The problem is people are religious about their Cola and basically nobody has managed to convince consumers that theirs taste as good as the big brand. There are plenty of very cheap store brand cokes available in stores, none of them have managed to compete with Coca Cola.
- kbutler 10y ago
  Even Coca Cola couldn't compete with Coca Cola...
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Here's the only problem: It's still not Coke. I may love Open Cola, I don't know, but if you're setting yourself up to compete directly with Coke, you're setting yourself up for failure. I'm pretty sure it's actually more popular than Pepsi, too.

beefield 10y ago

I think there should be some kind of open source licence for branding stuff like this. So that anyone would be allowed to sell a drink under Open Cola brand as long as it is produced as defined in the specifications, and especially face legal penalties if someone tries to sell something else as Open Cola. Then we would need an app that tells where is the closest place to get open burger with cheese and fries to compete with the convenience of knowing the quality I am getting when I opt for Big Mac.

abritinthebay 10y ago
Basically Open Source Franchises? An interesting idea...
- beefield 10y ago
  Yes, but not only foodstuff and restaurants, but also clothes, tools etc.
- ctack 10y ago
  The big thing behind franchises is standards enforcement. Could you enforce standards without a centralised storehouse and tons of onsite training?

brianwawok 10y ago

> 2.36 kg plain granulated white table sugar http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guid...

robotmlg 10y ago
Let's see: 2.36 kg of sugar makes enough syrup for 24L of OpenCola, according to the wiki article. So, 12oz of OpenCola contains 34.9 grams of sugar [1]. 4 grams less than the equivalent amount of Coke [2]. Not to say that this isn't still a lot of sugar, just that it's comparable to the product it's trying to emulate. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+for+x:+2.36+kg+%2F+x+%3D+24+L+%2F+12+fl+oz http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+for+x:+2.36+kg+%2... [2] http://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/coca-cola/ http://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/c...
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Yes it's not WORSE than cola.. but even 12 ounces has more sugar than WHO suggests for the entire day[0]. So while the concept of "OpenCola" is cool, it's closer to "OpenDiabetes". [0] https://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/ https://authoritynutrition.com/how-much-sugar-per-day/
  - robotmlg 10y ago
    I mean, it's a non-diet soda. What did you expect?

linsomniac 10y ago

I made Open Cola years and years ago, and here's the thing that surprised me most: You won't drink it and say "Hey, this tastes just like Coke!" It tasted good, it had some of the same sorts of flavor things going on that Coke does (sweet/tangy, neroli finish), but you would never mistake it for another cola. The basic set of oils costs around $75 (most of that the neroli, IIRC), the carbonation setup I was able to do for around $100 (most of that the pressure regulator).

gravypod 10y ago
Approximately, for your 75$ initial investment, how many cans of cola did you make? Also would you make it again?
teslabox 10y ago
> You won't drink it and say "Hey, this tastes just like Coke!" The Coca-Cola company has a monopoly on coca leaf extract [1], so nothing tastes 'just like a Coke'. ;) [1] https://mises.org/blog/coca-cola-cronyism-and-war-drugs https://mises.org/blog/coca-cola-cronyism-and-war-drugs
Question1101 10y ago
Did you try the Red Bull Cola? Did it taste like it?

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

This is pretty cool. I don't know if it tastes any good, though, so it's not supplanting coke for me until I can ascertain that.

Nursie 10y ago

This is making me want a sodastream.

a-no-n 10y ago

If there were an open-source low/no calorie formulation of MegaBrand Zero that didn't contain carcinogens, I'd try that out.