If you can’t source it, I’m not going to tell you that you SHOULD pretend to be a bottling company and ask a gum provider to send you some free samples, but you could and the amount they send you will last the rest of your life. TIC gums is pretty awesome and if you’re into frozen desserts has some incredible gum mixtures for ice creams, sorbets, etc.

Also, consider just using water soluble flavor concentrates and skipping emulsification all together. That’s what most pros do and it’s why Sprite isn’t cloudy like it would be if you used oils. My favorite suppliers that sell in consumer and pro-sumer qtys are Apex Flavors and Nature’s Flavors.

This probably won’t work for Cola as I think some of those ingredients have all of their flavor molecules in the oils, but as a general rule, if you can buy it at the store and it is clear, it is made using water soluble. If it is brown it probably isn’t, hence the caramel color additive.

It took me 4-5 tries to get to a recipe that tastes good. Earlier tries involved cooking the mate, which led to a bitter taste. Cold brewing led to way better results.

Here is my current recipe for 5 bottles (á 0,5l):

  - 60g mate tea leaves (coarse) [1]
  - 500ml water
  - 65g cane sugar
  - 1 squeezed lemon
  - soda water

  1. Add 60g of mate to a 500ml bottle and fill up the rest with water
  2. Let it sit in the fridge for 12-24h
  3. Then strain the mate from the liquid
  4. Use a filter cloth or a tea towel (soak with water first)   to filter out the remaining suspended solids
  5. Put sugar and the lemon juice together into a pot and start caramelizing the sugar
  6. Then add the filtered mate tea and take the pot from the stove
  7. Now distribute it equally on the 5 bottles and fill up the rest with soda

[1] Mate tea that I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Playadito-Traditional-Colonia-Liebig-...

That valve will attach to a standard female fitting, which you can put on the end of a hose coming from a pressure regulator, which will attach to a full-size CO2 cylinder available from a brewing or gas supply shop. CO2 refills are a lot cheaper this way.

Put cold water in the bottle with some extra space at the top. Squeeze out the air and attach the valve cap. Set the pressure regulator, connect it to the bottle, open the regulator's output valve, and watch the bottle that was slightly crushed by your squeezing expand back to its normal shape. Slosh the water around with pressure applied for maybe 10-30 seconds. Close the output valve and disconnect.

Voilà. Carbonated water.

IIRC, PETE soda bottles are pressurized to about 50 psi for retail shelves. I don't think they're likely to burst until well beyond 100 psi, and they'll deform before they burst, so if you're careful, you can go a little higher than 50 and make fizzier water than what you can buy in the store. I have used 70 psi many times.

Read up on precautions for handling pressurized gas before doing any of this. Wear eye protection. Don't turn your bottle or gas cylinder into an unguided missile. :)

Sadly, I don't have any info on microplastics released by this process. (Nor by countertop carbonators and their rigid plastic flasks.) I wish I knew of a suitable steel bottle to use instead.

IIRC it's not a great idea to drink carbonated beverages with lots of sugar or acid. Each of these elements weakens your teeth, and in combination the effect is much greater.

Saccharin was almost made illegal in the USA, until Teddy Roosevelt stepped in. He liked it in his tea.

The soda industry generally prefers aspartame/acesulfame potassium, as it has the right aftertaste profile to replace sugar.

This content creator used a mass spectrometer to find the flavoring used in Coca-Cola.

Add modifinil and peptides and you'll have your latest soylent startup.

Sad to hear she passed away recently this month.

Highly recommend Bakto's natural flavors.

Tips for working on sugar-free recipes: In some countries (like Canada), soft-drink manufacturers are required to disclose the exact amount of each artificial sweetener they use in the drink. So you can easily grab those numbers from Canadian product listings for use in your own recipes. E.g. 355ml of Diet Coke contains 131 mg aspartame + 15mg ace-K.

Also, aspartame can be difficult/slow to dissolve. It dissolves better in solutions with a low pH and a warmer temperature.

https://cube-cola.org/

I think you'd end up paying less, too. I paid about 20 bucks for the concentrate bottle plus shipping, made 1.75L of it, thought it was fine but couldn't quite replace Coke in my diet, and didn't buy again. Had I done it all from scratch, I'm pretty sure I would've paid more and had a bunch of essential oil bottles leftover, going to waste.

Indeed the 90s were an interesting time: https://youtu.be/2za2IK8FQoM

What I find really interesting is how little actual oil is needed for such a large volume. Makes you realize how much of “cola taste” is just perception tricks rather than bulk ingredients.

Have you tried measuring how stable the emulsion is over time? I’d be curious how long it stays homogeneous without separation.

Tried making it. Certainly interesting! But not something I’ll make again.

https://www.youtube.com/@Artofdrink

First of all you need to make quality carbonated water (de-aerate water by boiling it, carbonate it when ice cold, use heavy cold glasses, don't use ice):

Carbonating Water: The 2 Most Important Things To Do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBNJ7yzIvtw

Here's his root beer forumula:

How to Make Root Beer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIUMFkDV4FE

>Making root beer is really quite simple and anyone can do it in about 20 minutes. The core flavour is wintergreen oil and then there are additional complementary flavours that give the root beer its character.

He has several videos about formulating cola and many other flavors too:

How Coca-Cola Gets Its Iconic Taste

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi8o06qv7m8

The Origin of the Coca Cola Flavour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-1tGNobqi0

How to Make Cola, like Coca-Cola or Pepsi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2yLvseG5UM

What Coke and Pepsi Don’t Tell You About Caramel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7CFZAw3dkA

And if you want old school Coke flavor, here's one on how to simulate the smell of cocaine:

Coca leaf and Cocaine Aroma Used in Coca-Cola

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMcaYtOIbes

>Cocaine, or at least the aroma compounds in coca-leaf is an important flavour component of Coca-Cola today and possibly other colas, historically. So the question you might ask is "what does cocaine smell like?" And here is the answer. If you've ever thought about making your own version of Coca-Cola and thought something was missing, this might be that piece to the puzzle.

You use the same stuff they train drug sniffing dogs with (methyl benzoate and methyl cinnamate). Also there's another ingredient, truxilic acid, that's extremely hard to get, and is much more expensive ($300/gram) than real cocaine.

The result tasted shockingly similar to coca cola.

So I did some research and it turns out that what's labelled as "catuaba bark" actually refer to a couple different unrelated herbs. But ONE of the sources of "catuaba bark" is Erythroxylum vaccinifolium. Erythroxylum is the coca genus. I have no idea if this specific species contains cocaine but what I CAN confirm is that there are sellers within the US that grow and sell this "herb". Which means you don't have to worry about customs intercepting your order at the border.

I stopped consuming these, any that I tried was leaving awful chemical aftertaste that I just cannot get used to.

So instead I was DIY drinks by mixing concentrated fruit juice (with no added sweeteners) with sparkling water.

Also be careful if drink says "natural flavourings" - it's a loophole to add sweetener that is not classified as sweetener, so they don't have to put it on the label, but still tastes awful.

for now (out of laziness), I just grab plain sparkling water and add Stur drops

Also didn’t expect to be pulling recipes off GitHub, but I’ll take that any day over those paywalled sites

Definitely want to give this a try!