Hacker News

Posts like this are why I read HN comments first.

Posts like this remind we how much better it is to be as part of a large trading bloc to be able to easily order/sample these sort of things, rather than it likely being a pain in the arse to get locally.

> Blend it with any dry ingredients like sugar before using.

That's the key.

I'm not an expert - and have only experience making/mixing liquids for cocktails - but Gum Arabic (often used to add a thicker mouthfeel in sugar syrups) isn't a great emulsifier but needs to be full homogenised with the oils before adding to more liquid - exceptionally high speed, aggressive blending for longer than it looks like is needed, to create tiny droplets which the gum arabic then stabilises, or the oil will end up separating after a few hours/days.

Sucros Esters, Propylene Glycol, or Polysorbate 80 (which I haven't used) probably do a better job but only Sucros Esters could be considered 'natural'

Another fun use for gum arabic is making watercolor paints, you can do it with your kids sourcing the pigment from different soils. pour water and let the heavy big particle fall to the bottom and source the small ones from the top and mix some ingredients

What's the use in ice cream?

My ice cream is just ... ice cream. Cream, milk, sugar.

Why did you get a commercial bottling license?

I wonder how they pulled off Crystal Pepsi.

A neat trick, even if nobody cared.

What do you use to bottle things in, like what bottles?

What are your, um, favorite gum providers?

Thank you for helping contribute to reduced trust in the society. Fuck them big dudes, amirite?

To be honest, I don't have that much fun in playing around with the recipe, but I found this one and it just works for me: https://github.com/xil-se/FreeMate

But nowadays I just drink plain yerba mate with a splash of lemon juice, no added sugar. I do the FreeMate in summer a bit.

Edit: Btw, if anyone of you bought yerba mate before and thought it didn't taste great, for me personally there are huge differences between them. I like the milder ones a lot more that don't have much powder. If you have been disappointed before maybe try again with a different brand and don't forget the splash of lemon juice, that makes a crazy big difference

65 grams of sugar for 500ml is "less sugar"?How, if a 500ml bottle of club mate only has 25 grams? Did you mean 6.5 grams perhaps?

Edit: My bad, I didn't realise that was for 5 bottles. Carry on.

Love that you made homemade Club Mate! My favorite soda by far. I didn’t realize it was just tea before now. They have made a sugar free version now as well, but that not as cool as making your own

Late capitalism is when a traditional tea recipe is referred to as "homemade ClubMate (R)".

You can buy mate tea as tea sachets, "Mate leão" has a nice taste blend.

Why not do it with the leaves? This is harder as their taste profile is very uneven.

For the sour taste, add citric acid.

I'm pretty sure that if you toy around with the amount of citric acid, sugar & dillution you'll get a similar taste, or something even more palatable for you.

I've never found the right tea leaves. Most of them were to bitter and some had just a totally different profile than the original clubmate. How close are the ones you are using?

I found it cheaper and much, much more convenient to get an adapter to refill the countertop carbonator's CO2 cylinders from a standard 20 lb CO2 cylendar. That way, you can carbonate from the much smaller and easier to use countertop unit, you can service multiple countertop carbonators from a single larger tank, and you can leave the larger tank shut off and away from living areas so that a leak doesn't pose a hazard.

Use Perrier glass bottles. They're designed for low-level carbonation and can be resealed.

I guess the definition of "overpriced" varies, but I pay 7 or 8 EUR for one bottle of CO2 and it lasts like 3-4 weeks for 2 people, just to put it into perspective.

I’ve done this for years and never ruptured a bottle, I set the regulator to 60psi.

I’d like a metal bottle too but haven’t found one - I presume spraying some co2 into it would be enough to get the plain air out since you obviously can’t squeeze the air out.

FWIW the counter carbonators aren't too bad if you use a third-party refill instead of the expensive branded ones. Also, you can just use dry ice to refill the bottles rather than swapping for new ones. If you don't want to geek out on a complete DIY setup, the countertop models are definitely a little more convenient.

As a kid I built a pneumatic musket with both 20 oz and 2 liter bottles and filled them up to 80 psi repeatedly, and never had one pop.

I wouldn't recommend going that high for a carbonated drink though, unless you like to live dangerously while opening your soda.

I bought an Aarke (soda stream comp) and a CO2 hose. Now I use one of the 5lb tanks. It's great.

Here you go: https://www.kegoutlet.com/carbonating-kits.html

Pro-tip: cold water.

Could you do the math for the raw material cost of 355ml?

GCMS is neat, we have a really nice one at work but don't use it to reverse engineer soft drinks. Although, if we had a bit more time we probably could.

It is with utter disappointment that I must inform everyone that, after 3 months, there is still a complete lack of "Koala Cola" imitators popping up. I want to try one so much.

I've got a couple of sweetener-free recipes I use with my soda maker, though I should warn you nobody else I've given them to likes them. But I like them well enough.

One is a couple of squirts of vanilla, a couple of squirts of lemon juice, and a bit of salt. Salt is probably an underappreciated drink ingredient for this sort of thing. It turns out it isn't in your soft drinks just to make you want to drink more. This makes something that is related to cream soda, except for the aspects of cream soda that come from being crammed full of sugar, which I can't do much about.

I also have a mix I keep around made out of 3 tablespoons salt, 1 cup vanilla, 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1/2 cup lime juice, and about 1/3rd cup almond extract. I measure it all (except the salt which I just put in directly) into a single 2 cup Pyrex dish and just sort of eyeball the last 1/3rd cup of almond extract, then funnel it in to a holder. I use McCormick 32 oz vanilla and almond extract for this and order bulk RealLemon and RealLime juice for this from Amazon, and mix it into one of the leftover bottles and keep it around refrigerated. 3 squirts and "whatever dribbles in" as I'm removing the bottle is what I used for one DrinkMate bottle. To taste, as all of this is, of course. If nothing else this is pretty cheap per drink.

You can also mix unsweetened electrolytes in, but you have to wait until after you dilute the mixture with water or it'll react with the lemon & lime juice. Salt you can keep in the mix but not electrolytes in general. It adds a certain body to the mix even if you're not interested in the electrolytes per se, and a single packet of them lasts a long time.

You're not going to go into business selling this stuff, but if you're already drinking unsweetened apple cider vinegar & lemon/lime juice as a beverage flavoring we might just have some compatible tastes here. Carbonation is required, though, otherwise the vanilla and the almond extract don't come through at all.

Sparkling iced tea would likely hit a spot.

If you can get it where you are, have you considered trying malta[0][1]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta_(soft_drink)

[1] https://www.findmeabrewery.com/blog/malta/

Me too except I just use rye malt instead of the bread and without making any dough with it. The malt is cheap and easy to get in UK thanks to home brewing suppliers whereas rye bread is super expensive.

My only challenge is controlling the gassiness - it’s so vigorous that the moment I even slightly open the cap the whole thing fizzes up like crazy - opening it normally would result in a kvass fountain shooting up like 30cm. :)

How does this not become alcoholic?

bpc-157 soda would sell like hotcakes. Putting the "Heal" in "Healthy"

Kombucha is the best "natural" soft drink for me, too. It's not entirely sugar-free, though (even though you can get it to low-sugar with longer fermentation).

what did you bottle it in?

Oooh that sounds good! I’ve been meaning to add fermented stuff to my diet.

Are there any reasonably priced water carbonation systems that aren't sodastream adjacent?

I know there are hacks for the older sodastreams where you can buy a large tank from a foodgas company, but what I really want is a machine in my house that I can bring a cup to and fill with soda without it costing me ~$1,000.

> acetic acid (Vitamin C)

ascorbic acid!

I Googled the BDS Boycott list at a glance...the top link (https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott) mentions a bunch of companies, including Sodastream. The immediate issue I see is that Sodastream is owned by PepsiCo, Inc. That immediately makes them complicit as well. PepsiCo was also facing a lawsuit regarding a partnership with Walmart for price fixing (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/01/08/walmart-peps...) until the Trump administration threw it out (https://apnews.com/article/ftc-pepsico-trump-walmart-2cd8b42...).

I bring all this up to say that even if everyone boycotts sodastream, it won't do diddly to the actual folks responsible. I bet the same goes for others on that list. Boycotts also don't usually work in general. Most of the time it takes full on government intervention, lawsuits, etc. to change things.

People are always so laser focussed on the latest trendy thing, but why not just boycott all huge corporations/organisations? It’s a much simpler rule that achieves the same thing and you have the added benefit of boycotting companies that haven’t had their corruption uncovered… yet!

Well done for the BDS attempt ... had to get my Mum to return her Sodastream as she had no idea.

But I have to say, this whole thing is enough to turn me off soft drinks altogether.

Maybe that's the point?

Those bags full of crystals look like something out of Breaking Bad, lol, but I appreciate getting rid of the sugar and caffeine.

Some sparkling water and some cordials or dilutes has to be ~ better!

Thanks for the reminder to switch!

>BDS boycott list

Looks like a great initiative. Anyone knows about a similar list, but for companies that support Russia and occupation of Ukraine?

20 bucks for 1.75ml of cola seems like pretty bad value.

Yes, this video (and HN commentary https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543509 ) are an amazing nerdy deep dive into a taste chemistry subject. And seems to have uncovered new information (to the general public that is, maybe not new to Cola co insiders)

You know it's getting serious when they science it, using a mass spectrometer. And then keep at it for a year through many experiments that did not produce a result. That attitude of "the experiment didn't fail, it successfully eliminated one of the possibilities" is very scientific.

I wonder if we'd have the same reaction if cola had never been darkened. We wouldn't, right?

I thought of those. I remember drinking some. It tastes like cola but somehow different.

But then again I liked new coke. And that wierd “ok soda” that doesn’t exist anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda

Fun fact: Angostura bitters has gentian root extract in it, which is also in the northeastern US's favorite regional soda specialty: Moxie! If you like that, you'll probably also like Moxie.

It's also a great way to taste bitters, generally, and a pretty decent substitute for a drink if you're trying to cut back.

Try walnut or cherry bitters sometimes for a similar but different enough to be interesting flavor.

wait, are those the only ingredients?

The Stepan company in New Jersey is the only entity legally allowed to import coca leaves (aside from the DEA, ICE, the FBI and a few others that buy and sell all the time) and extract the illegal methyl benzoyl ecgonine (C17H21NO4) leaving the flavor compounds. Query whether they would sell the de-cocainized product to a soft drink hobbyist. Friends in Colombia report that Sek Cola sold there has the ecgonine ingredient. Not sure how close the recipe replicates the original Atlanta beverage.

I often carbonate my tap water and drink it straight, and have never thought the taste was any different from commercial seltzers. Then again, my tap water is just as good as or better than commercial bottled water, likely because it is mostly from mountain spring and snow melt, that travels down rocky high-flow streams.

There's a Nile Red video where Nigel carbonated water with carbon from diamonds, and when he tasted it, he complained that it tasted like his local tap water, which wasn't very good.

What's the water like in the Netherlands?

The bit about dogs just gives me nightmares. I picture a few puffs of the dust from that dispersing in my kitchen during that experiment, and then every item then in the vicinity becoming a beacon for drug dogs for the rest of my life :D

Same but for Diet Coke. Would make ridiculous amounts of it

If those kinds of warnings were required on naturally occurring products, pretty much everything in your pantry would need them.

A 28-oz cylinder of table salt, that can be easily had for $1 at a grocery store, could kill eight healthy adult men, if they each consumed a third of a cup in one sitting.

A five-gallon carafe of water used in most water coolers holds enough water to kill two adult men, if they drank it as fast as they could.

There's a bunch of foods that are poisonous if prepared wrong. I can't find the lethal dose, but a bag of raw kidney beans could kill multiple people. A cassava/tapioca root can kill you too. Eating a bottle nutmeg probably won't kill you, but it might make you wish it did.

Of course, it would be difficult to consume enough of any of these things to hurt yourself, (except for the beans) because we're able to sense when we are consuming dangerous quantities or types of foods, but it's not flawless, hence the need for tradition to pass down how to cook, or warning labels for foods that aren't prepared in traditional ways.

The dose (often) makes the poison.

Citrus fruit itself is generally regarded as fine to eat. Concentrating the oils can make them irritating (and flammable, etc) but that’s essentially undone by diluting them into a syrup and then diluting the syrup into an actual drink.

Yes! Also his book "Fix the Pumps" https://a.co/d/0intXOn1 which has a bizarre title and cover art, but is right up there with "Liquid Intelligence" for traditional sodas.

But did you know the fingernails were clipped perfectly? What a delight to see in these photos.

The recipe is using citric acid, instead. The tastes are slightly different, but citric acid is easier to get.

Right? In the summer, there's two things I drink. Cold water overnight infused with whatever (lemon, cucumber, mint, etc) and carbonated water from the store. Both are cheap to make and pleasant when it is hot. Neither has added sugar. You can also infuse with fruits like strawberries. In the other parts of the year (esp. winter) I make a can of tea (nearly 1,5l) with two teabags. One cup of tea is about 0,2l so it will last the whole day, and it stays hot for 24h. Make in morning and you got whole day together (we are two drinking this). Sometimes goes to waste cause of being away, too hot weather. There's a lot of good fusion brands available (I like Yogi Tea's blends a lot), you can also make your own herbal mix. Just be careful with some herbs and medication.

The carbonated water and lemon in water make for an acidic liquid. This is nice when it is hot, but it is also bad for teeth. So I do try to limit these somewhat, never drink it right before brushing, brush 2x a week, and floss with those special toothpicks. I also drink the acidic stuff with the main meal in evening when the teeth already get a blast from the meal, regularly at least.

As a former wine drinker (who can also appreciate special beers and heavy liquor) I was not able to stick to one beer on friday evening, and I recognized the struggle to battle an addiction, being an alcoholic in disguise. I've been sober past years, approx 4, apart from an occasional mistake due to alcohol in a desert or an intentional tiramisu during Christmas.

I also still drink coffee, but with caffeine not so much. Mainly in morning/afternoon. As a kid I was a fan of cola, the coca cola one (for some reason never liked other ones like Aldi's or Pepsi much; there's a lot of choice these days). Club Mate is a bit hard to source and the pfand is annoying (justified, but...) to send back from NL. But I been able to quit that in puberty. So, while I like cheap/bulk, I am not sure what I could gain from DIY soda (the carbonated water is cheap and we get the groceries at the doorstep, also useful since we don't have a car).

A easy solution might be to mix the concentrate with sparkling/carbonated water?

I made Open Cola once, and hooked it up to CO2 canisters and a beer tap (the other tap had home made beer). It's certainly better than mixing with soda water or using a SodaStream.

> aspartame (yeah yeah not proven to cause cancer, but still not a great sweetener)

Compared to what? Aspartame is almost certainly the most studied artificial sweetener in existence, and the safety profile looks very good.