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All right, this guy already did this. I think we should stop this episode. He already did it. He tested this for a year. Way more scientific than this. I'm trying to do this in one afternoon. On today's episode of CLA Recreates, we are tackling a personal favorite and also personal challenge of mine. I'm going to recreate or try to recreate Coca-Cola. It actually makes sense to me when I was researching Coke that it started out as like a health tonic because there's something to me that's like when I take one sip, it's like a jolt into my bloodstream. It's the caffeine, it's the bubbles, it's the sugar. I like drink soda, like mostly diet soda in high school and like it never really was a thing that I carried into adulthood cuz
I was like, "Oh, it's not good for you." like your teeth, like you know the sugar or whatever, the fake sugar. And now as an adult, Coke became like my vacation treat. And now, and now I'm kind of just like maybe like one every now and then. So, our local grocery store had the glass bottles, iconic, because you do taste out of the can. You do taste the metal in the can, I think. So, I do like the glass bottles. They had This is original Coke. I also had Mexican Coke in the glass bottles. And here's the thing, actually, my brain is more wired for Coke Zero because that's what I drank growing up. I think Coke Zero came out like when I was a teenager. And so, it's like we all were like, "Oh my gosh,
it doesn't have aspartame. Like, we're going to drink Coke Zero." So, that's what tastes right to me actually. So, it's like I maybe have a secret stash of Let's see. And it's not secret. I've really embraced it. Listen, I would just say like as a mom, sometimes you need like a little 8 oz can of Coke Zero. So, it's like I do have these. Brilliant. By the way, whoever came up with this mini can, the Coca-Cola company is really lucky that they get to take advantage of the natural flavors loophole, like listing your ingredients because it's very There's like six things on here. carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, and caffeine telling me essentially nothing. [snorts] But there are certain flavors that I
feel like you can pull from Coke where it's like there's definitely something citrusy in it. The caramelly flavors, it is the sweet sour. It's a sweet sour thing. I did some research and I had to plan in advance because I had to make a couple extracts for this. There's also like the spiciness like this. There's like something cinnamony or cinnamon extract. The only time I told Harris that I was doing this or mentioned it, he was like cinnamon extract like he was he's very like insistent on the idea of like a cinnamon thing cuz there is that spiciness to it also. So my mission is to create a syrup that then you like add to carbonated water. And that syrup should be sweet, tangy, a little spicy,
and like can we get somewhere in the realm by using ingredients that I have access to? So the color is, you know, it's not opaque. It's pretty reddish. It's like an amber brown. So, from what I read, Coke syrup is a mixture of what the Coke company terms merchandises. And by the way, the name Coca-Cola comes from two extracts that are ingredients in the formula. One is cocoa, like cocoa leaves. It's what you cannot get. I tried it. Doesn't you can't get those. And then cola, like the cola nut. The colonut you can get. But the way that modern Coke syrup is made, it is through a mixture of what they call merchandises, like in the Coke factory.
and they're numbered 1 through nine. So number one is sugar. In most cases it's like high fructose corn syrup. Number two is caramel coloring. Number three is caffeine. I think most caffeine that's added to something is the result of the process of decaffeinating coffee beans. And so it's like a just I don't have that. Number four is phosphoric acid which we saw listed in the ingredient list. I don't know what phosphoric acid is, but I decided to get citric acid. So, that's what I'm going to use. Now, merchandises 5 through 9 are up for debate and are sort of secret. Merchandise 7X, this is I think this is all from Wikipedia. Is thought to contain a mixture of essential oils such as orange, lime, and lemon.
So that's that like citrusy flavor that comes through. Now for that I mean I have citric acid which comes from citrus but for that I decided to make a mixture called oliosaccharam. I remember learning about this several years ago. It's a cocktail ingredient and it's a syrup made by muddling sugar and citrus peel. Basically what I did was I took a bunch of peels. I muddled it. I have a mortar and pestle. I added sugar and this has been sitting here for a couple days. So ooliosaccharum means like oil sugar and so it really pulls out a lot of the essential oils in the peel and you're supposed to get a syrup. I probably added too much sugar here but it will dissolve. Now part of those merchandises
5 through 9 at one point and maybe not anymore were spent cocoa leaves but I can't get that. Another one is cola nut extract. So about two months ago, I went online and I bought cola nuts. Then I went to the liquor store and I bought Everclear, which is what you use. This is basically grain alcohol, what you use to make extracts. Yeah. 124. So I started this in early December. And I started a colon extract. So what I did was I chopped them up, I toasted them, I rubbed them, and where the skin came off, I took it off. And where it stayed on, I left it. So this has been going for almost 2 months now.
The other parts of merchandises 5 through 9, there's thought to be some content of vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, and lavender. So I have sort of various ways of adding these flavors. Another ingredient is naroli extract. Now I didn't know what naroli was. I knew it was like a skincare ingredient. I literally have like a naroli face mist. So I was not familiar with this ingredient as having any culinary applications. But naroli apparently is a form of citrus. So when I smell it, all I smell is like my face my like face mist. So I but I bought this because I don't know that I can I've never seen a fruit that is naroli.
What's this? Oh, aroma patch for face mask. I'm going to make some caramel. I'm going to cook some sugar into a caramel and like try to come up with something that feels Oh, I forgot I made something else. I started a different extract about a month ago. I also started making my own cinnamon extract once I had ever clear. I was like, what else can I extract? Basically, m smells really good. So, there was some kind of yuzu of something or other that was in here. I'm always like reusing little jars. This is a super handy. So, I don't know what this was, but now it is cinnamon extract. So, like what I don't know yet is what I'm mostly concerned with is one like getting rid of the alcohol at
least aroma from the extracts. Like I'm not sure how that's maybe I cook it a little bit, but I don't want to destroy some of the flavor by heating it. And I'm concerned with achieving a kind of syrup consistency, but I think if I can get a kind of caramelbased syrup, that will be my base. It's not so much of a game plan as it is like a list of things that I'm going to add to try to achieve the flavor. Number one is caramel. I'm going to cook the sugar, make into syrup. Two is like just tinker with the formula, tinker. And then three is mix with selzer. So that's the game plan. Coke caramel. Take one. I'm going to make a dry caramel. I have some sugar right here. And with a dry caramel, like I'm not dissolving
it in water first. I'm just melting granulated sugar. And I'm eyeballing this. And then basically, I'm going to cook a caramel and then add water to dissolve it into a syrup. Also, I'm not going to cook a very dark caramel. I don't think for any like normal application, I would cook a really dark caramel cuz I want the bitterness, but not for this. Like a light caramel is as far as I'm going to go. I'm gonna add some water to it. And I want to only add enough to dissolve the caramel into a syrup. I'm just going to keep warming it and stirring and maybe adding more water as needed until all of the caramel is dissolved. I've been told that I've been scooped and that someone on the internet already is claiming success at having
recreated Coke. And I really want to see what they did. I'm going to watch it the way I watch most YouTube videos, which is on two times speed, which is how Harris watches me. I hear myself talking really fast. Harris, are you watching me on two times speed? Now, believe it or not, we already know over 99% of Coca-Cola's makeup, at least by weight. A liter of Coke contains roughly 110 g of sugar, 96 millig of caffeine, and 0.64 gram of phosphoric acid based on pH measurements and other scientific analysis. What we don't know is what makes up the last ingredient, natural flavors.
Get more crypto and set up recurring buying. crypto algorithm, huh? Never in my life. In terms of flavors, nutmeg, cinnamon, and coriander seem to contribute the most to the iconic flavor, but not strong. Nutmeg, cinnamon, and coriander seem to contribute the most to the iconic Coke flavor. So, this guy made this video and he did a way better job. I'm not really going for like chemical composition, obviously. I am trying to do it the way I do recreates which is to make a real thing out of real ingredients and hopefully have it taste like the original. The challenge, the unique challenge for Coke is that with recreates, so much of what I can rely on is at
least getting it to look like the original. And then the like and I'm also I'm almost always going for like enhanced flavor and like similar look. And this is like I'm actually just trying to match the flavor and I can't rely on any visual um achievement of like getting it close except for maybe color. The tannins I think was really interesting because there is a weird effect with Coke where like you there's the tiniest bit of like dry dryness right when you drink it right don't you feel like that happens and maybe that bitterness from tannins is really important to balancing it I don't he used like actual tannin is like a compound I have tea that has tannins like I don't know do you think tannins are in the colonut when you extract it
I don't know what's in the colon nut I guess there's caffeine in the colonut so I'm kind of adding caffeine He did say like the caffeine originally came from the colonut content. I do appreciate the kind of like helpful info that like naroli and lavender were not did not factor in. It's funny. It's like we clearly read the same Wikipedia of like what are the best sort of like educated guesses of what's in it. I'm okay to not use the naroli. I'm never going to smell it and not think about my face mist. According to his research and results, the coriander was really important. The coriander and nutmeg. So, what I want to do is infuse this syrup with the coriander and nutmeg. So, I'm going to add
a little more water and I'm going to grab the spice. This is like the opposite of that guy's video. This is like could not be less scientific. I'm going to dash of the coriander. He was like, "It's this many parts per million." I'm like, I give it four taps of my finger. It's just not my style to like I hit a point where I'm just like, I don't care this much. I get like easily distracted. I'm like, I'd rather move on. I'm going to take this off the heat and I'll pour it into a jar. I hope at the very least I get it to look like the color of Coke. Coke tinker take one. So, I'm in the tinkering step. Let me start with the oolio sacum. I guess I
want to try to get the liquid cuz I think that's what's going to have the oils in it and then some of the sugar as well. Ooh, it smells delicious. This is a mix of orange, lime, and lemon. I did one orange, two limes, two lemons. And I just used like a peeler to take off the orange peel. Let's add some of our cinnamon. We'll just use this cute little spoon. So, I'm going to add some of my cinnamon extract smells great. You want to smell it, Cal? Mhm. Smells really good. Right. That was maybe too much, but I'm going to balance it out. This is so embarrassing. This video is just kind of like a little vanilla. Add dash of this.
Let's see. See what happens. M the vanilla smells good. Does citric acid dissolve? I want to see how am I supposed to use this. La uses laundry, cleaning, preserving, degasing, canning, water softening, drying, freezing, jarring, arts and crafts, candy making, pH adjustment, and more. Let's add the colon extract. I have no idea what this tastes like. And it's hard to get a sense from the smell cuz a lot of what you smell is like the alcohol. Oh. Oh, the smell. This is going to be so gross. Disgusting. So gross. Oh, you guys. It's so bad. I need to cleanse my palette.
Oh, disgusting. I think I left it in too long. It's really bitter. I'm going to add some cuz I think it does need bitterness, but I'm going to add like the tiniest bit. It's really gross. I could kind of see it being a thing in a health tonic, though. I feel like this is not anywhere near what Cocus tastes like at all. Ooh. I put a lot of citric acid in. This is so much harder than I thought it was going to be. I don't know why I thought this would be easy. Not easy, but like achievable. I'm putting more of the sacrian. It's not Coke, but like I kind of feel like they're related. You know what I mean? there. It's not Coca-Cola, but it's There are similarities. In some ways, I think it needs more bitterness. I'm
going to add a little bit more of the coconut extract. I'm like, you know what? This needs to taste more like Coca-Cola. I really want to add it as an ingredient. I don't I've added everything I was planning to add. I don't know what else to do. Well, you need selzer to know. Yeah, you got to test it out. Yeah, but it's so It's not I think it needs to be a lot sweeter, actually. I think it's Mine is not sweet enough.
You could make a dark caramel to try to darken the color and sweeten it. Yeah, but the dark caramel is just going to make it's not actually going to make it so sweet. I think it's going to make it bitter. I think I was really banking on the colon nut extract to be like it supposed to I wrote instructions cuz I this was really embarrassing you guys. I couldn't figure out how to use this and I had to like log like a request through like customer service or Brevel on how to like I couldn't I was like it's defective. It doesn't work. It like shoots seltzer everywhere. And then someone because they have great customer service, someone called me and was like, "I'm gonna walk you through it." And
they like set up a video chat and we did it together. And the first step was like, "Screw on the cap." And I was like, "Oh." In my defense, the cap requires a lot more force to screw on than I thought seemed reasonable. And I was like, it was a very short video call. I was like, "Well, we did it." Okay. Ready? It's a little It's sort of out. Okay. So, you release the pressure. Why did I think this would be easy? I seriously was like, "Okay, like the colonut, the cinnamon, like you just add it all together." You guys, you guys, it's not that different. Okay, it's really different, but it's closer than I thought it would be. Tasted. It's not Coke obviously, but like it's not It tastes like one of those health food store Yeah. colas. I'm fine with that. I'm
fine with that. There's something about it that feels related. I'm going to keep tinkering a little bit. I'm going to add a little bit more cola nut extract and a little more cinnamon extract. The other thing is I think it needs to be sweeter, right? Okay. So, I'm going to add some straight sugar to it and try to get it to dissolve. Maybe what I should do is make a super saturated sugar solution and then I'll use that to keep sweetening it. I'm going to let this boil for a second so it can reduce. All right, so I have my sugar solution. I'm going to add some of it for increased sweetness.
I think that's better. It doesn't taste like Coke, but it could. don't know. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to I have some black tea and some peppermint tea. I'm going to try to make like a super concentrated I guess kind of like infusion with it. Um extract some of the tannins. Maybe like really boil it really hard in some water. So, I'm going to add that. And what was the other thing I said I was going to do? Oh, and the color. Didn't he say tea tree oil or something? Yeah, he had tea tree oil. I don't have any tea tree oil. And actually, I'm super sensitive to tea tree oil. I react to it in my skin. So, I'm going to do the tea and try to get some of the like
cooling like menthol notes and tannins from the tea. And I got to and I'm going to try to come up with a color solution of how to make this darker. I don't think it has to be necessarily as dark regular Coke, but it's very light. I want to darken it a little bit. What are you thinking out of the gate? Uh, I don't know out of the gate. I mean, I think the tea will darken it a little bit. Uh, why don't you just use food coloring? Food. I think food coloring is going to be I'd rather not have to use the food coloring. I have to think about it. Coke tinker, take two. We had a little lunch.
I think taking a step pack was helpful. I got three tea bags. Two bags of English breakfast, like a strong black tea and one of peppermint. And so I want to just boil this really hard and reduce it and make a kind of tea concentrate. So I have maybe 2/3 of a cup of water in here. I'm going to dump in my tea bags. Depending on how concentrated I get, this might help with the color. The black tea is going to get pretty dark. So, I'm going to let this boil. And I want it to boil cuz I actually want like a lot of the aringent qualities and the bitterness and the tannins to come out. So, this is boiling. This is going to go I want to let this reduce for a little while. This color is getting pretty dark. It smells
bitter, which is good. So, here's my tea concentrate. I'll put this in a different container. That looks like Coke syrup. made it like one shade darker. This to me is adding a little bit of like a backbone to the flavor. It's definitely more bitter than Coke. I still think it actually needs to be a little bit sweeter. So, I have this super concentrated sugar syrup. I'm going to add a little bit into that. This is regular Coke like and that's mine. So, I got to taste theirs as a comparison. I don't know, guys. It's not the same, but it's not so far off. The consensus around here among everyone but me was to like throw a little food coloring into it and see
if that how much that helps. Like, what if I put like one drop of blue? And by the way, this is natural food coloring, so I feel a little better about it. Should I try it? Why not, right? It helps a little. What I probably should do right now is strain my syrup because there are some pieces floating in it. There's some of the spices, some undissolved citric acid. I want to get rid of that because I want it to be totally translucent like regular Coke. And I might even have some random vanilla seeds in there because I have vanilla extract, but I would use the extract to like rinse out the bottle of vanilla paste. So, there's maybe some random seeds. So, let me get a
super fine strainer. I think this will catch some of the particles, but let me use a coffee filter just to be sure. I hope it's not too thick to go through the coffee filter. It might be cuz it's like a really it's it's pretty syrupy. What's the water do? The water I think just helps it go faster cuz I think it doesn't absorb as much into the filter. I hope that this goes through. Let's see. Is it going through at all? Yeah. Little by little. It's going to take a while, huh? Let me taste it again. It's not right, but it's not that.
You know what I mean? Part of me wants to do a little more cinnamon, a little more vanilla, maybe a little bit more of the tea extract, but I'll wait until it strains. Are you hearing a lot of this babble? He's cute. Yeah. While I wait for my syrup to drain very slowly, I decided that I think what's missing is this base. It's hard to articulate it. It was a base that I thought was going to be formed by the coal nut extract and is not. It's like it needs some. It needs something. And I'm hoping that something is a thing I'm about to make, which is a very the same kind of caramel syrup, but much darker. So, I'm going to try to add it for color and also like complexity of flavor. And then
I'm going to keep tinkering by adding a lot of the same flavors that I've already added. See where I get. So, here's my dark caramel syrup. Color looks great. So now what I want to do is because I don't want to introduce any more particles into my syrup. Like the straining is super annoying. I'm going to make like a little coriander nutmeg tea essentially. So, I'm just like going to cook it in some water because I do think that these flavors help to develop the kind of like indistinguishable quality of like the overall Coke flavor in a sense. I am going to add my syrup to my new caramel syrup. And I already know that I want to add more of my tea, my tea infusion. I'm really smelling the spices. So, let me turn this off.
It's It's really spicy. Not like really, but I just mean like it has a lot of this spiciness. I want to add some of this. It's also pretty bitter, but that's sort of something that I like about it because Coke is so sweet, but I feel like it could be a little more bitter. Am I saying that I tasted my version and then decided that I want the original be more like my version? Yes. I think it's really good. I think it needs citric acid, but what I think I should do is dissolve the citric acid in the water, this mixture with the spices, and then add it because I don't want to have it floating around. When do you add the caffeine?
I don't You guys can add the caffeine separately to your own. Yeah, I was under duress. I got some caffeine tablets. Let's see what it says. I do not like the sound of all the inactive ingredients. I don't care as much about the caffeine. Carnabo wax colloidal silicone dioxide. Here's a thing I've never heard of. Crocar me crowscar melo sodium DNC yellow number 10 aluminum lake dalium phosphate dihydrate FDNC yellow number six aluminum lake h No I'm good you guys you guys have it though so I'm going to strain this You guys taste it and tell me what you think. It's bitter, but in a good way. I feel Here's what the face was called.
It was like, you did not do it right. I think it tastes less like Coke than last time. What? How could you? I'm going to do a little more cola extract. Does it taste like the apothecary told you to go drink it and then like apply some leeches? No, it tastes that I think would taste bad. All right. Well, let's let's have some selzer and try it. It doesn't taste like Coke. But it tastes like cola if you ask me.
It tastes like kari. Oh, because of the bitterness. Yeah. Like the bark or whatever. Tastes like a digestive. Yeah. Yeah, but it's funny cuz those are also like for those are also kind of like have a kind of health halo of like it's for digestion or for appetite. A little heavy on the black tea and you think so? Oh, theirs is so much better. That's so much better. It's really good. It's hard to know if I'm tasting Coke or if I'm tasting the aftertaste of mine cuz I was like, "Ooh, nutmeg." But I think that's just because it's already in my palette. I'm thinking it's not right, but I don't really have any other tools in my toolbox to like switch it to do anything else. Maybe a little more vanilla.
I think it's as close as I'm going to get. I don't think it's going to get any. Maybe a little more um a little more cinnamon. A little just a tiny bit. It's not it, but it's not bad. And I don't know that I'm going to make it any better. What do you guys think? Should we try another one? Another little taste? Yeah. Do you want to put it in a Coke bottle? No. Maybe it just needs more of this, too. It was like more spritzery than soda.
Yeah, it's better. I think it's maybe a little orange forward and that's part a little orange and a little cinnamon forward, which is partly why it's reading not like soda. I think I'm just getting black tea. Really? Too much. I think I'm done. The salt is also a little flat. Yeah, I got to fix the seltzer. Should be cold. Yeah, it should be cold. Take one. My palette is like blown out. Maybe the pirates booty didn't help. But I'm having a hard time tasting much right now. But let's do a side by side.
Maybe it being cold will help more than I think. Let's make a little selzer. It's a pretty color. Should I just say I made orange soda H I wonder what would happen if I let my this syrup kind of sit and like age a little bit. They are not the same. Obviously mine has a lot more of the bitterness. The flavors are more detectable. You get more orange. You get more maybe distinct cinnamon. The Coke is more harmonious just like as one flavor. I didn't come as close as I thought I would. I really thought the colonut extract would be my jumping off point, but it was so strong and so bitter. I was more left to like I don't know. I feel like I never started with a kind of
like foundation for this syrup beyond just the sugar. So, it was definitely harder than I thought it would be, but I probably should have anticipated that it would be harder, otherwise it would have been done before. But I still think this is good. H. Delicious. Refreshing. Not Coca-Cola. What do you guys think? Try it. I think it's just too much of that kind of botanical tanninity. Yeah, it's very botanical. Well, that was a lot of time to spend making less than a cup of syrup that doesn't really taste like Coca-Cola, but interesting nonetheless.
We could slate in a part two for after Kinder Bunny. Part two of Coke. I think you should try this again. Wait, really? Yeah. I think I did fine. It was definitely delicious. Good. Yeah, definitely delicious. Definitely. All right. I think there's some combination of the ingredients that I used, the components that I used that together would feel like Coca-Cola more than this. But there's still something else. There's some There's probably several X factors happening with this one. I'm not going to promise anything, but I'm going to continue to Well, no.
I'm not going to keep thinking about it. The other guy took a year. You could do it in half a year. But I don't want to keep working at this. I'm happy to spend like one afternoon giving it my best shot and trying to make it from ingredients that are accessible at home. I think with everything you just had, you could Do you want to try? I don't. I'll give you everything. You take it all home. All right. We'll get back into the more standard recreates format. Let us know any ideas if you have. At least I didn't make a lot of dishes. It's silver lining.
