Open Soda

While at a friend’s birthday party, some one got some Angostura bitters, which was used as a flavor additive for whiskey. He was having people give it a sniff. I being a super taster, I immediately recognized the smell as the same ingredient in Pepsi that I’ve been trying to find! After me telling the rest of the party this, they agreed. We put some in glasses of coke, and PRESTO! Pepsi! But with a very bitter after taste. Now Angostura bitters is them self made from a secret recipe. But it’s a place to start.

Also I was sent a link on the dangers of Caffeine. Check it out.

http://consumerist.com/2010/11/man-dies-after-ingesting-enough-caffeine-for-70-energy-drinks.html

WARING! Open Soda is a complex process that involves the mixing of dangerous chemicals. Please read all warning notes of all chemicals, oils, equipment, and processes listed on http://opensoda.org before starting. Only use glass and metal for mixing.

Software

Hardware

pipette

glass containers

cooking pots

scale(.1g accuracy is best)

drill with whisk attached

Directions

To start, boil water(1 cup for 2l, 10 cups for 5gal). Once the water is boiling, add in sugar and stir to dissolve. Decrease heat to medium so that solution is barley at a boil. Add both acids to the solution. Allow to cook for 30 minutes or until it reaches a light amber color.

While sugar is cooking, mix vodka and flavor oils in small glass container with pipette. Next, dissolve the gum arabic in a very small amount of water in a medium sized glass container. Your container should just barely be the size to allow your whisk attached to your drill to fit in. Contact with the sides is necessary. Pour your flavor oils into the water and gum arabic mixture and pour some back and forth to get every drop of oil. Mix the solution as high as you can for several minutes with the drill/whisk assembly. Then add the sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, and caffeine(optional) to the mixture and mix until fully dissolved.

When the sugar is done cooking, pour mixture in. Pour a bit of water into the mixing vessel to get any remaining mix out and pour into sugar. This concentrate is very potent and every last bit counts. Finally, add coloring to the resulting syrup and mix. Now just pour into final container(2l bottle or 5gal keg), fill up with water(don’t forget to pour water into the pot the syrup was in to get every last drop of syrup out), and carbonate using one of the carbonation methods.

Variants on other side

Variants

Variant 1 – Precise acid measurement vs acid mix

If you don’t have a scale precise enough to measure down to .1g, you can mix an acid mix 1st. In 2l bottle of water, add

• 100 g Sodium Citrate
• 100 g Sodium Benzoate
• 26 g Citric Acid

Then for a 5 gal keg, use 100ml of the mix. Each 100ml will contain 5g Sodium Citrate, 5g Sodium Citrate, and 1.3g Citric Acid. For 2l size, use 10ml of the mix. Warning, this mix crystallizes fast. This is why we don’t recommend this method. If you store this mix for any amount of time,  you will have to heat up the water(with out losing any of it else you throw off your ratio) and shake VIGOROUSLY to get back into solution.

Variant 2 – Diet or regular

If you want to create diet version of any recipe, replace the sugar with Splenda. 275g for 5gal(one large bag) or 27.5g for a 2l.

Variant 3 – blender vs vodka

The vodka is used because oil is alcohol soluble and this vastly helps smooth out the flavor notes. If for some reason you do not wish to use the alcohol, you need to mix for a much longer time. If you don’t have a proper drill/whisk assembly, you can us a blender, but you need to add enough water to come up over the blades. Also, do not use plastic blender, the gum aribic will stick to it very badly. Use a glass blender and mix for several minutes.

June 27th 2009

Always wanting to confirm our findings when we can and wanting to gather all evidence on how real soda pop is made, here is an interesting link that backs up the Cube Cola vodka oil dissolving methodology.

http://www.themuslimwoman.com/hertongue/PepsiCoke.htm

Open Soda got accepted to be in the Maker Faire Detroit. Info at ..

http://www.makerfaire.com/

Basically it will be a ton of ppl that make things gather for the last weekend in July at Dearborn MI. We will be holding hourly how to sessions and as well as dispensing multiple flavors of soda.

I have notes from 2 dev sessions to put up and also the newest dispense rig failed at Penguicon. So I had to build a quick and dirty platform that merges dispenser 2.o, 3.0, and 4.o into one. Only has 4 flavors rather then 4.0’s 6, but it works.

Ok, today I finally finished the switch over to wordpress. YAY!! This gives us lots of neat features, lets other ppl help update it, make it easy to update, and looks better. Anything before this post is randomly in order, but I tired to copy everything over from the old site as similar as possible.  I’ve also put up the new recipes. So look around, tell me what I can improve, what else you think the site needs, and don’t forgot to register so you can comment on stuff!

V2.0 – 2007

I don’t have pics of the original 1.0 dispenser, but it was just a board with 3 holes. Back then, we were still only concerned with open cola and hadn’t hit apoun different flavors of soda, so 3 were fine. Once I decided to make more flavors, it was clear we needed a new dispense rig. I built this one up with wood, and bent some sheet metal into a drain. The rack was from a dollar store. I made the drain water proof with about 2 tubes of water proof Goop. Worked really great, but still relayed on the old cool the entire keg method which used lots of ice. You can see many of the design elements I carried over into the V4.0 rig. This one is retired along with the V1.0 rig as it’s far easier to chill the chill plate rather then 6 kegs.

V3.0 – 2008

This one is a real official Cornie dispenser. I found it on ebay for a really good deal. It only has 4 heads, no quick disconnects(so the hoses are kind of a pain to deal with), doesn’t have a drain board, and doesn’t have the cart like the V4.0 so not as portable. Still it’s a very nice small event rig.

Here you can see the inside with the chill plate and all the hoses. None of them have quick disconnect so I have to shove them inside. The plate is actually larger then the 6 port plate so it does chiller better.

V4.0 – 2009

Here is the new for 2009 V 4.0 Dispense rig. It’s portable, has 6 heads, has a chill plate, drain below taps, and has 5 kegs on cart. There is also a tool box built into the top which you can’t see in this pic. I have yet to add a place to hang the 6^th keg and a drain water bucket.

Here you can see the V4.0 rig’s slide out ability allowing access to change out kegs. This has been tested with the cooler section full of ice and water. Unless all the kegs are empty, it doesn’t tip over and no signs of breaking.

Here you can see the inside of the cooler section. At the bottom is the chill plate. This gets filled with ice and cools the soda as it’s pushed to the taps. You can’t see it in this view, but the out side of the incoming hoses has quick release hose connections making transport and moving vastly easier and quicker.

Here’s another view. You can see the drain plate.

PIPETTE PUMP 10ml

Pipet Pump – a MUST have for measuring oils. This one comes with fast release button. Not all do. You might consider getting 2ml and 10ml if working on lots of batches. You need to buy pipette’s seperatly of course.