Orignal source is http://community.livejournal.com/penguicon/7717.html

OpenCola test batch
The Consuite signal shone on the clouds this weekend and the cry went out, "Consuite powers, unite!" Mark Szlaga, Steve DeHart and Shar Nims quickly assembled in Mark's basement. I and the Conchair Bill Putt brought over the bulk of the ingredients, Mark had found the very hard-to-find ingredients, and we worked on the test batch for OpenCola. Thanks to Shar Nims for taking these pictures. They're a top-notch team and I'm very excited about Consuite this year.
-Matt Arnold

	Measuring a quarter of a milliliter is not easy.
	Nothing but the finest distilled water.
	Citric acid. (These photos skip a lot of steps.)
	I had to mix the heck out of the syrup, because the food-grade gum arabic gave the Top SeekrutTM flavoring formula the consistency of relish. There's the "Beer God" Mark Szlaga, who gave us the use of his basement.
	One part "black waters of corporate imperialism" to five parts carbonated water.
	I bought several 2-liters of carbonated water which said "sodium free" but sure didn't taste sodium free. So we didn't use them any more.
	The recipe calls for too much of the orange flavoring. And also, we never found any nutmeg flavor, which affected the taste signifigantly.
	Mark has got the forced-carbonation process down to a science. As the Hitchhiker's Guide would say, our consuite people "really know where their towel is."

The verdict is that it tastes pretty good. Bill noticed that he got a little upset stomach later, but I'm just fine. Whether that is related is not known-- drink at your own risk. All flavors, including Pepsi and Coke, will be available in cans in the Consuite as always.

---Notes: We discovered a curtial element here; OILS EAT PLASTIC. The equipment that we got was all plactic. We found bits of floating plastic in they syrup(we strained before making a batch). We found the OpenCola recipe to be horrible difficult to decypher, had bad math and incorrect numbers, and used a process we found required to many steps. We severed about a 5 gallon batch at the 2005 Penguicon consuite and it all went away. Lots of people said they liked it. I hated it and found it to be discusting. We much later found out why it would give me up set stomachs, the oil degrades with time and we were using pretty old oils that were not properly stored. We also much latter learned not to run soda with beer equipment. Soda runs at MUCH higher psi of co2.