How to Make Cola

hi everyone so today we're gonna make some Cola now the final product was pretty close to what you might get at the store and what you might be expecting but I'll let you be the judge so you guys have probably all had some form of Cola before so I really don't need to introduce it we can just go straight into the recipe now the recipe can be broke down into three main parts we first have a flavoring which is called 7x the Cola flavoring we need to prepare the other components that go into the soda syrup and then we need to cook all this stuff together to actually make the syrup so the first thing that we're gonna need to do is make the flavoring and to do this you can use all essential oils which is what the original recipe calls for but since I really don't want to spend 40 euros on essential oils I instead try to make my own 7x flavor compound using the actual ingredients that make up the essential oils and this was a little bit more work but I mean in the end it worked the same so we just need the following ingredients to actually make the flavoring we need 10 grams of an orange peel we need 10 grams of a lemon peel we need four grams of cinnamon which is about one stick we need about 1 gram of nutmeg 1 gram of coriander seeds and lastly 4 grams of neroli or bitter orange peel but I really couldn't find these so I did some research to found out that kaffir lime leaves are comprised of 80% of the same flavonoid compound and so I used 4 grams of those instead and the kind of funny thing you realize when you're making this is actually that Cola is really just a citrusy lemon drink with some spices in it and as anyway that's kind of weird so now that we have our seven ingredients that make up the quote-unquote 7x flavoring we need to actually get the flavors out of these ingredients and essentially you would do this by having some sort of essential oil where you have a carrier oil that's holding the flavor compounds that make up these flavors now there's plenty of ways to actually get these flavors out or these essential oils out you can use stuff like steam distillation you can soak them in oil for about a month or so but I was in a bind for time so I wanted to attempt a shortcut which was to pound them in a mortar and pestle and then put them into a pot with about 75 milliliters or 5 tablespoons of coconut oil this will act as a carrier oil and basically we'll heat this up and strain out the coconut oil later and hopefully all the flavors will come with it so the next step is to take this powdered mixture and steep these ingredients in oil while heating over low heat for about 30 minutes so we just let simply need to put this pan on the stove let it sit for about 30 minutes and then pull it off so after the 30 minutes were up I strained off the coconut oil and what we're left with is a super fragrant coke flavored oil that has all of the flavor compounds from the ingredients that were simmering in it so now I have a slight problem here which is that the flavors are dissolved within this oil and we want to use water for the rest of our Cola as you know water an oil repel each other so how do we get these two to mix well we can use an emulsifying agent now we have two options here one is which is the method I'm gonna use is to use alcohol as the multiplying agent now the amount of alcohol we'll use here so minimal that will be virtually non-existent in the final coke but if you don't want to emulsify using alcohol that's completely understandable you can also use something called gum arabic which is what's typically used in regular Cola it's apparently pretty easy to find online just make sure that you get food grade stuff and not stuff made for art so I'm gonna use the alcohol method and for that I'm using 10 milliliters of alcohol and I'm gonna use the moonshine that I've made in previous video because it's a semi neutral flavor and it's mostly ethanol which is what we're after we can then add three tablespoons of our flavored oil and then we need to whisk both the alcohol and oil together until they become very tiny dots so tiny that you can't see them it should also be stable and not separate again after a few seconds now once we have our emulsified mixture we can move on to the next step which is preparing the rest of our ingredients so first off we have our sugar now in retrospect I would recommend about half the sugar here but I'm not really a fan of the overly sweet colas that you find at the store but if you are a fan of those kinds of sodas you can use the originally called for amount which is 600 grams if you want it a little bit less sweet you can add a little bit less we'll also need another 100 grams to caramelize and this will help with the color and the flavor will just separate this to the side next we need 3.5 grams of citric acid and lastly we need 500 milliliters or about 1 limes worth of lime juice now the version I'm making will be caffeine free but if you choose to add some caffeine it would be good to prepare that right now as well and lastly we need 500 milliliters or about 2 cups worth of water okay now that we've gathered all the ingredients we can actually work on creating the Cola syrup now here we want to take those hundred grams that we've separated out for the caramelization and we're gonna simply pour this into a pan over medium-low heat and let the pan heat now be sure to stir the sugar as it starts to melt as it starts to melt it will also start to turn brown and this is exactly what we want at the point where the sugar has completely melted and we have a nice brown color we can go ahead and add in our 500 milliliters of water once we add the water it will immediately seize up and crystallize but don't worry just try to stir this mixture up and eventually the caramel will begin to dissolve in the water again and once it has we can go ahead and add in the rest of our sugar we can then add in the citric acid and lastly the lime juice now I've always heard that coca-cola without any food coloring would be green and I didn't really believe it but after adding the lime juice the whole syrup that I was making turned green action and you can see it here to give it a little more of a realistic coat color I personally be adding in some black food coloring that I have but that part is completely optional and up to you so once everything's mixed we can pull the syrup off the stove and let it cool down I let mine cool down for a few hours at which point it's time to make a soda you simply need two tablespoons of syrup for about 12 ounces or about 330 milliliters of soda water so you just pour the syrup in then you pour the water in but I also recommend to adjust the cerebration for your personal taste give it a good mix with a spoon and then add a few ice cubes and that's it it tasted similar but not quite the same as a regular coke in the future I definitely reduce the amount of sugar and play with the flavoring ratios a little bit more to try to make it a little closer to the coke you'd find in a store but my personal opinion that's where all the fun is so I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please be sure to check out some of my other content and thanks for watching bye

Channel: Flavor Lab

Views: 7,149,529

Rating: 4.9013543 out of 5

Keywords: How to make Coca cola, how to make coke, how to make cola, how to make soda, soda making, coca cola, pepsi, coca cola recipe, coca cola original recipe, cola (beverage), life hacks, how to make, how to make coca cola, homemade soda, at home, how to make cola at home, how to make cola syrup, soda making at home, coca cola recipe vault, coca cola recipe safe, coca cola recipe secret, how to make coca cola machine, how to make coca cola at home, senku cola

Id: U2HS_hswGmQ

Length: 5min 54sec (354 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 02 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Legiaoday]

Pretty interesting video. For some reason I always assumed you needed coca leaves or something similar to make cola.

[u/slypig]

*Serves you cola*

"Hm. On second thought I'll have a Sprite."

[u/chiefboiardi]

But he didn't use any Kola nuts. Granted he wanted it caffeine free, but still...that's why it's called Cola.

[u/inasinglebowl]

“The moonshine I made in the previous video”

I immediately switched to that video

[u/Barryzechoppa]

I just spent 30 minutes watching a bunch of your videos. These are wonderful! I love the mixture of science and food! I personally love understanding how things become to be, like how we get from natural ingredients to Cola. Thanks for this! Keep up the good work!

What do you do for work, as you're incredibly knowledgeable?

[u/lightning_50]

Pretty amazing that you can make it like this and you don't even have to go to the chuckola reserve

[u/TheOneAndOnlyChase]

Super cool. Great vid. Love craft colas. Interested to play with this too. Perhaps a coffee flavoured version

[u/bubblesfix]

Where are the Cola nuts? I know that those are in Cola.

[u/flipfloplif3lock]

Nice. I've always wondered how to make soda, now I can mess around and try to make a healthier version for my addiction.