Open Soda

Digital Pocket Carat

Digital Pocket Carat – If your looking for something with even more accuracy, this scale is .01 gram accurate for only $50. It’s made by the same company as the mouse scale.

http://opensoda.org

Mouse Scale

Mouse Scale – We have long sought a scale with less then 1 gram accuracy for less then $1000, finally here it is. It has .1 gram accuracy and can be found for less then $40. .1 is plenty accurate enough for our needs, but you have to wonder why they hid it in a USB mouse?http://opensoda.org

Opensoda trail batch 9-13-08

Using cube cola methodology of wisk mixer and vodka and meringue powder

Batch 1
Normal 2 liter cola oil formula
.1 ml vodka, 20ml water, and blended with wisk on drill
¼ tsp meringue powder add to final product.

Results: greatly improved flavor smoothness. Hard to identify individual notes. To much head. Needs less meringue powder. Perhaps 1/8^th tsp

Batch 2
Cube cola formula sized to 2 liters
.1 ml vodka, 20ml water, and blended with wisk on drill
1/8 tsp meringue powder

Oils
this level is enough for 58.5 batches of 2L. so we need to dived each by 58.5
7.50 ml orange oil
7.00 ml lime oil
2.00 ml lemon oil
0.75 ml cassia oil
1.50 ml nutmeg oil
0.50 ml coriander oil (12 drops)
0.50 ml lavender oil

dived by 58.5=
0.128 ml orange oil
0.119 ml lime oil
0.034 ml lemon oil
0.012 ml cassia oil
0.025 ml nutmeg oil
0.008 ml coriander oil
0.008 ml lavender oil

I will round to nearest drop

Results: the oil mixture smelled so disgusting I didn’t bother making it into a 2L. There was a reason we
abandoned the nutmeg, coriander, and lavender oils. They are horrible and bring nothing good to the flavor.

Batch 3
Still trying to identify the long mystery flavor that leaves bad after taste. Try a dev batch(no oils) for comparison with batch 1. Also will try the 1/8 tsp meringue powder.

Results: made up a batch of dev as well as batch of just acid mix and just phosphoric acid. Taste does not seem to be in those. Could it be just sugar? Made up a batch of just sugar, taste seems to be in the just sugar mixture. Need a bit
less meringue powder. Perhaps 1/16th tsp.

Also, lemon and lime flavors seemed to strong. Made a batch of just .5ml less of lemon lime. Much better taste.

Researched simple syrups more. Turns out, just adding heat will not break down the sucrose into fructose and glucose. You need to add an acid. Following online instructions, made a batch of a 1:1 simple syrup with a tsp of cream of tarter. Put on low boil for 25 minutes. Mixed with 2 liters of water and it tasted much better then our old method. Mixed in rest of ingredients and results were a very good tasting cola!

Need peer review of methodology a taste results and if it passes, we add new steps to document. http://opensoda.org

Open Cola test batch 2

What follows is a collection of notes from various sources about this day…

Sun, Dec 4, 2005 at 9:41 AM
So Matt, barrier of the Open Cola box, as he was the one who approached the lady who MADE open cola and offered up all her original supplies, claimed up and down that he did NOT have the open cola box containing ingredients and our notes. The original box had a bottle of nutmeg oil break during shipping and was quite pungent I could smell it from a long ways away. I could not smell it in Matt’s house, so concurred with him that it was not at his house either. So, Aaron(conchair), Mark(beergod and 3.0 opencola carbonation meister), Steve(consuite head), Shar(smoking consuite head), and I tore our houses apart looking for this box Matt claimed was not at his house. Chuck(4.0 Master of Carbonated Chemistry), Matt, and myself, took EVERYTHING out of the storage cube(and sorted, inventoried, and restacked neatly) in an attempt to locate said box. After all this, we decided to simply rebuy all the oils and start from scratch on the formula. Yesterday, we did testing and experimenting on a Pepsi formula, but were missing one ingredient that we knew was in the box. I sent Matt on a search for a screwdriver, as Chuck and I lamented for the missing ingredient. Low and behold, Matt walks up from the basement saying,  “Maybe it’s in this box” setting down a small box containing all of the missing objects of the open cola box. PHTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. So Matt had had it the ENTIRE time as he should have had. The difference is it was in a new smaller box with out the strong smell of nutmeg, so I was unable to locate it by smell.
So thank you who helped in the search in vain. Also for those who know Matt like I do, you can rejoice for I have fixed his off body memory retention(aka his palm). No if only we can get a system that tags all items in Matt’s possession and have them listed on a gps hand held for him.

On a good note, we made very good progress and the final batch was the closest thing to a cola that we’ve gotten to date and should have some very good samples at ConFusion.

—
Bill Putt

Blender, Scale, measuring cups, and other assorted items of cola creation

Chuck mixes in flavor oils into the blender with gum aribic creating an imulsion

Chuck adds oil into the blender

Arron Thul(conchair Penguicon 4.0) and chuck check out the flavor base

Bill Putt’s(conchair Penguicon 3.0) job was to taste test regula cola’s and make flavor batchs. Here chuck checks the latest one mixed up.

Chuck, Aaron, and Bill watch as the syrup gets blended with carmel color

We used a selzer bottle to carbonate batches. Ended up being very expensive way.

For some reason, our coloring created blue foam

We used bottled water as to not effect the taste

Here Matt, try this. “Here try this.” The wonderful and dreaded words of any good OpenCola session.

Matt Arnold(conchair Penguicon 7.0) experenices a “special kind of bad.” We put FAR to much acid in this batch.

—Notes: I can’t really find more information then this. We ended up with a very spicy(cause of to much cininom) batch we called Ferndale(after the city we were making the batch in). We learned a lot and ended up with something far better then what we had a Penguicon 3.0.http://opensoda.org

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.http://opensoda.org

Open Soda Recipe – Fridged Bitch April 2009 version

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 2009http://opensoda.org

Open Soda Recipe – BubbleGum April 2009 version

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
http://opensoda.org

One of the biggest questions we get is “what does it cost.” So I finally made a price calculator spreadsheet to calculate the current cost with our current stock of supplies. If you have your own supplies at differnt costs, just plug in your numbers to get the cost.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvmpQZyIjQpEdFRLQ05VbTFRdmkyWDhWUWpDemQxU3c&hl=enhttp://opensoda.org