UPDATES: COCA COLA BY CHRISTMAS!

The fall semester at OU is coming to a close here in the next few weeks, and boy do I have my work cut out for me...not so much with college (I only have two classes at the moment, and neither are unbearably difficult), but with YouTube! I've been promoting the whole "stealing the Coca Cola secret formula" thing for months now, and with Coke releasing yet another terrible AI holiday ad, I figure it's about time I buckled down and finished the project while the hype (or hate?) is still up.

Aside from the first 27 trials and a few oddball runs, I am on my 99th iteration of Coca Cola...more than half a year after I thought "hey, this would be a fun weekend project and viral video". I have learned a LOT, which is the main reason things have been taking so long: I need to squeeze everything I know into a video script that I can reasonably film without going insane. I think I'm finally figuring it out, but it has not been easy, lol.

Regarding the recipe itself, I've finally dialed in a decent mix that:

A) Matches the mass spectrum "Neptunium" measured for Coca Cola

B) Matches the literature concentrations of every key flavoring agents (as published in this paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf504954p?ref=article_openPDF )

C) Tastes basically like Coca Cola (it's more like a soda fountain version of Coke, but it's definitely identifiable)

My only issue is the flavor is still slightly lacking. Coca extract is an important ingredient, and I've struggled with finding the right mix of oils to replace it. So far, tea tree and eucalyptus have done a fairly decent job, but they aren't perfect (eucalyptus especially throws off the eucalyptol in the mass spectrum). So I'm experimenting with other fresh, camphorous or leafy flavors, including myrtle (myrtus communis), pine (pinus sylvestris), camphor (cinnamomum camphora), and spearmint. Hopefully one of these will fill in the blank!

I'm not sure who would even gain use from this, but here is my most successful "Lab-Cola" recipe (made for a 840mL Soda Stream bottle):

• 88g sugar

• 360uL 85% phosphoric acid

• 50uL vanilla extract

• 60uL 5% vinegar

• 80mg caffeine

• 2.6mL caramel color

• 18uL flavor oil (dissolved in 1mL food-grade ethanol)

The flavor oil is (by volume):

• 44% lemon oil

• 37.5% lime oil

• 6.6% tea tree oil

• 4.4% cassia (cinnamon) oil

• 2.3% nutmeg oil

• 1.6% myrtle oil

• 1.5% eucalyptus oil

• 0.9% coriander oil

• 0.7% fenchol

• 0.5% ethyl levulinate (added mainly for mass spectrum, contributes little and can be eliminated)

Everything except the caramel color and caffeine is mixed in a minimal amount of water (about a cup or 250mL) to form a syrup, and heated in a sealed container until nearly boiling (for such a small batch, I just use a lightly covered mason jar in the microwave). After resting for several minutes to allow the acid time to hydrolyze key flavors, the remaining ingredients are added, the mixture is topped off to 840mL with water, cooled, and carbonated. Aging for a day or two helps the flavors reach their natural equilibrium and achieve the final flavor, but drinking immediately isn't bad by any means!

As mentioned, this recipe will likely be tweaked before the final release. I hope to have the video done by Christmas, but knowing my luck, it will be a week after lol. Then, I'll finish up the tornado probe video and start work on some of my other projects over the winter break! That plasma rifle isn't going to build itself!

Thank you all for sticking around, I know I'm not a very regular video uploader, and believe me it's only going to get worse in the spring! I'll be graduating, getting an engineering job, and moving out by May, after a busy final semester and possibly my last full-fledged storm chasing season (before I have to work around my new full-time job), so I can't promise any regular uploads during that time. I will try though, and hopefully everything goes smoothly!