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Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola [video]
Perfect meaning tasters would be initially fooled, but would correct themselves and note that the tastes were slightly different in A/B testing. The formula wasn't cracked it was emulated to a high degree of accuracy.
Coke isn’t even consistent between factories, different bottle sizes and cans.
  • pests
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Never liked the 20oz plastic Coke bottles. The aluminum cans and 2liter plastic tasted fine though.
It is true: sweetness is very different across the globe due to nation preferences
I didn't watch the video, but assuming they used a mass spectrometer, the end result will be identical to the real thing, anyone tasting otherwise is deluding themselves.
The video explains how the gas based mass spectrometers he had (indirect) access to don't normally pick up nonvolatile compounds like tannins. It was a big breakthrough that since he didn't have cocoa leaf extract, and he basically nailed everything else, he couldn't really understand what he was missing until he realised the extract would likely contain tannins.

So there may be other nonvolatile compounds which nevertheless impact the flavour profile. While a lot of flavour is in your nose, not all of it is...

  • ginko
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Maybe he could have paired it with an hplc reading.
This is wrong.

Same with perfume knock-offs

Spectrometer doesn’t tell you quantities, mixes, what have you.

You can emulate 90% of the first smell but never in life you can replicate entire bouquet, aftersmell, propriety molecules, etc.

He doesn't compare the mass spec of his final product to a real coke, unless I missed it.
You did miss it. It's quite close, but not identical. Wouldn't be surprised if different batches of coke have at least some variance anyway.
You missed it
Taste buds can detect chemicals in as concentrations as low as a few parts per million, I dunno.
Someone once said the reason we had alcohol before civilization is that we carry around a chemical testing laboratory in our faces.

It just so happens that everything in beer that can go wrong and hurt you (any sooner than cancer) creates a distinct aftertaste and you can learn to avoid it rather easily.

The only exception of course is if you use poisonous ingredients in the first place.

Mass spec is indeed demonstrated multiple times
There have been a number of taste tests that show that, when blindfolded, most people can't distinguish between Coke and Sprite, let alone Coke and a close imitation, without the visual cue: throw together enough sugar, acid, and carbonation, and it overwhelms the body's ability to distinguish taste. It's a story often repeated in marketing (like Twitchells' Branded Nation), because forging a distinction between indistinguishable parity products is marketing's job.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1982/0...

I think if you believe this I'd recommend trying it yourself.

I've done this blinded with colas, and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi. You might not know which is which without some history drinking them, but they all taste very distinct by themselves.

Really disagree that these are indistinguishable parity products, or that most people would not be obviously able to tell the difference between them.

I'll say that the 'Zero' products have gotten quite good. Not indistinguishable, but closer than I expected. On a couple of occasions I've inadvertently purchased real Dr Pepper instead of Dr Pepper Zero and not realized I was drinking the real thing. That's high praise for the Zero version (notably, the Diet version of Dr Pepper, while it has a following of its own, is extremely unlike real Dr Pepper).
I don't know but I recently drank coca cola which my brother ordered and then after a few days, I decided to drink diet coca cola because I was discussing it with my brother and he mentioned that diet and normal coke are the same price and I started wondering if there are negative effects to normal coke and not much for diet coke and they both are same price and I am drinking it for the taste, then diet coke makes the most sense so I decided to order it

Not sure if its just me though but after drinking both diet coke and normal coke the taste gap between diet coke and normal coke felt really huge to me.

You mention about Dr pepper and how strikingly similar Dr Pepper zero is, what are some other drinks which have a genuinely similar.

But now realizing this, I think that there is a difference between diet, zero and normal variants, this is the first time I am discovering this. Time to drink coke zero and coke but the winters are really cold so I might have to wait this winter season

Can confirm, could never stand the taste of Diet Coke, but Coke Zero tastes pretty close to the original to me! To the point that I pretty much never drink regular Coke anymore, if Coke Zero is available. There's basically no downside to going with Zero, imo. And the upside of no calories is pretty great.
IIRC, the diet versions of pepsi and coke are deliberately a bit different, while the zero ones are trying to taste the same as the regular ones.
That link actually clearly says down in the body that they could pick the lemon lime out from the colas, which makes sense.

Throwing together sugar, acid, and carbonation does not overwhelm your sense of taste. Thats most bottled beverages. If you believe this, you should see a doctor.

But many beverages are very similar to other beverages. It’s not an inherent flaw in taste perception that Coke and Pepsi taste alike to most people, it’s that one was intentionally made to be only slightly different than the other.

This is irrelevant and misleading. Just because many people cannot tell flavors apart doesn’t mean that the products are parity and are marketing differentiated.

Sure the majority of people cannot tell flavor notes apart but there exists a certain % of the population that can very reliably distinguish different tastes. Wine sommeliers, fine dining, food science are all professions which require a sensitive palate and smell and it is an over simplification to talk about sodas tasting the same for the majority of people as if it implies there is no difference or speciality in crafting taste.

Most people prefer Pepsi's taste. Unless the brands are revealed, then the brand recognition sets in and your brain rewards you more for choosing Coca Cola (c)

So you can taste it, but that doesn't matter in the end.

Last I recall, you get different answers if you taste just a sip verses a larger amount. Pepsi has a good first taste, but after a couple of sips it's pretty overpoweringly sweet, even compared to other sodas.
  • pests
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Their example wasn't even Coke vs Pepsi but Coke vs Sprite.
Supposedly Jell-O was originally to be clear but they needed the food coloring to convince your brain you weren’t just tasting sugar and citric acid instead of the little bit of flavor they added per recipe.
All Jello tastes the same, and that's a hill I'll die on. There are no flavors.
Yea, you've never drank the off brand stuff I see. It's generally significantly different to me.
Check out the acquired podcast episode on Coca Cola. Amazingly reserached history on the business and evolution of the Coke forumla.
Some of the interesting discovered flavor components in this trial were tea tree and basil (not shown in the video).
Yes I'm surprised basil wasn't included. How did you find out if it wasn't in the video?
Now I am wondering are there any industrial processes that use a common commercial product as a standard?

Coke, Guinness, etc all probably have exquisite quality control. Is it in the manual of any equipment, “congratulations on your new FooBar pH meter. To confirm the correct operation, a CokeCola should give a reading of X”

The government has reference products that a lot of processes use. https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductList?categoryId=a0l3d0000...

one that gets mentioned occasionally on the internet is the peanut butter: https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387

I was more imagining a completely pedestrian sourced sample. Those are likely large aggregate pools to minimize heterogeneity. Looking for something like, “Go to corner store, buy 12 pack canned CokeCola (with aspartame), dilute 1:10, measure”
Coincidentally, Guinness had a role to play in the development of modern quality control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sealy_Gosset

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> Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola

Which version ? In EU it tastes different in almost every country.

The concentrate is produced by Ballina Beverages, then regional bottlers add the bulk ingredients like sugar and water. Hence every version being a little different.
And that's just bottlers. Fountain soda is also diluted from concentrate. So local water can affect the flavor, as can the calibration of the soda fountain. The better retailers will carbon-filter their water and check calibration regularly but the average convenience store? Varies wildly.
Do you have fountain soda in your convenience store? I've usually only seen that in fast food places (am european)
Yes, convenience stores here often have self-serve fountain soda.
yes it's very common in the US. See: Big Gulp!
> Big Gulp!

I'm old enough to remember when that was actually the big size.

Random tidbit from my youth: when the Coke truck would come deliver a crate of Coke bottles to our house in Mexico, each Coke bottle had a little stick of sugarcane in it. I don't think it was like that in all places in Mexico. Street vendors would have giant unlabeled jugs of Coke, and sell it to you by pouring it into a plastic bag with a straw in it.
For other science buffs out there,

https://www.youtube.com/@MassSpecEverything

is a great resource. He breaks down lots of the things you might be interested in.

Quite informative, and a laundry list of flavor names/chemicals that sound far more dangerous than they taste. Interesting find is vinegar, which might have offered a small germ-fighting benefit and given Coca Cola the 'medical' qualities it initially sold for...
The ingredients he uses are not necessarily what CC uses, but they're just a way to replicate the flavor profile. Notably he lacks the coca extract so he has to make up for it.
I was surprised to see nausea meds for kids that's phosphoric acid and sugar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose/fructose/phosphoric_ac...

  • foxyv
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I think that the cocaine was the origin of its medical debut.
Cola nut also contains caffeine, so quite an energy drink between the two.
It was a reformulation from a popular drink where wine was infused with coca leaves and kola nuts, popular with Pope Leo XIII who appeared on poster advertisements for it. (and many others)

Georgia passed prohibition and coca-cola was an invention to replace the now banned beverages.

Is that tonic wine? Like buckfast?
Same kind of thing as Buckfast, long out of production but somebody tried to revive it a decade ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mariani_pope.jpg

One of the really interesting thing (to me) in this video is that the very distinctive "your whole mouth sticks and is slimy from the sugar and even your teeth feel different" can be traced from a single component that's added seemingly for this purpose. And it's the thing I can't stand with regular non-zero coke (well the sugar level too, but that's pure health thing).

It would also be very interesting if he could get his hands on coke from different markets as the formulation varies from country to country. One of the most obvious is the amount of cinnamon, but it would be very interesting to know if more differences were there.

Another interrogation of mine would be if, sugar aside, the formula is different between regular coke and coke zero. I'd bet is is, simply to offset the aftertaste that aspartam/artificial sweeteners have, but I'm curious if other non-sweetness related ingredients do change.

It would be interesting to know more about how it's actually manufactured and whether he has ideas about why the classic formula was changed -- maybe something to do with the cost of one of the steps, which the video suggests could be true, as it's damn complicated
I didn't see the full video, but in a nutshell its quite some effort. For a person who has a bad tastebud like me, every dark colored carbonated drink tastes almost the same to me :(
You are not missing anything though.

Just a lot of sugar

There's a lot of reasons Carbonated Sugar Water, Inc. isn't a $200B business, and Coca Cola (tm) is, that "just a lot of sugar" doesn't even begin to explain.
that's a very oversimplification of it. how people can be willing to consume a beverage that can be used to eat the corrosion off of battery terminals is beyond me. so they'd be missing that on top of the sugar, unless of course they are drinking the sugar free versions, then it's just the battery cleanser
> how people can be willing to consume a beverage that can be used to eat the corrosion off of battery terminals is beyond me.

Wait 'til you find out what water can do.

I do get your point, but really, it's just corrosive in a different way than the usual highly corrosive stuff we consume daily.

> can be used to eat the corrosion off of battery terminal

That's just acidic, orange juice will do the same thing. But perhaps you are amazed people are willing to consume orange juice too!

About the same acidity as lemonade. Less acidic than the stomach it is going into. There are far more pressing things to worry about in this world.
I'm drinking a coke right now. The reason? I like it.

Also I'm not sure how the pH level of a food is relevant to anything

Lemonade (made from real sugar, water and lemons and nothing else) can also eat the corrosion off of battery terminals...
Let me tell you about this thing called saliva…
I'd love to get hands on this coca cola's syrup. I know that this video has just recently released but I feel like this might help in producing indie levels of quantity of syrups which can be sold to indie users

I am not even much of a coca cola person. Usually I drink Pepsi or mountain dew but this video is one of the most high efforts video I have ever watched. Period.

massive respects to LabCoatz. I seriously didn't expect this level of quality, its shocking how good youtube is. This feels so professional and well thought of in a way

I am still in high school and I was studying chemistry. I don't enjoy chemistry (In fact I complain often so much about being forced to study chem to go to a decent CS uni that even AI LLM's wrapped of 2025 picked it up on my admittedly hate on chemistry https://hn-wrapped.kadoa.com/Imustaskforhelp)

I think that the chemistry (atleast what I study) is fundamentally different from the science shown here. This is the chemistry which genuinely attracted me. Studying biomolecules and seeing the structures some of them were even familiar.

I don't know but in a sense it kind of helps an genuine interest in the subject while being genuinely practical so I thank this video creator.

Some videos are just gems, this is one of them. I was constantly thinking surely Coke is so large of a company, everyone's heard of the secret, surely someone else must have made something so effective ( I was thinking of a large company) but it turns out that large companies dont really end up doing this and its the one man shop with genuine passion to his craft (in this chemistry) which really ends up doing spectacular.

Massive respects. Can't recommend it enough right now.

Also I am thinking of one thing but what if an non profit can be established who can produce such bottles of "lab cola" perhaps at a low-mid --> high scale.

I'd genuinely support and imagine that you can buy lab cola which can be environmentally safe and the proceeds go to social causes which you can align to. Wouldn't that just be amazing?

This opens up so much more possibilities!!

Edit: I thought about the non profit idea even more and I think that this can position itself as for fundraising as well. Imagine this genuine movement of slowly owning what we actually eat no more secret recipes. This seems to be the open source of Food and I am all for it!

If one worries about the supply chain, they can supply it via amazon or local providers (yes I know Amazon is morally shitty at times but I feel like this might answer some questions that people might have about that coca cola has worldwide presence, how is it gonna compete)

One could also bootstrap the whole thing and directly sell to customers or businesses as well (the businesses can have genuine value to it, I don't think that at scale, there is much of a difference in pricing and some amount of pricing gains are okay for what its worth if the mission is noble)

Best part is that Coca Cola can do nothing about all of it and the ideas are limitless, the bottleneck was the recipe which has now been effectively reverse engineered haha. There is a genuine ability for people to bring change in beverage industry. I am certainly hyped for what its worth. Someone please contact LabCoatz if you have affiliates and give him this idea if possible or anyone implement it themselves if they follow a similar field/expertise to this. If so, I would be your first customer for the non profit :)

I didn’t like studying chemistry at all when I was your age. But I also didn’t like physics until I took a class thar focused on it in a practical way. So definitely listen to your interests but perhaps you’ll find a better on-ramp to chemistry if you focus on food chemistry or something else more pragmatic.

But cheers for showing support to high quality science content on YT. Appreciation is a great instinct to nurture.

No, I think my hate (Edit: Hate seems a strong word, I meant dislike perhaps, Its just that I usually blame chem for any grades loss because thats the reality more on that later) in chemistry stems from the fact that people are able to grasp it naturally for some reason and chem is considered very high scoring so its depressing and you resent the subject if you can't achieve score in chem (mind you, that where I live, the individual subjects score don't matter but the aggregate, so in essense, chem has equal weightage as much as maths or physics while being really simpler but still requires a fundamental grasp which I find unintuitive at times and somehow unable to understand so the system feels a little unfair to me at times in the unique situation but oh well) I still feel like I dont study chem that much when the feedback loop just exited when I was studying and didnt get marks so I decided to stop studying it that much but now I am starting to genuinely focus 100% on chem most of the time because I just have to remember a few things and instant boost in my marks (or so I am thinking, we will see how this goes but it seems to be the best utilization of my time right now)

I could probably blame some parts of the education system but I don't think that the system can probably change regarding it. Still, I just wanted to share my frustrations regarding it where everything kind of becomes overcompetitive while you have a hobby in computers and I feel like genuine passion towards computing/linux and other things and want to make it a job because in my case I feel like money's valuable only in the end to do something that I enjoy and in this case, I can get both paid and enjoy without having to go through a retirement phase (or so my thoughts on FIRE, I'd still invest/save most of the money as money is rather not the big part of why I am doing this in my opinion) and Chem doesn't have anything related to it for what its worth.

I still have to go read chemistry though. But I don't know why but something in this video genuinely clicked chemistry for me where I could watch a 100 videos like this (although the point can be that I am now doing it out of my own free will and not a rigorous syllabus with tests and rewards/punishments systems basically)

Sorry for the yap, just wanted to get it off my chest. I have nothing against chem as a subject tho, I am sure that its interesting and this video sorts of proves it but I feel like I am more inclined towards software engineering but it sucks that I have to study chem to go do what I actually want in life (which requires a degree for maximal benefit which requires good marks aka a decent/huge focus on chem as well right now)

> But cheers for showing support to high quality science content on YT. Appreciation is a great instinct to nurture.

Thanks! I appreciate it, Have a nice day!

(Also edit once again) but I want to touch on the reason why I feel appreciating it even more so is because a single guy is able to compete against (essentially) a 200 Billion $ GIANT.

Such levels of individual freedom and achievements should be celebrated by the society just for the sake of it (and in this case we can see some other benefits as well as I told in the initial comment)

They empower Individual youth and Individuals in general and its very empowering. Generally the same reason I love Open source as well. Bringing real change to the world and leaving a fingerprint on Humanity I suppose. Even small things like these provide me and maybe others hope against darkness created by system of corruption being witnessed most around the world and monopolization/ big businesses doing shady practices most often.

So full disclosure, I haven't watched the video, and I've already seen some couple comments since I always take a brief scan before I do.

That being said: The thing about soda that most people get wrong is the level of fizz. Nothing is comparable to commercial soda just based off that. So, when you start off from a lower level baseline of "your fizz" < "their fizz", and add in recipe differences...well, it'll be a fun watch, regardless.

Small edit on this: They used a soda stream, which definitely doesn't add as much carbonation as commercial equipment does. Based only upon that, the taste profile will end up different for most, and despite all the science involved, it will lead to the over use of other flavors to compensate. Respectable try, however. He should sell premixed stuff on his website, although I imagine that is a regulatory nightmare, given that some of the stuff he used isn't food grade.

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The marketing and trademark is more important than the formula. If you created and sold a perfect Coke clone you wouldn't make a dent in their market share. You could make one better than Coke and not make a dent because it wouldn't be Coke.
I think his idea was to make a very close copy that costs very little compared to the finished product, to e.g. save cost of your own consumption (in the video it says he made a mixture that can be mixed with water and sugar to create 5000 liters of Coca-Cola)...