What is Your Greatest Fear About Making Soda or Drinks?

You are not alone, marketing is expensive but there are many ways to build a business and working hard seems to work.

Darcy S. O'Neil

marketing is my biggest issue

Martin Seiler

Main thing for me is just investment in space, time, and cost vs. just buying sodas from the store. There's also the added convenience of cans being much easier to pack and bring places.

Tom

Here are some quick answers: 1. Unknown chemicals are rare. All reputable chemical companies that market their products for human use (topical or internal) test their products for anything harmful. And most production methods are designed not to produce harmful compounds. I've worked in labs for over 15 years, and companies care a lot about not making terrible products because it is not profitable. 2. This is the place to find info, so welcome and smart choice! 3. Most flavour oils, used in the recommended concentration, don't have a taste, just an aroma, so it is easier than you think to filter out the "flavours" you don't like. Developing a product requires a lot of failure, that's just a fact. Sometimes it takes a dozen attempts, others a 1000, that's product development. The goal is to improve the formula each time and learn something from it. Failure is the best teacher.

Darcy S. O'Neil

1.Unknown chemicals 2.Difficulty finding info 3.Going through the trouble of researching gathering ingredients then making it and fearing it will taste nasty.

I actually have a combination of concerns.

Typically you can't over-extract something, the idea of an extract is to extract 100% of the contents. But you can give a dose/serving that is too high in a drink/soda, so it is about ensuring that when you use an extract in a drink, you know how much is safe to use. And obviously, if we don't know we should wait until we do. Usually there is documentation, it just may be hard to find. Now, I have been known to try things that are not allowed, like Tansy for example, but I'd never serve it to anyone, I just try things out of curiosity.

Darcy S. O'Neil

I'm highly interested in returning the beneficial nature of the original sodas, while being backed by modern research. Unfortunately that means utilizing ingredients that don't have the correct data for consumption available in this context. I definitely worry that I'll over extract a medicinal quality and have issues. As of now my solution is to just to self experiment.

Distillation is definitely in the works, I have two stills, a 30L one that can run as a pot still or column still and a 2L lab still, you can see it in the videos. But, I've been distilling for a few years and have a few videos being scripted. Probably closer to summer though.

Darcy S. O'Neil

I will try to work some more EU laws in with the FDA laws, though they are similar. And often a co-opacker can help you once you have your formula complete.

Darcy S. O'Neil

I would really appreciate a distillation lesson as well. I have something made for essential oils etc. When I get flavors down I will likely experiment with creating the nuetral spirit for extracting flavors. For now I use something like Everclear (not in the states). My main purpose for getting what is basically a very ineffienct pot still was to work on building flavor concentrates

Rob

Understanding the laws regarding production, especially for starting ground up (think self distribution for starting breweries). My situation is complicatied by being in in the EU. In fairness, this is not an immediate concern. First I have to solve for getting ingredients and landing on something worth sharing wider. I'm not really in it for starting a biz but can't deny that I am thinking about scale with every experiment.

Rob

Looking forward to this!

Rob

This is a tricky question, but the best answer is to practice. Many things affect flavour strength, volatile components, alcohol content (water based vs ethanol based), emulsification, temperature, mood, medications and your own individual ability to taste are just a few of the dozens of factors. I've been doing a Science of Taste presentation since 2008, and humans are complicated. Most spirit and wine reviewers over-state what they can taste, because it makes them look more skilled. Take a look at what perfumers do to learn, they are really the masters of aroma, and they spend all day smelling different compounds and really get an understanding of flavour strength (flavour being mostly aroma). Also, acidity and sweetness play a role. A sweeter drink often seems more aromatic. If you taste water with a little essential oil you really don't get much flavour, add a teaspoon of sugar and a touch of acid, and everything changes.

Darcy S. O'Neil

What would be the most effective way to gauge flavor strength relative to essential-oil benchmarks (e.g. sweet orange oil) or is this a trial and error sort of situation (or maybe a Harold McGee question on whether there's just a diminishing return on flavor intensity)?

Evan Boucher

Most of the companies that make the flavours can provide the usage rates. Most of them keep their formulas secret so I don't know the composition. But just ask whichever supplier you order form and they'll let you know, then proceed as usual in my videos for syrup, soda and acid.

Darcy S. O'Neil

Really appreciate this! I would love instruction on usage rates/stability of these flavorman-style (or whatever commercial flavor manufacturer of your choice) flavors and how to employ them at home. It would be fun to make a hokey Jones-style bubblegum just for the fun of it

Evan Boucher

Fair point...

Some of that will come with more experience and practice.

Darcy S. O'Neil

Some natural flavours were made by distillation and extraction. It uses a lot of fruit to make a small amount of essence, though it tastes great. I may do a video on this in the future when I start making videos on distillation, I have a 30L still I can demonstrate on. The quantity of fruit required (100 lbs to make) is also why artificial essence were more popular; available year-round, cheaper, more consistent, requires a fixative to keep the flavour, better made using vacuum distillation, etc.

Darcy S. O'Neil

I'm going to try to answer this in a Patron only video, though the EU laws are a bit of a mess, the key you need to remember is that most companies don't sell essential oil as food because of the labelling requirements as well as usage rates. Because you have watched my videos you understand ppm and mg/L but that's not something the average person understands and measuring those levels is difficult unless you plan on making 500L of soda. You need to represent yourself as a product developer, but I'll deal with this in a video.

Darcy S. O'Neil

I heard most distributors of essential oils (in Belgium at least) have to go trough a lot of trouble to get certain food grade approvals and for that reason they always say it is not allowed to ingest. And that it may contain traces of pesticides. That way I don't know if the oils are organic or not and makes me a lot more hesitant to use them.

I read in your book that things like raspberry flavors were frequently faked. How does one get a flavor/soda from something that does not readily form an essential oil and how did they used to be created? I'd like a bit more info on the sources of/solubility of/descriptions of artificial/natural flavors.

Evan Boucher

It took a little while to source caffeine, but I did manage to get some from Fusion Flavors for the purpose of developing new soft drink flavors.

Chris Carlson

Cool

Chris Carlson

I'm inexperienced enough to troubleshoot my mistakes; so far I've been lucky and following the guidance has paid off but on the chance something doesn't turn out I don' t know enough (yet) to be able to figure out where me error was.

The last ingredient I needed came in today, so it is #2 in the queue and should be posted next week.

Darcy S. O'Neil

diabetes! I'm looking forward to the lower calorie formulations

Chris Carlson