Darcy S. ONeil

The Key to Great Carbonated Water

Though most people think a higher pressure makes better-carbonated water or seltzer, it's two other factors that are more important: temperature and dissolved air. Solving these two issues when making soda water, in a soda stream, syphon or on tap will greatly improve your soda water quality. This video goes through the steps on what to do, plus a few other tips to get your water sparkling. Giv...

Carbonation Take #4

When I make a video, I have a specific goal regarding the outcome that I want to present to you. In the case of carbonated beverages, an important topic on our journey through the world of soda, I wanted to explain to you how soda fountains in the late 1800s and early 1900s carbonated their soda because it was often stated that good carbonated water had to be pungent, as in highly carbonated. H...

Aromatic Elixir (Coca-Cola)

We often think that history is well-defined but that isn't always the case as you may have noticed in the video above. The world of old pharmacies and soda fountains has thousands of recipes for drinks, or elixirs, that are well documented. Because of this we can often dig up recipes that influenced modern soda beverages, like Coca-Cola. 

It is almost guaranteed that the recipe below...

Fernet Soda

Fernet is an acquired taste, but this soda recipe is designed to show you where we can go with formulations. We don't have to just do colas and lemon-lime soda, we can make an infinite variety of soda flavours.

The formula sheet is attached below as a PDF and I've also included four versions of the Fernet recipe. Do note that a number of compounds in these recipes are no longer approved f...

Zero Calorie Simple Syrup

Here is a guide to making zero-calorie simple syrup for use in diet sodas, and cocktails and to just sweeten up a beverage of choice. It is formulated for the sweetness of 3:2 simple syrup (Note: I will post 2:1 and 1:1 formulas here shortly, along with other details). I've also included a section on reducing the persistent sweetness sucralose can have, which annoys many people. The technique w...

Preview: Preservatives in Beverages & Soda

Later this week, two videos will be coming out, one on using sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate in drinks and one on low-calorie or sugar-free sodas. I needed to do the preservative video first, because if you want to store something like diet soda syrup for a longer period of time it needs a preservative. The issue is that there is insufficient sugar to keep the syrup free from spoilage bac...

Gin Tincture Formula

Below is a recipe from the Source Book of Flavours (1981) for a gin recipe that makes roughly 1000 litres. I've reduced it to roughly 750 mL for a small batch gin and for convenience as well as converted it to metric and rounded the numbers. For the tincture reduce the alcohol to 120 mL. There is lots of room to play with, as you can increase or decrease the amounts of any botanical. Currently,...

What is Your Greatest Fear About Making Soda or Drinks?

Like the title says, what is your primary fear when it comes to formulating a drink and possibly commercializing it? Obviously, I want to fill in the areas of concern for you by solving those things that are holding you back. If you want to get started, but something holds you back, select the item in the poll or comment below, even if it is something like initial start-up costs or deeper conce...

Real Vanilla Extract Cream Soda

Several people have asked about making cream soda using real vanilla, so I've looked at the numbers for everyone and here is how it works.

The first thing you need to know is that vanilla beans typically contain 1% to 2% vanillin (some can be 3%, but that is not typical; closer to 1% is). For experimental purposes, let's assume you have beans at 2% vanillin and get 100% yield (unlikely) f...

Cream Soda Formula

The latest video deals with making that traditional cream soda flavour, and it is more than just vanilla. I've attached the formulation sheet below, with all the details similar to the Energy Drink formulation. If you have any questions, please post them below. 

How to Make an Energy Drink

This video has a Patreon-only perk, a full formula sheet for developing your own energy drink. This formula tastes like your typical energy drink, has 100 mg of caffeine and 1000 mg of taurine with 20 grams of sugar per serving. 

In the attached formula PDF each ingredient has a link to a supplier, but you don't need to use the specific supplier as there are many other companies out ...

Glycerin as an Alcohol Substitute

Since I get asked this question a lot, here is a video that answers all your questions about glycerin. Also, I've attached a solubility list (PDF) below that will help you select whether glycerin is good, or not, for your essential oil or flavour compound.

Equipment List

If you plan on getting into making flavours and soda, good equipment will help. Using coffee filters will just cause frustration and low yields. The percolator (dropping funnel) is the way to go. A stirring plate and a separatory funnel can help get better extraction of your essential oils when making essences. These items do make your life simple and your product better, plus anything is more ...

Hop Water

Since January is often themed "dry January" and hop water is becoming a trendy drink, he is how to make it for pennies a glass. On a side note products like HOPWTR slightly offended me when I see them charging $3+ per can, but they are using less material and time than making beer. With the recipe in this video you can make up to 800 glasses of Hop Water with $5 in hops and $5 of vodka.  2023-01-18 21:06:31 +0000 UTC View Post

Coca-Cola Recipes

There have been many requests for a cola or Coca-Cola recipe so here are six variations of the recipe, some claiming to be the original. 

The first formula, claiming to be the original Coca-Cola recipe, was available for a fee from the jilted wife of Asa Candler, the primary shareholder and CEO of Coca-Cola in the 1890s and onward. You will often see a handwritten version of this rec...

Video Set Construction

A little behind the scenes look at the new video set. This section is for cocktails and brewing/distillation. I find most cocktail making videos boring, though Kevin Kos makes excellent and stylish videos. It is repetitive and most people know the basic history of most cocktails, so to be different I plan on telling you 15 stories on how cocktails changed my life. I’ve been lucky enough to tr...

Chocolate Syrup (1928 Patent)

If you want to make chocolate syrup like the commercial makers, you simply need to  add one ingredient to the normal 3 ingredient chocolate syrup (water, sugar, cocoa powder). And if you are into brewing beer or distilling this will make perfect sense. And the syrup comes out better, more stable, more flavourful but not thick so you can mix it with drinks easily.

I've attached a coup...

Making Better Videos

A little behind the scenes look at what is going on. Being successful on YouTube these days is much harder than it was 5 years ago. Production values matter, as does editing techniques. The trend of multiple angles and cuts every 15 to 20 seconds is a thing on YouTube, at least with the videos that do well, and I doubt it will change in the future. Video makers have taken techniques from movies...

Chocolate Extract

Here is the first of two videos on chocolate. This extract is excellent for cocktails and food, for soda it is more of a highlight flavour. So if you like the orange and chocolate combination, a few dashes of this chocolate extract would give a hint of chocolate to an orange soda.

The next video is on chocolate syrup for things like a Chocolate Phosphate, milkshake or just plain chocolate...

Chocolate Extract

The next video is about making chocolate extract the proper way, and it has similarities to bourbon. Putting cocoa nibs in vodka does not make a proper extract, sorry. I think a good chocolate extract is great to use in cocktails, since many spirits already have hints of chocolate, either from the char on the oak barrel or from the grains. On the soda side, the Chocolate Phosphate was a popular...

Acidity in Drinks

If you mix 100 grams of citric acid with 100 ml of water, you will not get 200 ml of solution; you get somewhere around 160 ml, just like simple syrup, but how much acid is in a mL of the solution and what is the total acidity in the drink? Unless you like math, that's a question you probably don't want to solve, so I've done it for you, in a smarter way. When you want to make an acid solution ...

Acidity in Syrups, Soda and Cocktails

The next video is in production and we'll be talking about acidity, specifically different acids like citric, malic and tartaric. Most people know how much sugar, alcohol, salt, fat, protein, vitamins and minerals in drinks, we even know the amount of bitterness in beer through the IBU scale. Acidity is a bit more ambiguous, though anyone who makes wine pays particular attention to this variabl...

How to Make Lemon-Lime Soda

National brands have to consider storage stability when formulating a soda because those bottles can sit in warehouses, backrooms or on a shelf for many months, often 6 or more. With lemon-based soda, an essential flavour compound (citral) can degrade over time to form p-cresol, which can smell like dung, ping or animal barn. To prevent this, bottlers keep their pH above 3, but you don't have t...

Next Video: Sprite & 7-Up

In production this week is the original lemon lime soda called Lemo-Limo. This recipe comes from the Bottlers' Formulary (1910) and this is the earliest Lemon Lime Soda recipe I've come across, so about 30 years before 7-Up, though the maklers of 7-Up probably used this recipe as a starting point. 

There are other, modern, lemon lime soda recipes that I'll look into as well. If you h...

Orange Soda

The next video is in production, and we'll be talking about orange soda. Citrus sodas, including lemon, lime, orange and grapefruit can be difficult to make and keep stable, so we'll deal with that. 

Did you know that most citrus-based sodas are bottled at a pH of around 3.0? That's because a lower pH will cause the oils to develop off flavours over a period of about six months, and ...

Form to Calculate PPM

The next video is getting posted shortly, so here is early access to the Patreon-only form that I developed so you can easily determine how much essential oil you need to make a syrup and what the final amount of essential oil is in a sodas or cocktail, measures parts per million, which matches FDA guidance. 

The form is on Art of Drink and you can access it with your Patreon account...

GRAS Information

Here is the information on all things Generally Recognized As Safe. I've included the FDA website links, as well as the FEMA GRAS documentation. If you can't find an ingredient in one of these lists, you might not be able to use it, but for the most part, there is a vast number of compounds you can use to make an infinite number of flavour mixtures.

This is the basic "white list" of foods...

Essential Oil Supplier List

One of the most frequently asked questions on my YouTube channel is, "where can you find food-safe essential oils?" My latest video answers that question, and as mentioned in the video, here is my list of companies I buy essential oils and flavour compounds from.  

An updated list can be found here: https://w...

Rock & Rye Old Fashioned

Rock and Rye was popular in the early 1880s, mostly because it was considered medicine, because Tolu was added. 

Ginger Syrup

Making a basic ginger syrup is relatively easy but if you want to make an awesome ginger syrup, check out this video.