HN Reader

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.

I don't drink much soda, maybe a coke once a year. Over the years the taste of coke has changed. Every year when I get that craving and drink one, it tastes different. So either the recipe has changed multiple times and there isn't one true coke flavour, or my taste buds might be faulty.

Fun fact: the most similar coke clone I've ever tasted was in Cuba.

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

Check out the acquired podcast episode on Coca Cola. Amazingly reserached history on the business and evolution of the Coke forumla.

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”

> Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola

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

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.

Some of the interesting discovered flavor components in this trial were tea tree and basil (not shown in the video).

Reminded me of the book Fast Food Nation where they describe the artificial flavor industry (Chapter 5), and visit labs in New Jersey where fast food tastes are created by "flavorists". Most of the taste comes from smell, via gas molecules released in the mouth.

The book also covers how they scout out real estate, and how they create french fries by shooting potatoes at 80 mph. (A bit different from in-n-out)

Note: don't bother watching the movie, it's nothing like the book.

I don’t drink cola and I’m usually not into chemistry videos, but this was genuinely entertaining. The "Mass Spectrometry" and “What do other people think?” segment was especially fun; great pacing and presentation. LabCoatz is my first chemistry channel subscription :)

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.

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...

to me the impressive thing is Coca Cola was formulated in the 1800s and yet even with modern equipment - most people fail to replicate it.

the original chemist who made Coca Cola was a genius

Coke is nasty, literally feels like my teeth are dissolving the moment I drink it. Not to detract from the amazing science. I am still guilty drinking the sugarfree redbull and for soda if I would drink it, mountain dew.

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 :(

Could he patent-troll Coca cola?

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 :)

Huh there is so much limonene in Coca Cola?! Limonene works as a very good…pesticide and herbicide! I did a research project on limonene like 10 years ago with my mentor and it outperformed most commercial pesticides in controlled settings. It really can't be that great to ingest.

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.

it's easy: take some coke and put coke into it.

approximately 0.2 g per liter

I used to be a big fan of Coke and Dr Pepper and rarely drink soda anymore. I stopped for health reasons though I still enjoy a nice ice cold Coke or Dr P. I once read up on the flavor of Coke which is said to be mostly cinnamon and vanilla and something strange happened: coke went from tasting like coke to tasting like cinnamon in vanilla. It's like how you cant un-hear muddled song lyrics you mistook for something else until you read the lyrics and they became clear. Same with Dr Pepper: vanilla and caramel. Sort of ruined the flavors for me for a while. Made giving it up easier.

One night I Was shopping, passed the soda, and a thought popped into my head: why not try to make my own soda? I have pure vanilla extract, cinnamon and sugar. So I bought a case of seltzer and spent the night making my own Dr Pepper and Coke. I caramelized sugar in a sauce pan for the Dr P which came out pretty good. Overall they were decent analogs but not anywhere near perfect. It was a fun itch to scratch.