Comment by 1970-01-01

Yes - not about coke but my understanding is that Heinz invested a lot of money over the years to standardise the taste across factories, countries and tomatoes themselves.

Coke itself is not consumed in a containerless 0g environment so the container itself imparts taste - hence why aficionados will often prefer glass over pastic or can. The bottling processing factory will also impart a taste, as will the local humidity which is why I often think drinks taste odd in Singapore.

My fav thing I heard was back in a chemistry lab someone told me a rumour coke had invested serious R&D into a plastic/surface that tastes like lemon to accommodate for the regular plastic taste that leaches from their bottles.

That's my experience but I'm not much of a Coke drinker.

I recall some years ago Pepsi making the claim they could replicate Coke to the point of it being essentially indistinguishable but that's wasn't the point, their branding required Pepsi to be clearly differentiated from Coke—commercially that seems to make sense.

It's unclear how accurate Pepsi's claims are but they seemed to be based on tasting trials where people couldn't tell the 'clone' from the real thing.

Seems to me Pepsi was likely right, if we consider how close this formulation is to Coke and that it was produced with limited resources then one would expect Pepsi with its huge resources to grind their 'clone' as fine as they deemed necessary.

These days, Coke's 'secret' formula is more a publicity stunt than anything else.

Yes my observation too that coca cola is inconsistent. I have felt that too. Also glass bottled cold drink or canned cold drinks taste much better than plastic bottled ones. My favorite is glass bottled one. But have never found a glass bottled coca cola in my region. It's a distribution issue. So I also don't agree with claims in the video. I drink coca cola 8/10 times

Never liked the 20oz plastic Coke bottles. The aluminum cans and 2liter plastic tasted fine though.

Even the same drink tastes a little different at different temperature or if you use a plastic straw, metal straw, glass bottle, plastic bottle.

It is true: sweetness is very different across the globe due to nation preferences

and water source has a great impact

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...

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.

Taste buds can detect chemicals in as concentrations as low as a few parts per million, I dunno.

Mass spec is indeed demonstrated multiple times

He doesn't compare the mass spec of his final product to a real coke, unless I missed it.

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.

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.

Coke and Sprite taste extremely different.

Coke and Pepsi are a lot closer but still distinguishable.

If you cannot tell the difference between a cola and a lemonade, then that says more about the person performing the taste test than anything.

Lol, and here I am choking in shock when I grab a sip from a sprite can instead of the coke that I thought it was. Turns out I was just blindly (literally) falling for marketing? I don't think so, Tim.

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.

Sounds as believable as that nonsense about onions tasting the same as apples if you hold your nose.

Yea, you've never drank the off brand stuff I see. It's generally significantly different to me.

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.

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.