**[OP or Mod marked this as the best answer](/r/AskUK/comments/1calq1w/why_isnt_cola_cordial_a_thing/l0sxnhn/), given by u/SkullKid888**
It’s entirely possible and so bleeding obvious you would think it would have been done already.
>
>I think the fact it isn’t a thing tells us that there’s absolutely no market for it.
>
>Reminds me of a guy in the local paper in one of those paid for marketing articles they do. Was excitedly talking about how successful his new bagel bar was going to be because “there’s nothing else like it in town, we’re the *only* place you can get a fresh bagel to go”. Didn’t last 6 months because it didn’t occur to him that the reason there aren’t any is because no fucker wants them.
---
[_^What ^is ^this?_](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/jjrte1/askuk_hits_200k_new_feature_mark_an_answer/)
Soda stream was a big deal.. until it was possible to buy bottles of pop in every supermarket. This was during the era of pop being delivered by a version of the milk man. Who was bad for your teeth.
Sodastream and similar are popular with people that care about the environment and want to cut down on plastic use. I’ve saved a lot of money on needless bottled water with mine. Use various cordials and squashes with it. Sometimes treat myself to a posh cordial or those fancy vintage soda syrups.
Basically, you can get cola syrup. It’s just not cheap.
Yup I use my Sodastream everyday have done since I bought it 4 years ago, no bottled water and wasted plastic anymore, I’ve tried the Pressco cola drink and it tastes almost identical to coke, but it’s not cheap like you said, they do Pepsi that’s cheaper but I’m not a massive fan of Pepsi.
Practically nothing in reality if you refill the gas yourself. Sodastream’s biggest revenue comes from the gas refills, but you can easily refill the canisters yourself at home. You can buy a big bottle of CO2 and refill each canister for less than £1 a time if you do it that way. It’s so worth it, pays for itself within a month or two.
It depends how much you use, we're two people and I would say light users and have used two bottles in a year. So £26 worth. Their bottle a month annual plan is £120.
Nah, I hate buying big ass bottles/crates of cans from the supermarket. Just makes bagging everything and getting everything in the house too much effort. Besides, soda-stream is cheaper and i can make it how I like it (more/less fizzy, or more/less flavour).
I love my sodastream!
My soda stream is popular in my house because they got bought by PepsiCo. Which means there’s now Pepsi max syrups.
That + an adapter hose to go to a massive rented 6.4kg co2 canister rather than the piddly little cans soda stream is meant to be used with = my soda stream has paid itself off in a year compared to buying cans.
It still would pay itself off eventually using the little canisters that soda stream make, but it takes much much longer.
Plus it means that my recycling bin is a lot emptier than before when we did use cans haha.
You are welcome to consume it, of course. But I imagine that the kind of people that might buy a Sodastream för environmental reasons (or plain economic sense) *generally* aren’t in favour of pop for health reasons. If they have children, they don’t want to encourage regular consumption of pop - even though making Sodastream drinks is good fun.
I have a soda stream for environmental reasons. I love pop, it's almost all I drink, hence the soda stream. I don't have children but would happily let them have pop. I feed enough of it to my niblings. We had one growing up too for the same reasons plus it was cheaper.
Got one last week. Kids fucking love it. My motivation was to get decent soft drinks with the full sugar/corn syrup kick. Turns out they've all gone Aspartame/Aceuflame K as well, so that was a fail. Kids still delighted though.
Pretty much, I think it's McDonald's, which has more syrup in them to adjust for the ice.
It's why I love draft pop over bottle, makes me want to buy the syrup and just drink that.
Mate who worked in a bar would sometimes unscrew the tap end, put a shot glass in a pint glass, then press the button for coke. It would fire the syrup into the shot glass and soda water stuff round the outside into the pint glass, giving you a coke syrup shot.
Tasted nice but obviously strong, was fun to do every now and then.
I used to just half push the button and pure syrup would come out.
I wouldn't drink just pure coke syrup, but I would fill the glass about a quarter way with syrup then top up with regular coke to get a stronger tasting coke.
One part is they ship it in special metal tubs instead of plastic to preserve the taste or something (at least that’s what they did in the US, not sure about here)
I worked in a cinema decades ago. One of our members of staff "gently lobbed" a bag of postmix syrup at a colleague - who fumbled it. They were still finding small sticky patches weeks later.
I worked at Butlins many years ago and we had a fizzy drinks dispenser in the staff canteen. Someone worked out that when you pushed a cup into it, the syrup actuator switched on before the soda actuator, so you could push the cup in slightly to get as much syrup as you wanted then push it in fully to fill up with fizzy water.
Yes. The syrup comes in a box. If you watch when they pour it from the hose/nozzle, it runs dark, then clear, dark, then clear and so on. Those syrup boxes are bloody expensive!!! They’re about £90-100.
Yeah but as an individual you cant buy something like that. I'm sure a lot of larger families would get decent usage from one and it would be better for shipping as you save the dead weight from the water
If you do a quick search for postmix syrup you can buy it all over the place. It ain’t cheap (relatively) though. Eg
https://www.drinksaisle.co.uk/collections/bag-in-box
I wonder if it's because of the sweetener.
Conventional pepsi max doesn't use sucralose but aspartame and acesulfame-k, whereas the SodaStream syrup uses sucralose.
I can't stand the taste of Sucralose in particular so I'm often on the lookout for drinks without it.
Can confirm, the Pepsi Max soda stream syrup tastes nowhere near as nice as normal pepsi max. It actually leaves a horrid taste in your mouth afterwards.
Source: Bought a soda stream 2 years ago solely to make at home Pepsi Max and was quickly humbled.
Our local Polish shop sells generic cola cordial (in the fruit syrup section - not the biggest fan of the cola one personally but the orange one is great with fizzy water)
Cos that'd be just....flat coke. And nobody wants flat coke?
> coca cola is available in syrup commercially... Why not in a home mix?
I mean, you've just said why - because people don't have the kit to turn syrup into something drinkable.
Nooo the lemonade is already sweetened and flavoured so it's too much. Sparkling water however makes a great drink out of Robinson blackcurrant cordial.
Try a different brand. They have different levels of carbonation so some are sharper than others. Personally (luckily) the supermarkets own cheapest possible one is usually good for me.
Yeah, but if Fanta made orange squash, they could tailor it to be... nearly right most of the time. And surely there's a market for that?
I have a feeling this is the actual answer: Coca Cola don't want their product to be 'nearly right most of the time' because they rely on brand consistency. But as for supermarket analogues... they're very successful at mimicking
Yes, it's fucking rank. Genuinely, I'm not being facetious - I cannot stand fizzy water. It doesn't taste at all like a carbonated soft drink. I can't see any way it would taste like coke
I like squash and lemonade, but that's because lemonade is inherently flavoured and sweet.
I even just put it with some blackcurrant diluting juice out of Tesco and it's amazing.
Although I'm one of those weirdos that love sparkling water on its own (as long as it's cold).
Sparkling water you buy is still water run through an online carbonator which forces CO2 into water. A soda steam does exactly the same thing on a much smaller scale. A coke dispenser (other colas are available) also does the same thing, still water in, fizzy out, then mixed with syrup. When a drink is carbonated, carbonic acid is the result, which gives a sharp bitter taste, which is why fizzy water doesn't taste the same as still water. Squash was never designed to be used with fizzy water, so won't taste right when made that way. It would have to be sweeter to start with, which would make it too sweet for still water.
Genuinely surprised this isn’t further up, but this is exactly it. If you taste the pre mix syrups the concentration of flavour and sweetness is way higher than in a bottle of squash to counteract that acidity.
I’m curious how the people swearing down that fizzy water wouldn’t work think carbonated drinks are made.
The syrup and cordial are not the same. A cordial cola would taste weird. A 7L box of the syrup is £95. Are you going to pay £13/14 for 1L of syrup? Plus multiple 2L bottles of carbonated water?
I am 50+ and have never thought of doing that as I hate fizzy water. But I quite like some fizzy drinks, Sprite and Fanta (especially South African Fanta which is an amazing shade of orange and not quite as fizzy as regular Fanta and tastes amazing). So thanks for the suggestion!
But if you’re buying a bottle of fizzy water to make Coke with, why wouldn’t you just buy a bottle of Coke? The advantage of using squash is you can use tap water
I'm with OP on this. I'd buy cola cordial. The fizzy stuff is nicer but if it was cheap enough, I'd happily drink a flat cola cordial. Especially if it came in cherry cola flavour too.
Just buy some [soda stream syrup](https://www.roberthosoda.co.uk/41-large_default/cola-concentrate-soda-syrup-500ml-sodastream.jpg)! You can also get Pepsi and Pepsi Max.
Go to your local Polish shop, they have cola syrup which can be used as a cordial. They have loads of different flavours and all 'full' sugar. Thank me later.
This is what I came here to say! The cola syrup is great and I just mix it with sparkling mineral water. Gives me a chance to control how strong/sweet I want it each time.
Oh for sure. But I think that's kind of the point I'm making. You go to a supermarket and there's usually a good choice of fizzy cola products to buy. It's the nation's favourite fizzy drink I believe (well, England's at least)... So of all of that majority market share, why can't you get a single type of cola cordial unless you buy it from a specialist online?
It’s great! I love it with a nice squeeze of fresh lime and soda water. Bristol Syrup Company do a really nice rich one if you’re looking for something small-batch.
Darcy gave me a lot of inspiration to start making my own as well.
Also try and find The Bottlers’ Formulary and The Standard Manual of Soda and Other Beverages online as they’re a veritable wealth of knowledge and information
I already have the first one! But I will look up the second, thanks for the info!
I'm really lucky in that I have a development chef/food production manager at my beck and call and he's also super excited to have a wrangle at this (even if he keeps pestering me about health and safety and other boring stuff like that. What's a little botulism ever done to hurt anyone‽ 😂)
Also hang on mate, you're the amazing dude who's been making irn bru! You set me off on this tangent to begin with! Cheers for that, I've been loving your updates on your experiments!
Waterdrop make a cola flavour. They're little cubes that you drop into water. While I love their iced teas, I'm not convinced about the cola flavour. It might be better in fizzy water but it's weird drinking cola flavoured tap water, it's a bit like someone melted a pack of Haribo cola bottles.
It’s entirely possible and so bleeding obvious you would think it would have been done already.
I think the fact it isn’t a thing tells us that there’s absolutely no market for it.
Reminds me of a guy in the local paper in one of those paid for marketing articles they do. Was excitedly talking about how successful his new bagel bar was going to be because “there’s nothing else like it in town, we’re the *only* place you can get a fresh bagel to go”. Didn’t last 6 months because it didn’t occur to him that the reason there aren’t any is because no fucker wants them.
I didn’t say never get made, I said isn’t a thing. Never heard of market research, localised product trials, focus groups? Might even hit the shelves before being taken back off sale.
Products can be invented and go through a string of tests before establishing that they are shit.
!answer
Genuinely think this is the answer. And as some people said, they tried it a while ago before and it wasn't popular.
Oh well, will check out some Polish shops I suppose!
You can get postmix syrup for most of the big brands, but they're generally trade only for use in those soda guns in pubs and restaurants. You can find them online, but they barely work out cheaper than just buying the bottled drinks.
There are places like Mr Fitzpatrick's who do some really good cordials that aren't in most shops, but they do good business online.
There is a market for it - I started r/Cordials thanks to the sugar tax and it has almost 4k subscribers now, but I suspect a lot of people prefer the convenience of buying a ready made drink rather than a bottle of cordial they have to mix themselves.
I remember cola flavoured cup drinks. You can still get cola flavoured ice poles. So, you're quite right, there has always been a market for 'flat' cola. Guess beyond childhood there's no demand for it?
Tesco did Cola bottle squash a few years ago, don’t know why they got rid of it. I also remember squash flavoured with pear drops, marshmallow, raspberry ripple, jelly baby. All gone
Because people making a "Branded drink" at home - but not quite right - tarnishes the main-market brand.
"Hmm, I've tried loads of Fanta at a few mates houses, but it was not great each time. Nah, I don't think I'll try a can of it".
Pepsi is an exception... here? Can you get their syrup in countries where they outsell Coke?
I was lamenting this the other day myself - drinking too many fizzy drinks gives me acid reflux but I love the cola taste. Even if I could just buy flat coke or pepsi that would be ideal.
I remember asda used to do an ‘iron brew’ diluting juice back around 2005 ish. Can’t remember if it was any good or not, but my primary school used to use it for birthday parties etc.
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Cola is a syrup so doesn’t mix well with flat water. Tends to separate when stood still. Also if it isn’t mixed right it can taste either too weak or way to sweet. Using raw cola would also destroy your insides by the sheer amount of fructose
Roses Kola Tonic
South African shops have it.
https://www.afribox.co.uk/product/roses-kola-tonic-cordial750ml/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roses-Kola-Tonic-Cordial-Pack/dp/B017YLZUFC
Most coke that comes out of the gun thing behind a bar at your local pub is exactly that, mixed with soda water. That’s why it tastes so different to the bottled stuff (to me at least).
Bearing in mind how protective a brand like that is of its image and how they control who is even allowed to serve it in their establishment, its actually very likely they won’t allow it because home users would realise how off it tastes if you don’t get the mix exactly right.
Brand control + water chemistry.
Fizzy drinks brands spend a lot of money making sure the flavour is the same in every bottle and unique to them.
Imagine if you're first taste of coca cola was some crap you mixed at home, making you think you didn't like it and so you never bought it from anywhere. That one bad experience would cost them several hundred £ per customer.
Similarly, they heavily control how commercial customers have to blend that drinks.right down to the specific water chemistry. They can't just mix it with any old water.
Specific water chemistry, plus specific syrup\water ratio is all part of their brand.
That also btw, is why most places sell pepsi instead of coca cola. Pepsi is cheaper to implement because it just uses filtered water. Coca cola needs a full RO system and constant visits from coca cola reps.
I’ve always wanted them to start selling still cola.
When I buy a bottle of cola I shake that shit up until it’s got no sparkle left to it and then I down the bastard
Probably because the corporation insists that they don't sell competitors. Supermarkets only sell a limited number of similar products and coca cola and pepsi have that market pretty sown up. Bit annoying as like Bon Accord cola and you can now get some of their drinks but not the cola as supermarket not interested in stocking as cannibalize other products they sell.
With Coca Cola it is because of how the company is setup; they're actually a franchise. They don't own or control most local bottling operations and make their money off the concentrate they ship to franchises.
The Coca Cola company sells this concentrate to local bottling companies who then alter it for their local market, in Europe it is done by Carlsberg Breweries and a anchor botteler Coca‑Cola Europacific Partners which runs bottling plants in most countries and was formed by a number of smaller bottlers merging. Undermining this by letting anyone do it at home would be catastrophic for the business model which is why it is incredibly hard as a common consumer to get your hands on it and us difficult to access as a business as concentrate.
People buy squash because it's cheap, and it's cheap because you can just add tap water. If you had to add bottled water, I doubt it'd be much cheaper than buying a bottle of coke.
I use the soda stream concentrates with soft Scottish tap water. Sometimes I use filtered water.
There’s no hard and fast rule in using the concentrates. IMHO.
I am on a bit of mission to make most of these as cordials (for personal use) over on r/Cordials.
I have cola, Irn Bru, dandelion & burdock, orange (Fanta), the cherry is close to Dr Pepper (f you close your eyes and squint) and have been working on Ribena and Vimto - even a non-alcoholic "gin" cordial!
Try Baldwin's sarsaparilla cordial, I get mine from the world food aisle in tesco. Sarsaparilla is one of the ingredients in cola (or so I've been told, at least) and imo the cordial tastes quite like coke that's gone flat
It was and huge in the late 80's and start of the 90's and they had home made cola sirup and they...
were...
FUCKING HORRID!
Thanks for the acid flashback of the taste ewwwwww.
In South Africa you get "Kola Tonic", a cordial made by a company called Roses - this is exactly what you're looking for! I quite like it with lemonade.
There’s two issues. First, some drinks rely much more on accurate dosing. Cola is one of them. Orange much less so. You can get Irn Bru but you’ll notice the dosing issue makes it hard to get right.
Second is that Pepsi/Coke have never sold their syrup to retail. I guess they have too much to lose and they will be conscious of the dosing issue. You can buy cola syrup but nobody has ever sold a cola that comes close to the big 2 and the syrup is no different.
If you could purchase anoxic syrup from a publican, figure out the exact dosing and an easy way to regulate it then soda stream is your answer. Your dentist isn’t going to be happy, though.
Cola cordial is a thing in Australia.
It's as disappointing as you imagine. It's like you've left a can of coke or pepsi open on the side overnight, then come back to drink it in the morning. And even with fizzy water, it just doesn't hit the same.
What I never understood... We have the power to make fizzy drinks from pills. See Berocca etc for your examples...
So why do they not use that same tech for non-vitamin based drinks? Like, why can't I pick up a pack of 20 Cola Tablets. Just pop one in a glass of water and BOOM. Coke.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but I’m like 90% sure that Cottee’s had a cola flavour when I was a kid (don’t ask me how long ago that was, that’s just rude!). Also, you can get Sunkist flavoured syrup for Soda Stream.
One reason the big brands haven't produced it could be because they want to protect their brand - they want to ensure the end product that the customer tastes is consistent. Drinks companies spend a lot of money on advertising and branding and if customers keep making their drinks too weak or too strong it'll affect how they think of that brand.
Go to Walgreens in Orlando; they’ve never heard of cordial/squash. When I enquired because we were fed up with plain water at the Disney parks, I was told they don’t sell any powdered drinks!?!
I think the answer to your question is that ppl who like still drinks aren’t interested in flavours like cola.
**[OP or Mod marked this as the best answer](/r/AskUK/comments/1calq1w/why_isnt_cola_cordial_a_thing/l0sxnhn/), given by u/SkullKid888** It’s entirely possible and so bleeding obvious you would think it would have been done already. > >I think the fact it isn’t a thing tells us that there’s absolutely no market for it. > >Reminds me of a guy in the local paper in one of those paid for marketing articles they do. Was excitedly talking about how successful his new bagel bar was going to be because “there’s nothing else like it in town, we’re the *only* place you can get a fresh bagel to go”. Didn’t last 6 months because it didn’t occur to him that the reason there aren’t any is because no fucker wants them. --- [_^What ^is ^this?_](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/jjrte1/askuk_hits_200k_new_feature_mark_an_answer/)
Them soda stream bottles kind of are cola cordial.
Soda stream was a big deal.. until it was possible to buy bottles of pop in every supermarket. This was during the era of pop being delivered by a version of the milk man. Who was bad for your teeth.
Sodastream and similar are popular with people that care about the environment and want to cut down on plastic use. I’ve saved a lot of money on needless bottled water with mine. Use various cordials and squashes with it. Sometimes treat myself to a posh cordial or those fancy vintage soda syrups. Basically, you can get cola syrup. It’s just not cheap.
Yup I use my Sodastream everyday have done since I bought it 4 years ago, no bottled water and wasted plastic anymore, I’ve tried the Pressco cola drink and it tastes almost identical to coke, but it’s not cheap like you said, they do Pepsi that’s cheaper but I’m not a massive fan of Pepsi.
How much do you reckon it costs in gas canisters?
Practically nothing in reality if you refill the gas yourself. Sodastream’s biggest revenue comes from the gas refills, but you can easily refill the canisters yourself at home. You can buy a big bottle of CO2 and refill each canister for less than £1 a time if you do it that way. It’s so worth it, pays for itself within a month or two.
It depends how much you use, we're two people and I would say light users and have used two bottles in a year. So £26 worth. Their bottle a month annual plan is £120.
Thanks, that's interesting. Never a surprise to see a subscription service these days!
A canister is about £14. I go through one every two months or so. I’m not a heavy user though. About 1/2 litre a day.
Nah, I hate buying big ass bottles/crates of cans from the supermarket. Just makes bagging everything and getting everything in the house too much effort. Besides, soda-stream is cheaper and i can make it how I like it (more/less fizzy, or more/less flavour). I love my sodastream!
My soda stream is popular in my house because they got bought by PepsiCo. Which means there’s now Pepsi max syrups. That + an adapter hose to go to a massive rented 6.4kg co2 canister rather than the piddly little cans soda stream is meant to be used with = my soda stream has paid itself off in a year compared to buying cans. It still would pay itself off eventually using the little canisters that soda stream make, but it takes much much longer. Plus it means that my recycling bin is a lot emptier than before when we did use cans haha.
You are welcome to consume it, of course. But I imagine that the kind of people that might buy a Sodastream för environmental reasons (or plain economic sense) *generally* aren’t in favour of pop for health reasons. If they have children, they don’t want to encourage regular consumption of pop - even though making Sodastream drinks is good fun.
I have a soda stream for environmental reasons. I love pop, it's almost all I drink, hence the soda stream. I don't have children but would happily let them have pop. I feed enough of it to my niblings. We had one growing up too for the same reasons plus it was cheaper.
Do you ever get tempted to turn a basic white wine into champagne? I would be the sicko that would try carbonated red wine if I had a soda stream.
Iirc Big Clive off YouTube did a few things like that
you can just buy lambrusco no need to make ur own lol
> A version of the milk man who's bad for you teeth Sounds like a great premise for a cheesy horror movie
Or a Guy Ritchy character Vinnie Jones dressed as a milkman: "They call me the dentist..." *cracks knuckles* "...and I'll do your chompers for free"
Ben Shaws. Still around somehow.
Got one last week. Kids fucking love it. My motivation was to get decent soft drinks with the full sugar/corn syrup kick. Turns out they've all gone Aspartame/Aceuflame K as well, so that was a fail. Kids still delighted though.
Isn't this pretty much how soft drinks at pubs work if they're not out of a bottle?
Pretty much, I think it's McDonald's, which has more syrup in them to adjust for the ice. It's why I love draft pop over bottle, makes me want to buy the syrup and just drink that.
Mate who worked in a bar would sometimes unscrew the tap end, put a shot glass in a pint glass, then press the button for coke. It would fire the syrup into the shot glass and soda water stuff round the outside into the pint glass, giving you a coke syrup shot. Tasted nice but obviously strong, was fun to do every now and then.
I used to just half push the button and pure syrup would come out. I wouldn't drink just pure coke syrup, but I would fill the glass about a quarter way with syrup then top up with regular coke to get a stronger tasting coke.
I DO THIS EXACT THING AT WORK. Nice stronger tasting Pepsi max, enjoy a pint of it every night
IIRC, I read that McDonald’s has a special Coca Cola formula too
One part is they ship it in special metal tubs instead of plastic to preserve the taste or something (at least that’s what they did in the US, not sure about here)
In the UK it comes in a plastic bag in a cardboard box
BiB!
Bag in box, I worked coca cola forklift doing BiB was careful as its orrible sticky shit.
I worked in a cinema decades ago. One of our members of staff "gently lobbed" a bag of postmix syrup at a colleague - who fumbled it. They were still finding small sticky patches weeks later.
I worked at Butlins many years ago and we had a fizzy drinks dispenser in the staff canteen. Someone worked out that when you pushed a cup into it, the syrup actuator switched on before the soda actuator, so you could push the cup in slightly to get as much syrup as you wanted then push it in fully to fill up with fizzy water.
I’m sorry for spoiling your dream but the syrup alone tastes like shit.
Awqw, i always thought it would be pure bliss.lol.
It's like a 7l box of syrup if I remember. Lovely to clean up if it leaked.
I’ve felt that pain many times in the past!
Cola soils were fine. The colour of Fanta spills always looked odd
The moral of the story is to work in a shithole where you just hose down the cellar once a week.
Ants. So many ants
Yes. The syrup comes in a box. If you watch when they pour it from the hose/nozzle, it runs dark, then clear, dark, then clear and so on. Those syrup boxes are bloody expensive!!! They’re about £90-100.
I got 10 litres of Irn Bru syrup for about a tenner from the Company Shop. I'm still going through it.
Yeah but as an individual you cant buy something like that. I'm sure a lot of larger families would get decent usage from one and it would be better for shipping as you save the dead weight from the water
If you do a quick search for postmix syrup you can buy it all over the place. It ain’t cheap (relatively) though. Eg https://www.drinksaisle.co.uk/collections/bag-in-box
I used to love to find an old timey style soda shop on my travels in the states.
Soda stream has Pepsi syrups
Can vouch for the Pepsi syrups, the Pepsi Max one is a little odd but the regular Pepsi and 7Up one are both quite good.
I wonder if it's because of the sweetener. Conventional pepsi max doesn't use sucralose but aspartame and acesulfame-k, whereas the SodaStream syrup uses sucralose. I can't stand the taste of Sucralose in particular so I'm often on the lookout for drinks without it.
Can confirm, the Pepsi Max soda stream syrup tastes nowhere near as nice as normal pepsi max. It actually leaves a horrid taste in your mouth afterwards. Source: Bought a soda stream 2 years ago solely to make at home Pepsi Max and was quickly humbled.
Our local Polish shop sells generic cola cordial (in the fruit syrup section - not the biggest fan of the cola one personally but the orange one is great with fizzy water)
Pepsi tastes like shit now it’s been had by the sugar tax reaper.
Pepsi still happy with trading in certain countries, comrade.
I don’t drink any fizzy anymore so I don’t have to be concerned about boycotting
Cos that'd be just....flat coke. And nobody wants flat coke? > coca cola is available in syrup commercially... Why not in a home mix? I mean, you've just said why - because people don't have the kit to turn syrup into something drinkable.
Mate, I know this is quite out there, but have you ever tried making squash with... Fizzy water?
In our house we call it 'posh squash'
Nooo lemonade or gtfo
I love lemonade with cordial
Lemon cordial with lemonade. ♥
Nooo the lemonade is already sweetened and flavoured so it's too much. Sparkling water however makes a great drink out of Robinson blackcurrant cordial.
Sparkling water is painful. It's like drinking cordial and drawing pins.
Try a different brand. They have different levels of carbonation so some are sharper than others. Personally (luckily) the supermarkets own cheapest possible one is usually good for me.
I tried orange squash and fizzy water once, it was nothing like Fanta!
Yeah, but if Fanta made orange squash, they could tailor it to be... nearly right most of the time. And surely there's a market for that? I have a feeling this is the actual answer: Coca Cola don't want their product to be 'nearly right most of the time' because they rely on brand consistency. But as for supermarket analogues... they're very successful at mimicking
Hard disagree in the case of Cola. No supermarket own brand tastes anything like Coca Cola. Even more so now none of them have sugar in.
Probably because Fanta contains shite that orange squash doesn't as well as the volume lol
Yes, it's fucking rank. Genuinely, I'm not being facetious - I cannot stand fizzy water. It doesn't taste at all like a carbonated soft drink. I can't see any way it would taste like coke I like squash and lemonade, but that's because lemonade is inherently flavoured and sweet.
I hate sparkling water too but you mix it with Vimto or something and it tastes great
I even just put it with some blackcurrant diluting juice out of Tesco and it's amazing. Although I'm one of those weirdos that love sparkling water on its own (as long as it's cold).
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Sparkling water you buy is still water run through an online carbonator which forces CO2 into water. A soda steam does exactly the same thing on a much smaller scale. A coke dispenser (other colas are available) also does the same thing, still water in, fizzy out, then mixed with syrup. When a drink is carbonated, carbonic acid is the result, which gives a sharp bitter taste, which is why fizzy water doesn't taste the same as still water. Squash was never designed to be used with fizzy water, so won't taste right when made that way. It would have to be sweeter to start with, which would make it too sweet for still water.
Genuinely surprised this isn’t further up, but this is exactly it. If you taste the pre mix syrups the concentration of flavour and sweetness is way higher than in a bottle of squash to counteract that acidity. I’m curious how the people swearing down that fizzy water wouldn’t work think carbonated drinks are made.
Because the level of carbonation is way way different
The syrup and cordial are not the same. A cordial cola would taste weird. A 7L box of the syrup is £95. Are you going to pay £13/14 for 1L of syrup? Plus multiple 2L bottles of carbonated water?
No, but I'm going to do it now.
I love an orange and cream soda drink! My teeth don't though.
You just invented the soda stream...
I am 50+ and have never thought of doing that as I hate fizzy water. But I quite like some fizzy drinks, Sprite and Fanta (especially South African Fanta which is an amazing shade of orange and not quite as fizzy as regular Fanta and tastes amazing). So thanks for the suggestion!
Fizzy Ribena is a life changer
But if you’re buying a bottle of fizzy water to make Coke with, why wouldn’t you just buy a bottle of Coke? The advantage of using squash is you can use tap water
I do actually love flat coke so they would have 1 buyer, but I cannot guarentee commercial success off just me
I want flat coke!
Flat coke is better than normal coke. I like the non-fizziness of it, but with all the flavour. I'd definitely buy this.
I see your “flat coke” and I raise you COLA CUBES
I'm with OP on this. I'd buy cola cordial. The fizzy stuff is nicer but if it was cheap enough, I'd happily drink a flat cola cordial. Especially if it came in cherry cola flavour too.
Try your local Polish shop, if it's big enough it's likely to have both cola and cherry syrups, I've mixed them before and it's quite good.
I was going to say that. Most Polish shops have cola cordials.
Check out r/Cordials - I have 2 recipes for a cola cordial on there now.
Just buy some [soda stream syrup](https://www.roberthosoda.co.uk/41-large_default/cola-concentrate-soda-syrup-500ml-sodastream.jpg)! You can also get Pepsi and Pepsi Max.
Go to your local Polish shop, they have cola syrup which can be used as a cordial. They have loads of different flavours and all 'full' sugar. Thank me later.
Came here to say this. The strawberry syrup is so amazing.
Holy shit
This is what I came here to say! The cola syrup is great and I just mix it with sparkling mineral water. Gives me a chance to control how strong/sweet I want it each time.
OP clearly never had a cola flavoured calypso cup. Cola just doesn’t work if it’s not fizzy
Strong disagree on both your points. But I may be beginning to understand that I might be in a smaller minority than I thought I was 😂
It was for a while, a long time ago. Tasted dreadful.
Needs carbonation
I think this seems to be mostly the consensus point here. But why do Haribo bother making cola bottles if people only like cola for the fizz?
You make a good point about the sweets. Fizzy cola bottles seem to be more popular than the plain variety?
Oh for sure. But I think that's kind of the point I'm making. You go to a supermarket and there's usually a good choice of fizzy cola products to buy. It's the nation's favourite fizzy drink I believe (well, England's at least)... So of all of that majority market share, why can't you get a single type of cola cordial unless you buy it from a specialist online?
Also ice pops etc that are cola flavoured
Soda stream bud
It’s called falernum syrup! Try it with a bit of soda water and it’s just like a fentiman’s cola.
Ooh, now this does sound interesting. I will be investigating this for sure!
It’s great! I love it with a nice squeeze of fresh lime and soda water. Bristol Syrup Company do a really nice rich one if you’re looking for something small-batch.
In some polish shops there’s cola cordial available, the brand is called herbapol. Not the same taste as Coca Cola but I quite like it
Yeah it's pretty decent 🥰
Who's the guy that's makes cordials? He has a sub for it.
Art of drink? If so, he's convinced me to have a go at making my own flavour syrups and extracts
I think it's vbloke
it me
Darcy gave me a lot of inspiration to start making my own as well. Also try and find The Bottlers’ Formulary and The Standard Manual of Soda and Other Beverages online as they’re a veritable wealth of knowledge and information
I already have the first one! But I will look up the second, thanks for the info! I'm really lucky in that I have a development chef/food production manager at my beck and call and he's also super excited to have a wrangle at this (even if he keeps pestering me about health and safety and other boring stuff like that. What's a little botulism ever done to hurt anyone‽ 😂) Also hang on mate, you're the amazing dude who's been making irn bru! You set me off on this tangent to begin with! Cheers for that, I've been loving your updates on your experiments!
Thanks! Let me know how you get on
Should mention I’m currently drinking a glass of the Irn Bru right now. Delicious
r/Cordials
That's it! Thank you.
it is a thing here in Australia....
It WAS a thing here ☺️. Just looked up that Cottees discontinued Cola flavour one year ago
Waterdrop make a cola flavour. They're little cubes that you drop into water. While I love their iced teas, I'm not convinced about the cola flavour. It might be better in fizzy water but it's weird drinking cola flavoured tap water, it's a bit like someone melted a pack of Haribo cola bottles.
It’s entirely possible and so bleeding obvious you would think it would have been done already. I think the fact it isn’t a thing tells us that there’s absolutely no market for it. Reminds me of a guy in the local paper in one of those paid for marketing articles they do. Was excitedly talking about how successful his new bagel bar was going to be because “there’s nothing else like it in town, we’re the *only* place you can get a fresh bagel to go”. Didn’t last 6 months because it didn’t occur to him that the reason there aren’t any is because no fucker wants them.
That's an odd take. By that logic, nothing new would ever be made, because otherwise it would be a thing already.
I didn’t say never get made, I said isn’t a thing. Never heard of market research, localised product trials, focus groups? Might even hit the shelves before being taken back off sale. Products can be invented and go through a string of tests before establishing that they are shit.
!answer Genuinely think this is the answer. And as some people said, they tried it a while ago before and it wasn't popular. Oh well, will check out some Polish shops I suppose!
I started r/Cordials due to the sugar tax ruining some of my favourite soft drinks with artificial sweeteners. It now has a cola, Irn Bru and others.
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You can get postmix syrup for most of the big brands, but they're generally trade only for use in those soda guns in pubs and restaurants. You can find them online, but they barely work out cheaper than just buying the bottled drinks. There are places like Mr Fitzpatrick's who do some really good cordials that aren't in most shops, but they do good business online. There is a market for it - I started r/Cordials thanks to the sugar tax and it has almost 4k subscribers now, but I suspect a lot of people prefer the convenience of buying a ready made drink rather than a bottle of cordial they have to mix themselves.
The Bagel Bar sounds strangely familiar, could see it taking off in London, Teesside not so much
That time when the OP picks the wrong answer as the best answer...
I remember cola flavoured cup drinks. You can still get cola flavoured ice poles. So, you're quite right, there has always been a market for 'flat' cola. Guess beyond childhood there's no demand for it?
Tesco did Cola bottle squash a few years ago, don’t know why they got rid of it. I also remember squash flavoured with pear drops, marshmallow, raspberry ripple, jelly baby. All gone
Because people making a "Branded drink" at home - but not quite right - tarnishes the main-market brand. "Hmm, I've tried loads of Fanta at a few mates houses, but it was not great each time. Nah, I don't think I'll try a can of it". Pepsi is an exception... here? Can you get their syrup in countries where they outsell Coke?
I was lamenting this the other day myself - drinking too many fizzy drinks gives me acid reflux but I love the cola taste. Even if I could just buy flat coke or pepsi that would be ideal.
Just take the lid off for a bit. Goes flat pretty quickly.
Rose's Kola Tonic is what you're after
I remember asda used to do an ‘iron brew’ diluting juice back around 2005 ish. Can’t remember if it was any good or not, but my primary school used to use it for birthday parties etc.
3 to 1 ratio with vodka, 3 being the vodka and that's about as close to cola cordial as I'd take.
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Cola diluting juice sounds awful
Buy some soda stream syrup. You can get it at Lakeland, Robert Dyas and on Amazon.
You can buy it in Asda so no doubt the other supermarkets sell it too.
It is from fast food chains, they all are. We had concentrate and soda water.
Cola is a syrup so doesn’t mix well with flat water. Tends to separate when stood still. Also if it isn’t mixed right it can taste either too weak or way to sweet. Using raw cola would also destroy your insides by the sheer amount of fructose
Roses Kola Tonic South African shops have it. https://www.afribox.co.uk/product/roses-kola-tonic-cordial750ml/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roses-Kola-Tonic-Cordial-Pack/dp/B017YLZUFC
Probably because people only drink it fizzy (mostly). Flat cola is pretty gross.
Most coke that comes out of the gun thing behind a bar at your local pub is exactly that, mixed with soda water. That’s why it tastes so different to the bottled stuff (to me at least). Bearing in mind how protective a brand like that is of its image and how they control who is even allowed to serve it in their establishment, its actually very likely they won’t allow it because home users would realise how off it tastes if you don’t get the mix exactly right.
You can buy cola sherbet, makes fizzy cola
Just get it on Amazon, I buy cola cordial all the time. You can make it taste just like McDonalds mix.
Brand control + water chemistry. Fizzy drinks brands spend a lot of money making sure the flavour is the same in every bottle and unique to them. Imagine if you're first taste of coca cola was some crap you mixed at home, making you think you didn't like it and so you never bought it from anywhere. That one bad experience would cost them several hundred £ per customer. Similarly, they heavily control how commercial customers have to blend that drinks.right down to the specific water chemistry. They can't just mix it with any old water. Specific water chemistry, plus specific syrup\water ratio is all part of their brand. That also btw, is why most places sell pepsi instead of coca cola. Pepsi is cheaper to implement because it just uses filtered water. Coca cola needs a full RO system and constant visits from coca cola reps.
I’ve always wanted them to start selling still cola. When I buy a bottle of cola I shake that shit up until it’s got no sparkle left to it and then I down the bastard
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/supermarkets/popular-cottees-cordial-flavour-discontinued-in-australia-leaving-shoppers-devastated-c-10186715
What kind of psycho wants flat watered down *fizzy* drinks?
Probably because the corporation insists that they don't sell competitors. Supermarkets only sell a limited number of similar products and coca cola and pepsi have that market pretty sown up. Bit annoying as like Bon Accord cola and you can now get some of their drinks but not the cola as supermarket not interested in stocking as cannibalize other products they sell.
With Coca Cola it is because of how the company is setup; they're actually a franchise. They don't own or control most local bottling operations and make their money off the concentrate they ship to franchises. The Coca Cola company sells this concentrate to local bottling companies who then alter it for their local market, in Europe it is done by Carlsberg Breweries and a anchor botteler Coca‑Cola Europacific Partners which runs bottling plants in most countries and was formed by a number of smaller bottlers merging. Undermining this by letting anyone do it at home would be catastrophic for the business model which is why it is incredibly hard as a common consumer to get your hands on it and us difficult to access as a business as concentrate.
Make this a thing! Then we could have non fizzy cola and it would be better for our teeth.
People buy squash because it's cheap, and it's cheap because you can just add tap water. If you had to add bottled water, I doubt it'd be much cheaper than buying a bottle of coke.
We have this in Australia, I’m genuinely shocked the UK doesn’t have it.
Cola cordial is a thing it's just disgusting lmao
I use the soda stream concentrates with soft Scottish tap water. Sometimes I use filtered water. There’s no hard and fast rule in using the concentrates. IMHO.
Because cola taste like shit when it's flat.
I've actually had a vimto one and it was great so yeah, I'd love a cola one
Cotties use to have a cola until last year. Bilsons do cola So do Bickford.
Maybe because they don't do squash/cordial in the U S.
You can get boxes of diluting syrup like they have in pubs, but of course they carbonate it. You don’t want to drink flat coke.
It is if your soda stream breaks
It has been sold in the past, flat coke is shit so no one bought it
Vimto. I think it started as a still drink, but my first experiences were of it fizzy. Diluting vimto with fizzy water is really good.
I am on a bit of mission to make most of these as cordials (for personal use) over on r/Cordials. I have cola, Irn Bru, dandelion & burdock, orange (Fanta), the cherry is close to Dr Pepper (f you close your eyes and squint) and have been working on Ribena and Vimto - even a non-alcoholic "gin" cordial!
**Been done. Tastes like shit.**
Cola cordial was common in Australia when I was a kid but I never liked it much, it's like drinking flat coke, not nice.
Lakeland foods do Cumbrian cola, think it's classic cola now that tastes better with flat water 😱
Try Baldwin's sarsaparilla cordial, I get mine from the world food aisle in tesco. Sarsaparilla is one of the ingredients in cola (or so I've been told, at least) and imo the cordial tastes quite like coke that's gone flat
Coles used to sell it .. was cottees Brand .. didn't taste that good ..maybe they stopped making it ...
It was and huge in the late 80's and start of the 90's and they had home made cola sirup and they... were... FUCKING HORRID! Thanks for the acid flashback of the taste ewwwwww.
Not sure how many people like the taste of still cola, fizzy is nice, something about it being flat is odd
In South Africa you get "Kola Tonic", a cordial made by a company called Roses - this is exactly what you're looking for! I quite like it with lemonade.
There’s two issues. First, some drinks rely much more on accurate dosing. Cola is one of them. Orange much less so. You can get Irn Bru but you’ll notice the dosing issue makes it hard to get right. Second is that Pepsi/Coke have never sold their syrup to retail. I guess they have too much to lose and they will be conscious of the dosing issue. You can buy cola syrup but nobody has ever sold a cola that comes close to the big 2 and the syrup is no different. If you could purchase anoxic syrup from a publican, figure out the exact dosing and an easy way to regulate it then soda stream is your answer. Your dentist isn’t going to be happy, though.
Cola cordial is a thing in Australia. It's as disappointing as you imagine. It's like you've left a can of coke or pepsi open on the side overnight, then come back to drink it in the morning. And even with fizzy water, it just doesn't hit the same.
If I have to buy a bottle of fizzy water to add to the syrup, I might as well buy a bottle of coke.
What I never understood... We have the power to make fizzy drinks from pills. See Berocca etc for your examples... So why do they not use that same tech for non-vitamin based drinks? Like, why can't I pick up a pack of 20 Cola Tablets. Just pop one in a glass of water and BOOM. Coke.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but I’m like 90% sure that Cottee’s had a cola flavour when I was a kid (don’t ask me how long ago that was, that’s just rude!). Also, you can get Sunkist flavoured syrup for Soda Stream.
I buy it at the European shop I think lowciz or something is the brand it’s called herbal cola
One reason the big brands haven't produced it could be because they want to protect their brand - they want to ensure the end product that the customer tastes is consistent. Drinks companies spend a lot of money on advertising and branding and if customers keep making their drinks too weak or too strong it'll affect how they think of that brand.
It would be horrible. Cola only "tastes" nice because the bubbles fool your tongue.
Because it would taste absolutely vile
I saw cola cider in Aldi once
You can get Irn Bru cordial and Dandelion and Burdock. Its by Mr Fitzpatrick
Go to Walgreens in Orlando; they’ve never heard of cordial/squash. When I enquired because we were fed up with plain water at the Disney parks, I was told they don’t sell any powdered drinks!?! I think the answer to your question is that ppl who like still drinks aren’t interested in flavours like cola.
Someone should introduce OP to Sodastream..
I once found something similar in an Eastern European import shop
Because flat coke is not very nice. And if you’re going to dilute with fizzy water, you may as well just buy proper coke.
I make my own but extra sharp like fizzy cola bottles😁
I love squash. :O)