Category: Nonalcoholic

What Does This Tropical Punch Taste Like?

This Tropical punch recipe is very good and made of 100% all-real juice. Some of the ingredients may be hard to find, but in that case, don’t worry about it and just leave it out. The main point is to pick many different topical fruits and make their volumes equal so that no one fruit flavor stands out. As long as all the ingredients are of equal volume and the juices picked are tropical, you’ll be in the ballpark.

Fruit Punches and Non-Alcoholic Juice Drinks.

Fruit Punch is an abstract term used to describe a category of non-alcoholic fruit juice punches. Similar to how Sour is an abstract category that makes up margaritas, whiskey sours, last words, etc, or how there are many kinds of sodas.

Punches have been around for a very long time with some references to them from the 17th century, but fruit punches gained popularity during American Prohibition. Some of the more popular ones were pineapple punch, apple punch, grenadine punch, and different berry and citrus punches. Some of these still are around today as various juice mixes, and the Shirley Temple in the case of grenadine punch.

Recipe Resources

• 1920 What to Drink The Blue Book of Beverages – Stockbridge

A Short History Of Coca-Cola.

John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola in 1886. Pemberton studied medicine at the Reform Medical College of Georgia and was a former Confederate States Army lieutenant colonel. After the end of the civil war, Pemberton moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he opened a pharmacy and sold many of his recipes. Coca-Cola was intended to be a replacement for one of his previous panacea tonic drinks, “Pemberton’s French Wine Coca,” due to the prohibition of alcohol in 1885 in Atlanta, Georgia. Thirty-five years before the sale and consumption of alcohol was prohibited at the federal level; it was banned in Atlanta, forcing John Pemberton to reformulate some of his recipes.

Click here to check out the Feb 11, 2011 radio broadcast of “This American Life” From NPR Here

When comparing the Coca-Cola recipe and Pemberton’s French Wine Coca recipe, it’s clear that he was trying to make coke appeal to a larger market by removing most of the medical qualities from his coca wine. His coca wine had medicine with anti-diarrhea, cough suppressants, sedatives, quinine, pain relief, anti-inflammatory, sexual stimulants, and cocaine and caffeine. All while being around 26% alcohol. All of that was removed from Coca-Cola except for the caffeine and cocaine. Since the wine was illegal, he needed something to mask the bitter taste of the stimulants and give the drink flavor. Thus Coca-Cola was invented.

John Wouldn’t live to see the success of his invention, though. He died two years later from stomach cancer at age 57 in August 1888. Around his death, he sold around nine cokes a day. Coca-Cola sells about 2 billion cokes a day now. John Pemberton sold the coke recipe to another Atlanta pharmacist Asa Candler in 1887 for $2,300. Asa Candler is listed as the Founder of the Coca-Cola company and, through aggressive marketing, made Coca-Cola one of the most popular fountain drinks by the mid-1890s. The last significant change to Coke was the removal of cocaine in 1903.

What Flavor Is Coca-Cola?

Two notebooks from the time contain the Coca-Cola recipe, Pemberton’s recipe book, and his pharmaceutical friend R.R. Evan’s notebook. I did quite a bit of experimenting with the two Coca-Cola recipes and found the best combination was R.R. Evans’s 7x Flavor base recipe with Pemberton’s syrup recipe and the amount of 7x he added to the syrup. Pemberton’s 7x recipe is WAY too oily, but Evan’s was spot on. Evan’s syrup is good, but he adds WAY too much 7x, but Pemberton’s syrup is excellent, and he adds the perfect amount of 7x flavor. Combining the two, I got a syrup that tastes precisely like Coca-Cola.

Keep in mind this may not be the present-day Coca-Cola recipe. Pallets change, and recipes get updated, but this recipe tastes like Coke. In this 1886 recipe, the iconic cola flavor combines vanilla, orange oil, lemon oil, nutmeg oil, coriander oil, cinnamon oil, and orange blossom oil. The most impressive part of this coca-cola recipe is how little of these oils are in each drink. So I will say when I originally wrote this section, I did the math and even wrote the proof of how much of each oil is in one coke. Although after writing it out, it was not fun to read, so I will give you the final values. Each 12 oz Coca-Cola is only:

• 0.0001083% Lemon oil
• 0.000072% Orange oil
• 0.000036% Nutmeg, coriander, cinnamon, neroli oil

Notice those are percentages, too, so that number is minimal. Those super tiny factions of a drink are where all of Coke’s flavor comes. I find that amazing. Neroli oil is expensive and difficult to find, so orange blossom water can be substituted. To substitute orange blossom water for neroli, add 1.5 tsp (7.5 mLs) of orange blossom water directly to the final syrup while adding the vanilla extract.

How Much Sugar Is In Coke And How Healthy Is A Coke?

I will start by saying I am not a nutritionist, so don’t take my word for it. Consult a professional if you have questions. That said, a 12 oz Coca-Cola has around 40 grams of sugar and 140 calories. Everyone freaks out at this amount, and that is a bit. One should take all things in moderation, but if you are comparing calories, it’s nowhere near as bad as an alcoholic drink. For example, a mojito has around 24 grams of sugar, but it also has 2 oz of rum which gives it around 240 calories. The most extreme example is the long island ice tea which only has 13 grams of sugar but a mind-blowing 540 calories. Even a dry martini with less than 1 gram of sugar still has 185 calories. Long story short, if you want healthy, drink water. None of these drinks are healthy, but they taste good.