April 12, 2026
Fizz feud in Aisle DIY
DIY Soft Drinks
Homemade Cola Chaos: Fizz fanatics vs 'flat mop water' haters
TLDR: A maker whipped up sugar‑free, caffeine‑free cola from essential oils and shared the recipes, sparking a brawl over bubbles, sweeteners, and whether to buy concentrate or brew from scratch. Kombucha diehards crashed in boasting cheap, ultra‑fizzy alternatives—turning a DIY cola post into a full‑on carbonation culture clash.
A home brewer mixed essential oils, gum arabic, and sweeteners to make a sugar‑free, caffeine‑free cola—then teased orange, cherry, and almond sodas. The nerdy charm (“stop mixing when it smiles!”) had people cheering, but the comment section quickly turned into a fizz fight. One camp demanded bubbles or bust: a user from India name-dropped the old-school “Mr Butler” soda gizmo and blasted today’s brands as “flat mop water.” Another camp waved the pragmatist flag: why fuss with tiny syringes and oil shopping when you can just buy Cube‑Cola concentrate and be done with it? Meanwhile, the sweetener subplot got spicy—sucralose at microscopic doses that was still “too sweet,” plus talk of ditching caffeine entirely.
The community’s vibe was half DIY kitchen lab, half soda speakeasy. A book rec for old-timey soda fountain wisdom—“Fix the Pumps”—popped up, while others shared a YouTube deep dive on recreating Coke link. Then came the kombucha coup: a brewer bragged about 20 liters of ginger‑lemongrass fizz that’s cheap, healthy, and exploding with bubbles, hijacking the thread with fermented swagger. Nostalgia surfaced too—remember open-source cola like Open Cola? One site’s gone dark as of 2026, fueling the mythos. In short: DIY soda is back, the recipe is open, the fizz is controversial, and the crowd is delightfully split between laboratory tinkerers, budget hackers, and fermentation fanatics.
Key Points
- •DIY project (started in 2020) documents making sugar- and caffeine-free cola, with current recipes on GitHub inspired by Open Cola and Cube-Cola.
- •First batch uses an essential oil emulsion (stabilized by gum arabic), caramel color, citric acid, and an artificial sweetener blend (cyclamate/saccharin), yielding ~120 ml syrup.
- •The concentrate is diluted to 1 L for handling and intended for 1:8 serving; taste adjustments include adding 10 g citric acid and considering oil ratio tweaks.
- •Second batch removes caramel color and switches to sucralose (1.6 g as sugar replacement), resulting in a drink perceived as too sweet and unusual without coloring.
- •Author seeks additional flavors (orange, cherry, almond/apricot), notes scarcity of non-cola DIY soda recipes, and cites resources including Open Soda and food chemistry notes.