coca cola beer ?

i know its not "beer" but my buddy asked me "if all you are making is a sugar solution to throw yeast in to ferment then why not use flat soda ?" i was surprised at the question and was at a lack of answer other than "it wont be beer". what would it be ? .....other than gross....

Colt 45













no wait, that's a "malt" beverage....

i just read the "similar thread" does not sound good !

Soda generally has preservatives in it. I doubt you will get anywhere by fermenting it. If you used your own soda syrups you could probably make something. It won't be as sweet though but you may get something good.

yeasty said:

i know its not "beer" but my buddy asked me "if all you are making is a sugar solution to throw yeast in to ferment then why not use flat soda ?" i was surprised at the question and was at a lack of answer other than "it wont be beer". what would it be ? .....other than gross....

Click to expand...

The simple answer is that the sugars in a soft drink, usually sucrose and/or fructose and/or glucose, are not the sugars you want as a starting point for beer. Mashing malted barley produces additional sugars like maltose, galactose, a number of complex oligosaccharides as well as dextrins. Throwing yeast in Coca Cola will ferment the sugars but you are right it won't be beer. Chances are it would be nasty stuff.

Coke has phosphoric acid, the active ingredient of Star San....

Oops. See, I went and followed the other thread, then posted a reply there rather than here.

Pretty sure coca cola, if fermented, would taste just like caramel flavored starsan solution with a bit of rubbing alcohol put in for a crisp finish.

EvilTOJ said:

Pretty sure coca cola, if fermented, would taste just like caramel flavored starsan solution with a bit of rubbing alcohol put in for a crisp finish.

Click to expand...

Fermented Starsan? Hmm thats an idea?

Yes Cocacola shouldn't ferment but aren't you glad you've got the bug and can't stop thinking "Can I ferment that?"

Don't lose it you may invent something great...
(It just won't start with Coke as an ingredient )

944play said:

Coke has phosphoric acid, the active ingredient of Star San....

Click to expand...

Which everyone claims is yeast food.

sounds like from the other thread it is a bad idea. ill tell my buddy to try it and let me know...

what about the "mexican" coke made with real sugar. Or some other craft soda producer who dosen't HFCS. (I'm thinking Goose Island Soda).

HCFS is just corn sugar that's had half of its glucose converted to fructose to make it taste sweeter - in short, exactly what yeast breaks cane sugar down into before actually eating it. Any difference to either fermentation or taste from either cane or unmodified corn sugar would be pretty minimal.

Why not just mix it with half a glass of beer? It's called a Russian...

It's too bad so many look at the negative aspect of this instead of asking "How can we make this work?". I catch flak from narrow minded people when I speak of the SUCCESS I had brewing with Mountain Dew. I used the recipe found in BYO magazine, made some minor changes, and made a beer that was very well recieved by almost all who tried it (five gallons consumed at a brew fest). Fermentables were 4 #'s DME and about 9 litres Mtn Dew. Because this was so good I've decided to make a wheat with Squirt and a porter with Dr. Pepper. Why? Because I can! If they turn out bad so what? I'll just have some brew to cook with. Just my $.02 worth.

Loweface said:

Yes Cocacola shouldn't ferment but aren't you glad you've got the bug and can't stop thinking "Can I ferment that?"

Click to expand...

I see a YouTube series in the future. "Will it ferment?" Sure, it isn't as sexy as a blender and shotgun shells, but will it ferment? That is the question!



(Will It Blend? | Presented By Blendtec)

Brewmando said:

It's too bad so many look at the negative aspect of this instead of asking "How can we make this work?".

...

Why? Because I can! If they turn out bad so what? I'll just have some brew to cook with. Just my $.02 worth.

Click to expand...

I am actually with you on this. I'm always annoyed when someone asks about making Orange wine or some form of cooler and is always slapped down with shouts of pruno...

But I still don't think straight Coke will ferment

It's been done with Mountain Dew, so why not Coke. (Personally I think it'd probably taste like balls, but....)

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/mountain-dew-beer-76518/

Recipe on this page.

Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - Recipes - The 10 Wildest Recipes

Hey, I might try this myself. Or some sort of soda, at least. I don't know that I'll even waste a packet on it though: maybe use some yeast cake from my cider when it's done.

This is one of those things where I assume if it worked, it would have been done by now...

...but hell, maybe i'm wrong.

Hey, someone try it and see how it comes out.

I fermented grape drink. Not grape juice, but grape DRINK (~15% juice, plus HFCS). It turned into slightly boozy grape soda. It was actually very, very refreshing!

I'm giving this a try today. I flattened a two liter of Coke (OG 1.045) and one of Sunkist Grape (OG 1.058), and added some yeast nutrient and half a Mr. Beer cider yeast pack to each. Just doing it right in the bottle with a little poured out for head space and the top covered with foil. We'll see what happens.

keep us updated! like i said i figure if this produced a good product it would have been done commercially by now, but i'm always curious about these things so let us know!;]

also what means of sterilization did you use, if any?

Since it's in the original bottles and all I did was vent CO2 and pour out enough for a hydrometer sample, all I sanitized was the spoon for the yeast nutrient. The yeast I sprinkled straight in from the packet. The foil's just going as an extra cover over a loose cap, so I'm not bothering to sanitize that either.

First question answered: the phosphoric acid in Coke isn't enough to kill yeast. There's no krausen, but I didn't expect any in a liquid that's all slimple sugars. On the other hand, tightening the cap for an little while makes the bottle pressurize nicely so there's definitely fermentation going on. Also, the Coke(phosphoric acid) seems to be fermenting at least as fast as the Sunkist(citric acid).

I figure I'll update again in a week or so unless something really unexpected happens, but for now the stuff's off to a good start.

As promised, a week past. Unfortunately, I was out of town most of the week and forgot to move the bottles to the one room that I left air conditioned. It wasn't that warm this week though, so hopefully it didn't get too heated up.

Both of them have fallen down around 0.998 or so. The Coke had significant krausen forming, and it tastes pretty vile. Maybe it's the sugar being gone, maybe it's flavor carried with it, I don't know. The grape is more recognizably grapish, though it's still pretty harsh. I'll have to see how things are in another week: then I'll see how they are again.

Keep in mind that the original Mtn Dew concoction had malt extract as half of the fermentables. A standard boil with the DME and NB hops was utilized then cooled and that was added to the de-carbonated pop. I suspect just fermenting pop will not be all that good of a thing but do please keep us posted.

Anyone remember Cisco? I think we have reinvented the wheel.

I was once bored enough to do just that. I boiled a 2-liter bottle of coke with some hops, cooled it and pitched some yeast. It fermented really quickly, almost completely removing all color to it, which was quite bizarre. The hydrometer reading was less than 1 and yes, it did taste horrible. I was never able to really drink it, just barely tasted it.

I'm sure you could use it in addition to other ingredients in a brew, but why not just add table sugar to the wort. I guess it would give you a nice bit of caffeine in a brew.

That's right, I forgot to mention color. Both flavors are lighter in color than before, though not immensely: in the bottle they look the same so it's only obvious if you shine a light through or pour a hydrometer sample. The cola has more yeast/trub in the bottom than the grape, though that may be imbalance on how much yeast and nutrient I put in each bottle. I can't imagine much other reason for the disparity.

I expect the comments that this would be better as an ingredient to a recipe rather than a solo fermentation are correct, but then I'd never know what the soda itself does. I also wonder how much of the bad taste is just how the base flavors would normally be when flat and without sugar. Really, my highest hope is that a little time, priming, and some light splenda backsweetening can make a mildly sweet, gently fizzy alcoholic soda. But I expect less. Hey, it's fun either way while I wait for my beer to ferment.

Killer_Robot said:

mildly sweet, gently fizzy alcoholic soda.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a Rum & Coke would be a safer bet.

Just some curious questions. I'm glad you're trying this out with an open mind. I think that is the difference between this and a hooch thread.

If it is just the lack of sugar what does backsweetening do?
If you backsweeten what point does it become the same as fermenting out sugar water to add to coke?

Making a malted beverage with coke added and fermenting would lead to a completely different profile as straight coke? Leads to a similar question to part b of above too?

If I backsweeten it wouldn't be the same amount of sugar it had in it before. Think the difference between a Woodchuck cider clone and apple juice with vodka added: apart from any changes to the flavor profile itself, one has enough sweetness to take off the dryness and one is fruit juice. I don't know if this will work at all with soda, and I don't expect it's something I'll repeat as is, mind.

The catch with all this is that I could do that all easier by working with soda extracts rather than the prebottled final product. A light-bodied malt fermentation with cola extract might be interesting to try more seriously, for example, or that Mountain Dew recipe. A big question here is how much the fermentation process alters or destroys the flavors of the soda. If it's not purely a bad change once the simple loss of sugar is accounted for, it might go other places. If it is, then it goes down the drain. I don't think anyone's going to tell me not to throw away the batch this time.

This really is making me appreciate the idea of the 2 liter bottle for small experiments, though. In future beer making I might want to make an extra gallon and split off some wort so I can try different flavorings or fermentation conditions if it's really this simple.

Tried after another week, pouring a little cup of each to sip, then chill and sip, then add a little sugar(much less than the starting beverage) and it was interesting. The Coke seems fairly dark still, and the flavor has changed a lot since the last week, citrus and spices much more evident, though still rough and harsh when unsweetened. When cooled and sweetened it got much more interesting, more of a spiced wine sort of vibe though obviously not exactly. The grape seems to have gotten less purple and more blue than last week. As for the flavor, it's still discernably fruity and all, but there's something a bit more chemical to it that didn't quite go away when chilled and sweetened, and I don't think it was there last week. This remains a weird experiment.

Okay, it's ready to drink!

I aged it a couple more weeks, added enough cane sugar to prime and leave about a quarter of the original sweetness. I can say fairly that the experiment was a success for the Coke at least: I got something that was both drinkable, and interestingly different from just adding vodka to Coke.

Color: somewhat lighter than the source beverage, it has a color more like that of iced tea.

Head: More persistent than I've seen in any soda that wasn't a root beer. It took some patience to get it to die down.

Flavor: Strikingly different than normal cola. It's considerably tarter and the citrus and spice elements are much more in the forefront, a lot of orange peel and cinnamon evident. Overall effect is still not unlike a spiced wine. On the down side, a somewhat chemical finish. I'm guessing it probably needs more aging among other things.

This isn't so bad - I don't think I'm going to mind finishing it up over the weekend before it goes flat again. Just the same, I don't think I'll make it again as is, though as an addition to a fruit wine or spiced beer it might be pretty good.


EDIT: Eh, I take some of it back. Maybe it's a certain sort of eccentric charm that wears off quickly or something, but after the first glass the chemical aftertaste and sourness seemed a lot sharper. Maybe it's the phosphoric acid, or who knows what else? Oh well, it was worth trying.

size said:

This is one of those things where I assume if it worked, it would have been done by now...

...but hell, maybe i'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Haha, I guess I'm the only one who saw this thread and thought, "doesn't Warsteiner already do this?"

Anyway cool experiment. It'd be intersting to try with that new Mt. Dew or Pepsi Throwback that uses real sugar instead of corn syrup.

I think the taste that was bothering me was the phosphoric acid without enough sugar to cover it up: I tasted the starsan while brewing today and it was pretty similar.

On the other hand, the grape soda(with citric acid) was almost too good. Bright purple/blue and very fruity. I had enough while brewing to make me slip up at the final pour into the fermenter and land some on the carpet.

I ran out of bottles for my Pilsner so bought some cheap cola. I decided rather than pouring it away i stuck it in a 2 liter demijohn with some high tolerance yeast, nutrient, and left it for a week. It's bubbling away like a mofo..

I'll let you know how it goes but I just had a sip and it tastes absolutely horrendous! May be good for cleaning the toilet, however.

It's sat in my kitchen now, I might let it "mature" for a while and see what happens!!

i'm really just wondering what this would be like with a yeast that throws out some flavors. man this is so stupid it makes me curious, especially the idea of blending it with some dme boiled with some hops. i already have some 5L buckets for experimenting, i may just have to try something like this. like a porter with some coke, or like was mentioned a wheat with some sprite.

also, i gotta say, i love the optimism the persisted past all the pessimism in this thread. because, why not try these dumb things out? most of the great inventions in life have either come from optimistic experiments or dumb, accidental luck.