Coca-Cola beer anyone?

How bored can one be. Having few brewing ingredients currently on hand I decided to ferment a 2-liter bottle coke. I degassed a small amount and took an SG reading of 1.040, kinda light but ok. The only yeast I have is a collection of WLP008(Czech) from my last brew. I'm currently in the boil, I was thinking of adding some DME to bring it up to about 1.045, but I might just leave it. I can't imagine it's gonna be a good beer so why waste DME. I'll keep ya'll posted.

That is actually VERY popular drink in Germany. Cola-bier. Half coke, half beer.

I couldn't ever get into it when I was there.

you think the sugars in it are fermentable?

i thought sodas nowadays were mostly HFCS? If you want anything to ferment you might want some different sugars in there.

I agree that probably won't taste too good, but what the hey... who cares if it's fun to experiment!

I wonder if the other chemicals present in coke will kill the yeast. It won't be beer as much as hooch, since there's no sugar derived from grain in the coke.

Dude said:

That is actually VERY popular drink in Germany. Cola-bier. Half coke, half beer.

I couldn't ever get into it when I was there.

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You still have any Dew-Brew kicking around?

I'm hoping that the boil will break down the HFCS to mono saccharides for the yeasties.... we'll see... I'm actually thinking of adding .5# of corn sugar and 2#(1qt) of ice to cool it. this still gives me an OG close to 1.042.

Coke will prolly ferment guys.

I did a half wort/half Mt. Dew beer that fermented down pretty good. 1.014 FG, IIRC.

Bird, their might be a lucky bottle or two laying around, yes.....

Dude said:

Coke will prolly ferment guys.

I did a half wort/half Mt. Dew beer that fermented down pretty good. 1.014 FG, IIRC.

Bird, their might be a lucky bottle or two laying around, yes.....

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Don't get any ideas; you owe me IPA...

Dude said:

Coke will prolly ferment guys.

I did a half wort/half Mt. Dew beer that fermented down pretty good. 1.014 FG, IIRC.

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So how did it taste?

BYW, 10mins left in the boil... it smell horrible! But I won't really know until it ferments....

Are you not worried about preservatives?

I'm not really worried about anything. It's just an experiment. I'll probably get 4-6 bottles out of it. I doubt if I'll even finish one, but it's been fun!

if this pans out pretty well i am curious how a dr. pepper would taste

You're right.
Maybe we could have a competition.

Brewing beer from the strangest ingridients.

Mmmm. Unsweetened Coke. Sign me up.

Send it in for the Spooky Brew competition.
http://www.chibeer.org/spooky06web.pdf

HFCS is mainly fructose and glucose, which should ferment explosively.

I've experimented with "soda" flavored ales and concluded most of them taste like cheap cough syrup once the sugar is fermented. Adding a shot of soda concentrate to a pint of mild can produce some interesting results.

Keep us posted.

I have a mate that only brews the same brew each time. Before bottling his secret is to put a splash of coke into each bottle. He has been doing this for years and it does taste good. He uses coopers pale ale tins and white sugar. He likes it a lot! Has a rolling stock of 5-6 hundred bottles. No secondary, bottles straight from primary. Simple.

I've tasted boiled Dr. Pepper before (don't ask why) and I can attest it was one of the foulest tasting substances ever to pass my lips, which is saying quite a bit.

Pabst Blue Robot said:

...it was one of the foulest tasting substances ever to pass my lips, which is saying quite a bit.

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I don't want to know what the other substances were...

Make sure to report once its actually fermenting. I'm very curious to see if it works.

OK so the specifics are these:
boiled 1 2-liter bottle of coke w/ .5# of corn sugar with .2 oz of centennial @ 30min and .2 @ 10. Cooled over ice, bringing the total volume to 3 quarts. OG 1.050. Pitched harvested WPL008 Czech bud yeast. Activity started in a couple of hours @ ~65F. I'll be moving it to the garage where temp is usually ~50F. We'll see how it turns out... hopefully not too foul!

drouillp said:

if this pans out pretty well i am curious how a dr. pepper would taste

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we used to add a shot of rootbeer schnaps to miller, tastes a lot like dr. pepper.

I would think a better practice might be to make a hop tea, and add that to the soda.

Boiling down the soda might as a few have described here turn destructive to the palate

This has turned very interesting, i just might try this myself!

Experiments might look at the differences with different hop varieties, times, dry vs. sweeter yeast strains, fermenting temps, different pop varieties.

brings a new meaning to the word 'alco-pop' hah :cross:

I wonder it this would work better with a sprite or other clear soda... seems to me that the flavors wouldnt be as funky. might go better with hops too.

I bet it would be better with some homebrewed soda. I think all of the chemicals and crap they throw in commercial soda's will destory any chance of a nice flavor. I know there are some organic soda's you can buy at the healthfood grocery stores.

Forgive me if there's a new thread and I missed it, but how did this go? Active fermentation? What'd the airlock smell like?

Trojan Horse - 1/2 Guinness 1/2 coca-cola
Black and Brown - 1/2 Guinness 1/2 root beer

Suprisingly enough both aren't bad i kind of like em....

I wanna know how his Coke beer went... I got 10 bucks on it being horrible and him chunking it...

DeadYetiBrew said:

Trojan Horse - 1/2 Guinness 1/2 coca-cola
Black and Brown - 1/2 Guinness 1/2 root beer

Suprisingly enough both aren't bad i kind of like em....

I wanna know how his Coke beer went... I got 10 bucks on it being horrible and him chunking it...

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According to his sig, it's in primary.

ayrton said:

According to his sig, it's in primary.

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Yeah but you'd think he'd atleast take a small sample... lol sounds so disgusting it might just work... (doubt it)

DeadYetiBrew said:

Yeah but you'd think he'd atleast take a small sample... lol sounds so disgusting it might just work... (doubt it)

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Oh, I'd have taken a sample by now too. I'm just really curious as to how this turned out.

Pictures please!

Sorry for not keeping ya'll updated, I didn't know there was such interest! Plus I've been getting some sun in Hawaii so I just got back. I should be taking an SG sample tomorrow so I'll let you know how it tastes and all that. I'll probably just bottle it straight from primary too.

The fermentation was pretty crazy in the first couple of days, then died down. I did use a lager yeast so it might not be done yet. We'll see!

*bump*

Any update?

I can get a great deal on some dog food that was recently taken off the shelves, do you think that will ferment?

Ok, well good timing I suppose... A couple of days ago I finally tasted a fully carbed coke beer and... it was horrible! I mean it was rank, I could not drink more than a couple of sips before I spat it out. I couldn't tell you why, it was just horrible. Pretty much all body had fermented out. You could tell it was high in alcohol, which makes sense because it's almost 100% fermentable. I imagine it's similar to brewing sugar water. Anyway, I'm glad I only made 4 bottles worth of it and I'm about to dump the other 3, unless some brave soul wants one....

only 3 bottles left? Don't dump them man!! let them age out....who knows?

you said it's pretty high in alc...maybe it'll condition a bit with time?

I don't know...you went through all of this why dump it now?

Good point. I haven't dumped them yet... I guess storing three bottles isn't going to kill me...

Exactly







Now crack one open in a year from now and tell us all how horrible it is...

Crazy thing is I was drinking a coke a few days ago and wondering what it would taste like to brew with it....this is uncanny that this thread would pop up a couple days later...I assure you I won't be trying it anytime soon after reading this..

I think you might be able to back-sweeten with the diet version of most soft drinks. Dr. Pepper Cream Ale anyone? A couple of diet root beers might even be the ticket to flavoring the root beer brews that a lot of folks try to clone.

On the other hand, fermenting the sugars in one of the regular versions sounds utterly terrible (even though I prefer the non-diet versions). I'm not usually a proponent of tossing a batch down the drain, but those three bottles you've got could probably be put to better use if you poured them out, IMHO. I just don't think this one is going to age well...