OpenCola (drink)

OpenCola is a brand of open-source cola. This means anyone can find or change its recipe.

History
OpenCola was created by a company of the same name, which was started in Toronto, Canada in 1999 by Grad Conn, Cory Doctorow and John Henson.

The drink was first released on January 27, 2001 under the GNU General Public License. It was made to explain open source software and promote the company's P2P program of the same name. However, the drink became more well known and sold 150,000 cans. Laird Brown, the company's senior strategist, said a distrust in big corporations and "almost everything" being proprietary made it popular. The latest version of the drink, 1.1.3, was released on February 20, 2001. The company later closed in 2003.

 Ingredients 
 Flavouring 
 10.0 g food-grade gum arabic
 3.5 mL orange oil
 3.0 mL water
 2.75 mL lime oil
 1.25 mL cassia oil
 1.0 mL lemon oil
 1.0 mL nutmeg oil
 0.25 mL coriander oil
 0.25 mL neroli oil
 0.25 mL lavender oil

 Concentrate 
 2.36 kg plain granulated white table sugar
 2.28 L water
 30.0 mL caramel color
 17.5 mL (3.50 tsp.) 75% phosphoric acid or citric acid
 10.0 mL (2.00 tsp.) flavouring formula
 2.5 mL (0.50 tsp.) caffeine (optional)

 Dilution 
1 part of syrup is added to 5 parts soda water, preferably sodium-free. This makes about 24 litres of OpenCola.

A series of basic ingredients such as yeast and sugar can be used instead of a carbonator.

 References 

 Other websites 

 OpenCola soft drink
 Cube-Cola, Bristol, UK
 The recipe from Wiki-How, condensed into a single, easily printable page
 OpenSoda.org , a defunct continuation of the OpenCola work for recipe and methodology
 OpenCola on GitHub

Category:Soft drinks