OpenCola (drink)

OpenCola is a brand of open-source cola. This means anyone can find its recipe and change it in any way.

OpenCola

Type	Cola
Introduced	2001 (2001)
Related products	Free Beer
Website	https://www.opencola.io/

History

The company that created it, which had the same name, was started in Toronto, Canada in 1999 by Grad Conn, Cory Doctorow and John Henson.

OpenCola was first released on January 27, 2001. The newest version of OpenCola is 1.1.3.

It was created to explain free and open source software and promote the company's P2P program of the same name. However, the drink became more well known and 150,000 cans of it were sold. Laird Brown, the company's senior strategist, said it was successful because many people did not trust big corporations and "almost everything" was proprietary.

Flavouring

Flavouring oils used in OpenCola

• 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

Ingredients of OpenCola

• 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

The syrup is diluted 5:1 with soda water, preferably sodium-free. This makes about 24 litres of OpenCola.

The full recipe also includes instructions to make soda water using basic ingredients such as yeast and sugar. This avoids the need for a commercially made carbonator.

Other websites

• OpenCola soft drink
• Cube-Cola, Bristol, UK
• The recipe from Wiki-How, condensed into a single, easily printable page
• OpenSoda.org Archived 2009-06-01 at the Wayback Machine, a defunct continuation of the OpenCola work for recipe and methodology
• OpenCola on GitHub