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Soft Drinks (Soda, Pop, Carbonated Beverages, Etc.)

Yup, when I want to California I tried the root beer that teenagers in American literature drank. It was soooo sweet. Could hardly finish it.
Next time try one of the all natural no sweetener ones which is closer to what is recorded in literature.
 
I think you'll find that because 'India', the products you can buy are often clones of well-known brands from overseas but the Indian Government are protective of their domestic markets and their approach basically means that a big company like Coca-Cola, if it wants to have a market there, needs to produce a drink which is manufactured there.
That's why you end up with something that probably tastes and looks a lot like Coca-Cola but is formulated to appeal more to the Indian tastebuds, and given a memorable name, but also carries 'Coca-Cola' branding on the bottle.
 
I think you'll find that because 'India', the products you can buy are often clones of well-known brands from overseas but the Indian Government are protective of their domestic markets and their approach basically means that a big company like Coca-Cola, if it wants to have a market there, needs to produce a drink which is manufactured there.
That's why you end up with something that probably tastes and looks a lot like Coca-Cola but is formulated to appeal more to the Indian tastebuds, and given a memorable name, but also carries 'Coca-Cola' branding on the bottle.
I've bought Coca Cola over here, that seemed to have been imported from the Middle East (Dubai?) - no idea why someone over here would import it - and it tasted pretty much the same as the UK version.
 
I've bought Coca Cola over here, that seemed to have been imported from the Middle East (Dubai?) - no idea why someone over here would import it - and it tasted pretty much the same as the UK version.
Could it have something to do with the reason "Mexican Coke" is sold in the US? Are the sweetening ingredients different? Because corn (maize) farmers in the US are subsidized by the government, it's cheaper to use high fructose corn syrup - which many feel has a "sticky" aftertaste - instead of cane sugar/sucrose. This led to the grey-market importation of Coca-Cola from Mexico that was sweetened with sucrose.

Two additional points: Because sugar is now taxed for health reasons in Mexico, Mexican Coke now has the fructose syrup as well - but Mexican bottlers still export sucrose sweetened Coke for the US market. And once a year you can still get sucrose sweetened Coke - and Pepsi - from US bottlers in specially marked "Kosher for Passover" bottles, since maize is not allowed at Passover meals. Many non-Jewish Coke fans (like me) stock up at Passover.
 
Could it have something to do with the reason "Mexican Coke" is sold in the US? Are the sweetening ingredients different? Because corn (maize) farmers in the US are subsidized by the government, it's cheaper to use high fructose corn syrup - which many feel has a "sticky" aftertaste - instead of cane sugar/sucrose. This led to the grey-market importation of Coca-Cola from Mexico that was sweetened with sucrose.

Two additional points: Because sugar is now taxed for health reasons in Mexico, Mexican Coke now has the fructose syrup as well - but Mexican bottlers still export sucrose sweetened Coke for the US market. And once a year you can still get sucrose sweetened Coke - and Pepsi - from US bottlers in specially marked "Kosher for Passover" bottles, since maize is not allowed at Passover meals. Many non-Jewish Coke fans (like me) stock up at Passover.
It may be ingredients-based. It may be 'halal-approved' rather than kosher. I don't know. I'd have to have one of those cans in front of me to get some idea.
 
I've bought Coca Cola over here, that seemed to have been imported from the Middle East (Dubai?) - no idea why someone over here would import it - and it tasted pretty much the same as the UK version.
In 1997 I was working in Samara, Russia building a Pepsi factory, whilst some colleagues were building another in Yekaterinburg. Coke were building a manufacturing plant a few miles down the road from us.
All the coke and Pepsi we drunk before the factories opened were imported from Turkey.
As an aside we had dinner one evening with the VP of Pepsi International Bottlers when he flew in to visit the project and told us British made Pepsi was the best in the world as it used sugar from beet rather than cane. Cane sugar leaves an aftertaste that beet sugar doesn’t.
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They've recently changed the taste if their drinks, not for the better.
Sanpellegrino drinks used to be about as natural as possible.
We always had a few cans of the Lemon and the Blood orange Sanpellegrino in our fridge but the wife detests it since they removed the sugar and replaced it with sweeteners. She won’t drink anything with sweeteners in it as she hates the taste it leaves in her mouth. Personally I can barely taste the difference but the only pop that I consume these days is original full fat coke.
Sanpellegrino fizzy water is still my favourite though. Don’t know why, it just seems a little more pleasant than the others.
 
Harking back to the earlier theme of now dubious or banned soft drinks, in Ireland there was a famous red lemonade.
No one knew why it was Red
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I was in the Czech Republic last week and I had my first ever taste of ‘Kofola’, an Eastern Bloc rival to western cola drinks. Quote from Wikipedia:

“Kofola originated in the Czechoslovak Research Institute of Medicinal Plants in Prague in 1959, during research targeted at finding a possible use for surplus caffeine produced in the process of coffee roasting. The resulting dark-coloured, sweet-and-sour syrup Kofo became the main ingredient of a new soft drink named Kofola introduced in 1960. During the 1960s and 1970s Kofola became exceedingly popular in communist Czechoslovakia because it substituted for Western cola drinks like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, which were generally available since 1968 (Pepsi in 1974), but were expensive and considered as for high society.”

I can say it is quite delicious, The flavour is somewhere between familiar cola and dandelion & burdock.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofola

https://www.kofola.cz/en
 

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I was in the Czech Republic last week and I had my first ever taste of ‘Kofola’, an Eastern Bloc rival to western cola drinks. Quote from Wikipedia:

“Kofola originated in the Czechoslovak Research Institute of Medicinal Plants in Prague in 1959, during research targeted at finding a possible use for surplus caffeine produced in the process of coffee roasting. The resulting dark-coloured, sweet-and-sour syrup Kofo became the main ingredient of a new soft drink named Kofola introduced in 1960. During the 1960s and 1970s Kofola became exceedingly popular in communist Czechoslovakia because it substituted for Western cola drinks like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, which were generally available since 1968 (Pepsi in 1974), but were expensive and considered as for high society.”

I can say it is quite delicious, The flavour is somewhere between familiar cola and dandelion & burdock.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofola

https://www.kofola.cz/en
I love d&b :)
 
No one knew why it was Red
Because it's MUCH MORE EXCITING than regular lemonade.

I assume this was fizzy like most lemonades in that part of the world. American lemonade is always still.

By the way, put me down for NO dandelion and burdock.
 
Because it's MUCH MORE EXCITING than regular lemonade.

I assume this was fizzy like most lemonades in that part of the world. American lemonade is always still.

By the way, put me down for NO dandelion and burdock.

In my teens my parents had a jar of mock coffee made of dandelion & burdock root (may have had chicory too) that never seemed to get used and sat there in the pantry forever. I opened it once out of curiosity to smell it. Vile stuff. I can still recall the odour decades later.
 
Dandelion burdock soda just doesn't do it for me, but somehow I still want to try Kofola.

And I just checked at the supermarket, and the Pellegrino sodas here still use sugar.
 
Dandelion burdock soda just doesn't do it for me, but somehow I still want to try Kofola.

And I just checked at the supermarket, and the Pellegrino sodas here still use sugar.

In principle Kofola reminded me a bit of Marmite manufacture; using the byproduct from another industrially produced foodstuff to make something new. Very resourceful and cool. I would definitely recommend it.
 
They used to sell that at UK McDonalds when I was young.

Tasted like disinfectant.
It did!
And I really liked it, ice cold.

These were my favourite drinks in the 1970's in the UK...though I never had the Orange one.

The exercise based adverts were fun too.

"Every bubble's passed its fizzical"

You could take the empty bottles back to the shop and get money for them.

Of course, a a name now known as a beer and a family of viruses.

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My memory of bottled childhood pop is that the local Dandelion & Burdock was exactly the same as the Sarsaparilla.

Both of them pale ghosts of Root Beer. I like real Root Beer, when I can find it; it blends interestingly with other beers!

Germolene! Reminds me of a graze on the knee.

By the Sixties, all the genuine herbalists' concoctions had been replaced by sugary concentrates, I think.

I know that an old-fashioned purveyor of the old temperance potions survived in Haslingden - I think - until recently.

Must look it up and see if it has survived the virus! :thought:

They survive but now on the Grane Road, it says!

The Grane Road is quite a story in itself! :omr:
 
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The Code Red computer virus is supposedlh actually named for Mountain Dew Code Red, which was popular with the people that figured the virus out.
 
It did!
And I really liked it, ice cold.

These were my favourite drinks in the 1970's in the UK...though I never had the Orange one.

The exercise based adverts were fun too.

"Every bubble's passed its fizzical"

You could take the empty bottles back to the shop and get money for them.

Of course, a a name now known as a beer and a family of viruses.

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When I was a kid we used to have a 'Corona man' who used to come around in a van once a week selling the fizzy pop, and giving out the 10p bottle returns, cherryade and limeade were always my favourites, over the years I'm pretty sure I tried thermal, I seem to remember we go a bottle of each flavour every Christmas.
On bottle return refunds, I remember the last time I was in Amsterdam, when we would buy a crate of beer, the empties and the crate could be returned to the shop, put through a machine and a refund given.
 
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You could take the empty bottles back to the shop and get money for them.
When I was a kid it was common to return soda bottles to the store to get a 5 or 10 cent deposit back, and the bottles were sterilized and refilled at the factory. This died out in the 1970s with the takeover of thinner disposable glass and plastic bottles. When New York started mandatory bottle deposits in the 1980s, the bottle industry successfully lobbied to outlaw refillable bottles at the same time, forcing the more wasteful practice of material recycling.

My memory of bottled childhood pop is that the local Dandelion & Burdock was exactly the same as the Sarsaparilla.

Both of them pale ghosts of Root Beer. I like real Root Beer, when I can find it; it blends interestingly with other beers!
Oddly, everything I've had that was labeled sarsaparilla has tasted stronger than root beer, almost like birch beer. The only dandelion & burdock I've ever tried (or found) is Fentimans. Maybe I'd like another brand better.

When I am down and out, a real Coca Cola over ice revives me.
It is the pause that refreshes.
 
I loved Corona as a child.

But Barrs products taste pretty much like my memory...
 
I've bought Coca Cola over here, that seemed to have been imported from the Middle East (Dubai?) - no idea why someone over here would import it - and it tasted pretty much the same as the UK version.
I know the Egyptian stuff is, or certainly was, more sweet. Man, Arabs love sugar. I once spent a few days in an Arab village in Israel and by day three I was going crazy due to all the sugar intake.
 
When I was a kid we used to have a 'Corona man's who used to come around in a van once a week selling the fizzy pop, and giving out the 10p bottle returns, cherryade and limeside were always my favourites, over the years I'm pretty sure I tried thermal, I seem to remember we go a bottle of each flavour every Christmas.
On bottle return refunds, I remember the last time I was in Amsterdam, when we would buy a crate of beer, the empties and the crate could be returned to the shop, put through a machine and a refund given.
I don't remember corona. Maybe they didn't sell it everywhere?
 
I don't remember corona. Maybe they didn't sell it everywhere?
Corona first made 'Tango', wow you learn something new every day.

"Corona was a brand of carbonated soft drink produced by Thomas & Evans Ltd in South Wales, and distributed across the United Kingdom. The firm was created by grocers William Thomas and William Evans when they saw a market for soft drinks caused by the growing influence of the temperance movement."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(soft_drink)
 
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