Homebrewer Open-Sources Sugar-Free, Caffeine-Free Cola Recipe

A developer has been crafting DIY soft drinks since 2020, building cola from scratch using essential oils (orange, lime, lemon, nutmeg, cassia, coriander, lavender), gum arabic as an emulsifier, and caramel coloring. The recipes are open-sourced on GitHub, inspired by projects like Open Cola and Cube Cola. A key motivation was producing a caffeine-free cola, since caffeine causes the author headaches.

The project evolved through multiple iterations - swapping sweeteners from cyclamate/saccharin to sucralose, dialing in oil ratios, and adding vanillin for depth. The author also branched into orange soda and an almond-blood orange drink. Each recipe is versioned with semver in a Git repo. After direct comparison, the author found their homemade cola significantly better than decaf Coca-Cola.

The writeup doubles as a practical guide: 2 ml of essential oil flavors roughly 9 liters of cola, gum arabic prevents oil separation, and 0.4-0.6g of sucralose replaces a full kilogram of sugar. The author notes a surprising gap in open-source soda recipes beyond cola and is still reverse-engineering other commercial flavors.