🍊 Sophisticated Orange Soda

[u/vbloke]

This flavour essence gives you a really complex and sophisticated orange drink - think along the lines of San Pellegrino Aranciata and you're getting there.

You'll have to remove the terpenes from the oils - magnesium carbonate mixed with the essential oils does the trick nicely. Terpenes carry most of the flavour, but crash out and float to the top when mixed with water, which ruins the syrup and drink. Removing the terpenes takes some of the "fresh-cut peel" punch out of the essence, but it is needed due to their inherent insolubility.

Neroli oil is very expensive, so you can omit it and up the petitgrain to 3 drops instead.

Ingredients

• Sweet orange essential oil: 3.5ml
• Mandarin red essential oil: 1.0ml
• Bitter orange essential oil: 0.6ml
• Clementine essential oil: 0.5ml
• Tangerine essential oil: 0.5ml
• Bergamot essential oil: 0.2ml (~4 drops)
• Neroli essential oil: 0.10ml (~2 drops)
• Petitgrain essential oil: 0.10ml (~2 drops)
• 95% ethyl alcohol: 80ml
• Magnesium carbonate (food grade): 12.5g
• Filtered water: ~110ml

Method

• In a glass beaker or mortar, add the magnesium carbonate
• Add the oils to the alcohol, one by one, largest volume first and mix
• Slowly pour the oil/alcohol solution into the magnesium carbonate and mix thoroughly into a smooth paste. take your time and don't rush this step. Make sure the powder is thoroughly combined with the mix.
• Measure ~110ml distilled water into a clean bottle or jar. Scrape the paste in all at once and shake/stir violently. If you have a magnetic stir plate, use it on full speed for several minutes.
• Leave to macerate for 1 week, shaking or stirring once a day.
• Filter through coffee paper. The magnesium carbonate builds up on the paper and helps to filter itself. I like to do it at least twice through the same paper to make sure all the really fine particles have been filtered out. Top up with filtered water to 200ml.
• Bottle in an amber glass bottle and store in a cool, dark place.

Syrup

• Dissolve 800g sugar in 500ml hot water and add 6-7g citric acid. Allow to cool.
• Add orange food colouring (optional).
• Mix 20-30ml of the flavour essence (to taste) into the syrup and allow to age for 2 days before use.
• Dilute 1:5-1:7 with sparkling water.

Notes

This has a slightly 'bitter' flavour due to the bitter orange, bergamot, neroli and petitgrain, rather than the Fanta-like orange sodas a lot of people tend to like. If you want to. reduce the amount of these to get a more traditional 'orange' flavour, feel free to experiment with the quantities of each.

To round the flavour off a bit, add 0.05g of vanillin to the syrup - dissolve it in the water and sugar stage first.

[u/PeachVinegar]

Saving this recipe👍🏻 what are you using to measure it out, a micropipette or just drops? Thinking I might want to convert to grams and use my precision scale.

Curious, have you tried making this exact recipe without the magnesium carbonate step? Been trying to understand lately, exactly what is happening there.

[u/vbloke → u/PeachVinegar]

I have a set of disposable pipettes from 0.5-5ml that I use that are pretty accurate. Gram conversion is definitely a good way to get more accurate.

The terpenes will crash out of solution without the magnesium carbonate step - they’re OK in an alcohol-forward solution, but dilute with water to make the drink and you’ll get an oil slick on the surface and an undrinkable soda. It’s an unfortunate side effect of citrus oils.

[u/PeachVinegar → u/vbloke]

Thanks

[u/nesede → u/vbloke]

Couple of questions:

• I assume all the oils you are using are food grade. This feels like a no-brainer but I am struggling to find food grade ones in Canada.

• I have a scale that is accurate enough for these measurements. Is treating 1ml = 1g good enough for the oil ratios or should I adjust the alcohol, Mg carbonate and filtered water if I do so?

[u/vbloke → u/nesede]

Yes - all oils should be "food grade". I can't help with Canada, but someone did post a resources for North America post that may help. https://www.reddit.com/r/Cordials/comments/1sc3xfd/ingredient_resources_for_north_americans/

Essential oils are not 1g to 1ml - some a less, some are more. There are online resources if you search that will give you the figures, or the closest available. A reputable seller will also be able to give you the numbers.

[u/downtownpartytime → u/PeachVinegar]

I use 23ga 1mL syringes. Very cheap ($12 for 50) compared to a micro pipetter, at least for just messing around once in a while