Please forgive me for the folks from different regions whereas I will refer to soda, coke, tonic, and any other similar name as pop.
So, I am a big pop drinker. I love my coke. However, I am sick and tired of the excess of carbonated water that I get in my drink. I understand that is the point of how they make their money but I’m not liking it.
So, how can I get my pop without that water? Is there some special switch/button/anything I can do to get my pure pop from the fountain drink machine? As I’m sure there are fancy knobs in the back to do this, I’m looking to get this done from the front in a quick manner without too much hard work or mechanical work on the machine. Basically walking in, getting my drink, and walking out.
and honestly folks, I’m looking for practical answers. I’m sure a million witty comments can be produced from this post
Dunno; if it’s one of those machines that dumps a squirt of syrup in the cup, then adds carbonated water (or at least if the tail end of the vend is just carbonated water), you could just pull the cup out prematurely; other than that, I’d imagine it’s unlikely.
Occasionally you can buy no shit for real coke syrup in a pharmacy. It is used for indigestion.
You can try to go to an industrial food service supplier [like US Foodservice] and talk them into selling you a 5 gallon pony of syrup and try to figure out how to tap into it and still keep it ‘fresh’ without a mixing machine. Most food service companies wont sell to individuals though, but you might get lucky=) When I worked for US Foodservice, I probably could have bought the syrup, we got to shop there for our food at cost [but we had to take it in the whole case lot, or find someone who wanted to split the absurdly enourmous amount of whatever, the 40 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts was a favorite, as was the sigh case of artichokes. I miss working there=)]
You can try to make friends with the manager of a fast food store and get him to let you buy a pony of soda syrup and tag it onto his store’s order.
I remember we had a testing device that I used when I worked at a movie theater waaaaaaaaaay back in High School. There was a physical adjustment we made to the fountain if it was too syrupy or too watery.
You could attempt to remove the nozzle (which, IIRC, will have the syrup coming straight down and the water spraying in 360 degrees) and you might get some looks for that.
The syrup is the pricey part of the soda - so essentially you’re looking for ways to cheat the store?
From what I recall from my days of working in a restaurant, what you’re looking for isn’t located on the front of the machine or in an easily accessible area. And besides, soda without the carbonated water is, literally, sticky, very sweet, and flat. Some places like homebrewing catalogs sell the concentrated syrup (scroll down to the Sprecher Soft Drink Syrup; the other items are just highly concentrated flavoring) if you really want it.
Sometimes I notice when you take your finger off of the pour button, the syrup seems to cut off 1st, leaving a fraction of a second of extra water. Removing a cup before you let off on the button (or lever) might help a little.
A lot of times (may depend on the design of the fountain), you can see the stream of syrup in the jet of water, because they don’t mix completely before the flow hits the cup. If the brown stream of Coke is obviously off to one side, you could put the lip of the cup in the center of the jet, and capture only the half of the flow that contains the syrup. Then you’ve gone from 5-to-1 down to something more like 2-to-1.
Ask a local bottler for names of establishments that sell a pre-mix as opposed to a post-mix drink. Pre-mix is prepared at the bottlers’ plant to their standard ratios and a bit of CO2 is added at the delivery point to give it the fizz, as well as to provide the pressure.
Post-mix provides the syrup in one container and the carbonated water in another. The flavor is always the same. With post-mix, machine adjustments can change, or be changed. Fountain drink mark-up is pretty high even with pre-mix, and those (most) who use a post-mix are really gouging.
I’m basing these comments from my experiences of 20 years ago, but I doubt that much has changed in those years.
I have this image in my mind of an eventual sad story of CheflL11 found in an alley, with his “works,” dead from mainlining coke syrup. It’s a sad thing. First it’s “can I have a sip of your drink, daddy?” Then “I want a fountain coke!” The next thing you know, it’s “Pssssst. Hey, soda jerk, gimmie one without the seltzer. You can do it. Common, man!”
This is also true of those “bar nozzles” that bars use to dispense soft drinks – the ones with several buttons on the nozzle to dispense Coca-Cola, Sprite, plain tonic water, etc.
On the ones at the restaurant I used to work at ~10 yrs ago, if you pressed the Coke button down lightly, you’d get a stream of pure syrup. If you pressed it all the way down, the carbonated water would kick in and mix with the syrup.
It was a trivial matter to mix oneself a stronger version of Coca-Cola, if so desired.
Take it from someone who has experience—Undiluted Coke syrup tastes medicinal. When I got a shaved ice at a rural stand once, the Coke flavor was actually the real syrup. The man used quite a bit of syrup (much more than the usual 5:1 ratio; more like 2.5:1 with spots of 0.2:1), and while I enjoyed this for the most part, I couldn’t help but compare it to Robitussin or something.
Years ago there was a convenience store near our work site that had a soda dispenser where the Coke nozzle had a second lever beside the one that you pushed the cup against to turn it on. This second lever was so short that cups couldn’t touch it but I tried it once and found it dispensed syrup only. Wow! It was great. My sodas were so sweet and syrupy…mmm, I’d never had better Coca-Cola. Once or twice I added too much syrup, which ruined the taste, so I was careful to not go overboard. I can still remember those great-tasting sodas.
Yeah, you’re right. The second line should be read in Apu’s voice.
Polly Purebread probably tries to return the extra bottle of soda that the vending machine accidentally gave her. Me, I figure the machines have taken my money without dispensing product often enough to justify taking the extra with me…
It isn’t clear what context this is in. A fast food place? In my parts, that’s the only place where you can dispense the pop yourself. And in these places, I doubt you’d be able to change the ratio that much by how you push the lever in.
Anyway, don’t worry about “cheating” the propietor. The ingredients of a small drink cost them a few cents at most. And you pay what? At least a dollar, usally more. And you’re providng the labor! In fact, that’s exactly why they let you do it, and they don’t care if you refill your drink ten times. No one could drink enough to surpass the labor costs of a minimum wage earner.
So are these machines factory predetermined as to how much water/coke ratio that it will dispense? Or is this up to the convienience store?
Further, how does this compare to the ratio that you get when you buy a prepackaged bottle or can? Any ideas?
As for what kind of place this is: Self-service although it would be funny to order a coke without carbonated water at the local pizza hut. mmm awkward reactions
On top of which, I don’t have a cite for this, but I’m fairly sure the proprietor’s primary expense (excluding labor) for a soft drink is actually the cup.
