Food Theory: I Invented the BEST Tasting Soda! 

🥤 What is your favorite soda mix?

Matpat spent a month without sugar and decided to go all out after the cleanse.

Every single time i went to my aunt as a kid she would give me this mysterious drink she called 'a spacey' and it was so good so i asked my mom to buy some, but it wasn't anywhere in the supermarkets. I just last year found out it was just cola and fanta mixed together.

Santi being a bartender is that kind of information you learn and it's like "woah, really?" and then you go "wait, no, actually. Yeah, I'm surprised I didn't guess that already."

For a chuggable, low carbonation sugar rush, we had something that we called Hulk juice, 1 part blue powerade 1 part Hi-C orange 3 parts sprite .5 part lemonade It was *very* green and the sugar rush + electrolytes was a decent replacement for caffeine

My personal favourite has to be the water-ice combo, ABSOLUTELY SLAPS everytime!

If you get a swamp water that looks mostly green, it's called the Yoda Soda.

This is so interesting because as an Australian I've never had any of this "swamp water" because our fast food restaurants don't really have those soda fountains (at least not the self serve kind). Kinda interested to try it out tho and mix up my own stuff

I would actually like to see this one revisited, with STRAWS thrown into the equation. When you drink from a cup, you're drinking from the top of the mix. But when you drink from a straw, you're drinking from the bottom. How would that affect the flavor profile?

I always saw two constants when it came to soda mixing: Dr. Pepper was the "universal receiver", where you could mix just about anything into it for a different though Dr. Pepper forward flavor, and Sprite was the "universal donor", where it could re-carbonate an almost flat soda without affecting the flavor too much.

Worked at a restaurant for about 5 years, where I found the secret flavor combination to get Baja blast. It was so spot on, some of my regulars started requesting it (Baja blast with Mexican food is a match made in heaven) Half sprite Quarter lemonade Quarter blue Powerade Squeeze quarter lime and garnish with lime wedge🤌

In Germany they market mixed soda drinks, such as Mezzo Mix (cola and orange soda), and every German kid grows up knowing what a Spezi is (equal parts cola, orange soda and Sprite/what we call lemonade)

It’s really smart how mat had Santi in these final episodes SO much more to make the host change Even smoother than it already is. Bravo Theorist

The complexity of the soda fountain mix options are definitely underrated and underexplored. It stands as a testament to human creativity and ingenuity.

“May your drinks be sweet, and your refills be free” I’ll toast to that one, mate. 🥤🥤

21:38 Sam, buddy. I get your point, but I would absolutely ask Da Vinci about fractions of blue in The Last Supper. He’d probably know the mass of the pigments, too.

I once worked at my local Arby’s and for lunch I would take a cup and fill it with the following; Sprite, Lemonade, Powerade, and finally, Unsweetened Tea. I never really figured out how much of each I just judged the amounts on my own. And in rare occasions if I felt like it I added a tiny part of water if I wanted more drink but felt I already had enough of the sugars and carbonation.

I tried making swamp water with a freestyle machine and it somehow looped around to being not only UNSWEET, but actively BITTER!

I love the fact that these guys are so Scientifically passionate about explaining soda mix

Love how Santi is horrified at how the Pepsi Mix could taste so bad, but Mat is more curious about how the Pepsi Mix could taste so bad. Different minds make different finds I suppose.

My favorite was always going down the line, but of different Sprite flavors. It tastes like a handful of Wildberry Skittles eaten all at once. That method made me fall in love with mixing sodas!

14:13 this NEEDS to be santis png when he takes over the channel PLEASE make it happen!

I love how mats first reaction at about 14:20 is not "ew thats gross' but instead laughter. years of eating gross food really does get to u

I do this with mocktail or cocktails. Can say my favorite is 1/5 cup mangosirup, 2/5 cup lemonsoda, 1/5 cup tapwater or ice and 1/5 cup either Coconutrum or elderflowersirup

Making soda blends for myself was a top tier part of working fast food

The coke/fanta blend is so popular in Germany, it’s sold as it’s own flavor (Spezi)

i absolutely love soda mixing , as someone who works at a gas station/ restaurant and gets free drink i’m a gigantic fan of mixing things , multiple mtn dews mixed with sprite are almost always good , and tea mixed with soda is kinda great

I go with waterver is available, SOMETIMES adding sweet tea and/or lemonade helps a lot. If you do add them, make sure it is not contradicting with the other stuff. Also, it is very hard to make a mixed soda with all the drinks, but not impossible.

just take one large cup and pour every drink at the bucee’s lineup (if you haven’t been to a bucees i HIGHLY recommend it) including juice, icee and coffee with espresso and creamer and swirl it up to make popsicles at home, every lick and taste of that popsicle is like *insert drug here*

can’t ever go wrong with my mixture: 1/3 sprite + 2/3 blue powerade

What I always find fascinating is that when Powerade is included in traditional fountain drink machines it is always Mountain Berry Blast (Blue), but that flavor is never present in the freestyle machines. Probally has something to due with how that flavor is not used with any other drink unlike: orange, grape, fruit punch, etc.

for me, i call them mashups and my fave is pepsi max cherry with some fanta lemon topped off with a bit of apple and blackcurrant squash (yes, it does appear in soda fountains in england) honestly, the squash makes it so good

MATPAT WEVE GOT A THEORY ITS THE MAKER OF THE DINO NUGGET

I used to always mix roughly 25% sprite, 50% lemonade, and 25% hi-c as a kid. Adding the orange at the end is so satisfying to watch. It's carbonated citrus heaven.

i worked in a kitchen for a while and a personal favorite mix is 1/2 blue powerade, 1/4 sprite, 1/4 orange fanta, with ice. kept me hydrated pretty well and kept it interesting

I recently went to Hershey Park, while I was there I created "battery acid" (50% Mtn Dew + 50% Starry)

Petition to have matt make a soda periodic table.

Yo, I call it an "unaliving yourself" drink, too! Cola + lemonade/some other citrus drink is always 🔥

My mix is Diet Dr. Pepper 75% and Cherry Coke 25%. This is mostly at gas stations as fast food places dont usually have cherry coke on tap

I always love combining sodas together, I still do it whenever your freely able to pour your own drink from the soda fountain which my favorite combination I randomly came up with is cherry Coca-Cola + root beer and last some Dr Pepper

"Battery acid" 2/5 code red 1/5 lemonade 1/5 sprite 1/5 diet coke

as a water drinker, i know I will never use this information, but this useless knowledge is why i love the channels, whether that be random equations and karat values from game theory, the average packing density of ellipsoid objects from film theory, and this perfect soda that i will never drink, this is why i love these channels

14:18 That iconic MatPat laugh after he tastes something outlandish.

A new mix I've been doing out in the world is Barq's rootbeer with a splash of lemonade. Was a random idea one morning and I ended up loving it.

Stopping video at the intro so I can type. When I was a kid, my two brothers and my parents would go to the Sam’s Club once a month for our “Big Shop” grocery night. There was a little restaurant in the store and they had a BIG one of the dispensers, it must have had like twenty sodas in it. My littlest brother loved to make the suicide drinks, mix all the flavors in the fountain into one cup. Once, and only once. It tasted like Bubblegum. We would spend months trying to find that perfect combination, and never succeed. Can’t wait to see what you come up with Team!

MatPat creating new soda mixes is the content I never knew I needed.

Hoo boy. This episode speaks to me. I’ve been mixing sodas for decades, and I typically spend at least half a minute at soda fountains. As for my typical mix, I mainly fixate on citrus, coke, and cherry. I usually go Sprite (1 second), Mello Yello (1.5 sec), Fanta orange (2 sec), and cherry coke (1-1.5 sec), plus other miscellaneous related pops if I have some room left.

Used to mix sodas all the time as a kid. I don’t remember a specific recipe but used various combinations of Root Beer, Cream Soda, Ginger Ale, Dr Pepper and Sunkist.

I haven't done my fav mix in years (mainly because I drink less soda now), but as a kid I have fond memories of going specifically to Fuddruckers and mixing cherry pepsi with orange soda (apparently I just really like citric acid), with more pepsi than orange in that mix. This episode makes me want to try that again then also try a coke version.

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet..but this episode reminded me of visiting any of the local soda shops in my area. I'm from Utah, where the soda addictions are truly next level, and this is child's play. You haven't tasted hurricane until you taste the unlikely mix of 2 sodas, 3 flavor syrups, coffee creamer, and a splash of monster all in a 44 once cup! My personal favorite is called a Cocolada: coke, whip cream, pineapple, and coconut.

A fun follow up to this episode would be the best combos for shaved ice!

Seeing the term *unaliving yourself* beverage actually brought back some good ole ohioan memories. I have a brother who is 10 years older than me, so he showed me a lot of stuff when I was younger, and I distinctly remember being in a McDonalds seeing my brother put all the drinks together, and so I did the same, and me being in the range of 4-6, the sweetness was the BEST. So I asked him what it was called so that I could order it at a sit-down restaurant and he said it was a "fountain *unalive*" So little me, not knowing what that second word meant told my mom I was going to tell the next waiter I saw that I wanted one, but she said no for obvious reasons I know its an outdated term, but it legitimately brought back some fun memories :)

my personal favorite, you know that ORS packets given to patients when they suffer from vomiting/diarrhea, just that with soda (carbonated water) and a lime, gosh it this the best refreshing drink i ve ever had thru my throat in my entire life

11:53 you should actually do a episode on if orange soda really is the reason why kel acts the way he does. That sounds like a great idea

@foodtheory my fave mix was pretty simple, I called it dirty punch, you use a bit of sprite, fanta, powerade (blue), and then splash it with either rootbeer if you wanted super sweet, or dr pepper if you didn't want it TOO sweet

Alright here we go. 2 thirds root beer, 1 third orange Sunkist, with a spritz of lemonade for that kick. Best one ever. (Except for the monster you made. Thanks mat!)

at 13:20 there's a big block of code-like text that shows up for two frames. not sure what it says or if it's even supposed to be there so i'll just leave it to someone else to figure out

Please take Santi from 20:00 and use it as a cutout in videos. It's perfect

my personal fave is 3 parts coke and diet coke evenly mixed, and one part root beer with a widdle bit of dr. pepper at the end. Pretty similar to mats honestly.

Powerade and Sprite was my go to for a long time when the family went to McD's on a weekend out. Only two things but even mixed it just worked.

3:55 his friend is such a real one for speaking up

My go-to with the Coke freestyle machines is "The Disinguished Englishman": a 7:3 or 6:4 ratio of _Segram's_ and Grape-infused _Sprite Zero_ . A home inspiration of the _Schwepp's Dry Grape_ ginger ale.

It depends on what's available for each soda machine but generally i like having Sprite as a base, then i add a flavored iced tea, then Hi-C (preferrably fruit punch), and then lemonade ESPECIALLY marionberry lemonade in that order. The sprite mostly just adds some fizz without affecting the flavor too much, and the mixes of sugary fruit flavors makes it fantastic (if you're like me and prefer juice to coke)

Never have I felt more compelled to comment on a Food Theory Video. To start, I have been making "self unaliveing" beverages from about as far back as I can remember being presented drink options and choosing all. As a mater of fact I just enjoyed such a mixed beverage with the dinner I consumed watching this video. As a chemistry major in college, I actively made a concerted effort to evaluate the concoctions I crafted. However, I feel that my results are drastically different due to several key preferences: 1. I don't like ice in my drinks (hurts my teeth and waters down the flavor over time) 2. I generally prefer fruity and citrus flavors over coke related flavors 3. I can enjoy a very strong sugar flavor in drinks so long as they are also very sour 4. I never experimented with the mix order as I was often drinking through straws (in college) or letting the drinks mix before consuming Some of the major realizations I had were as follows: 1. Light and dark rarely mix well (as shown by the sprite + coke in the video) 2. less citrusy fruit flavors (cherry, strawberry, grape, blueberry, blackberry, etc.) work well to bridge the gap and can work well both with dark sodas as well as light ones. (sadly despite my love of cheerwine, its inclusion would often water down the resulting mixture, instead of adding its unique cherry flavor) 3. honestly, my favorite combinations include mixing real fruit juices with sodas, but as this video is about exclusively what is on tap i will refrain from delving into that particular tangent With all of that being said, here are 3 of the concoctions I have come to enjoy over the years (note %'s would vary depending on daily preference) 1. 45% Cherry Coke + 45% Root Beer + 10% Dr. Pepper - my go to dark drink in college for when I felt so inclined. interestingly the coke and root beer alone would foam excessively developing quite a "head" (this was detrimental to rapidly filling up the cup) but adding just the 10% of dr. pepper would reduce the foam considerably. 2. 30% Mtn Dew Baha Blast + 20% Mtn Dew + 10% Sierra Mist + 20% Tropicana Fruit Punch + 10% Lemonade + 10% Mango Brisk Iced Tea - Taco Bell staple both acidic and fruity 3. 30% Cherry Limeade + 20% Raspberry Fanta + 20% Grape Powerade + 20% Mello Yellow (classic) + 10% Orange Sprite - for Coke freestyle machines, many different variations, absolutely prefer the fruit basket approach, the trick is not letting any one fruit flavor become too dominate (like orange)

21:46 I can see why Matt said "Oh no!"

I used to always call this type of drink a "sewer-cide" as the water looked like sewer water.

I love how Sam has become the Roman emperor of final judgments in the Theorists team. He delivers his opinions fast and doesn’t regret saying them.

13:54 “DIE DIE DIE” -matpat 2024

As someone from the motherland of Spezi, those coke mixes need more orange juice.

I atuck to the pepsi fountains when i was regularly refilling my cup. 50/50 mountain dew and code red was my go-to. With the advent of the freestyle machines, I've switched to 2/3rds Raspberry ginger ale and 1/3rd lime ginger ale.

My favourite is zero sugar coke and solo lemonade. Its nostalgic to me as my mum used to give me coke with a lemon slice when i had a cold and it reminds me of that.

3:04 just drops a random lore drop like that

Santi Supreme recipe (26:38) 1 part Dr. Pepper 1 splash Code Red 1 splash Orange Fanta 1 splash Mountain Dew 1 part Blue Powerade 1 part Sprite 1 part Coca-Cola 1 part Diet Coca-Cola Could probably simplify this to just 3 ingredients: Santi Select recipe 1 part Dr. Pepper 1 part Blue Powerade 2 parts (Diet) Coca-Cola But that's just a theory.

My favorite mixes is when I go to cici’s pizza and mix all the drinks left to right with sweet tea ( make sure it’s sweet tea) and don’t add any ice. Me and my friends call it “diabetes in a cup”. It’s amazing but you can mainly taster root beer

I’m a simple woman, three parts lemonade to one part sprite has been my go-to for years. Recently I worked for a place with a juice fountain, too. I’d get sparkling water + tropical juice (mango, pineapple, and orange) and it was sooooo goood 😔miss that drink. This video certainly makes me excited to experiment more with my drinks, so maybe I will!

For a more fruity mix without dark sodas: sprite, orange soda, pink lemonade, fruit punch (also an overlooked option at some soda fountains) topped with more sprite. I've been doing this one for years!

Santi had to have had a soda addiction, he is filling in for Mat after all

An episode on Battery Acid drinks would be soo cool!! I mean there's just so much you can do with it (also it uses energy drinks and lollies)

Interesting episode, especially since this soda fountain mixing can get you weird looks here in Central Europe. People dont do it that often. But my personal to go mix is actually pepsi and 7UP, 50/50 ratio, with a bit of fizzy water to connect it. Simple but tasty :D

I like how Sam implied the great inventor, Da Vinci, wouldn't care about fractions because he is also a painter.

22:16 is now gonna go down in history

If these are the reactions we get 14:12 am excited to see santi take over that was golden!

Here's a fun one for you if you can Hit the southern part of Kentucky to access both of these= Ale-8-1, which is a KY drink through and through, that tastes like a fruity ginger ale, and mix it with "Dr Enuf", a citrus soda from Tennessee made with real sugar and infused with B vitamins. 50/50 mix. Enjoy!

I have been drinking my own mix since I was a kid and I’ve been told I’m crazy. It is equal parts lemonade (pink or yellow), root beer, and lemon-lime soda. Traditionally Minute Maid, Barqs, and Sprite from a McDonalds fountain. I never had a dedicated order for layering though.

I’m gonna miss you, Matpat 🫡

I love adding a little bit of slushy instead of ice, it changes the flavour as it melts

Mine is similar to the fizz. It’s sprite first, Hi-C fruit punch, a small bit of Fanta, then the smallest splash of Dr Pepper. If I’m feeling frisky, I might also put a dash of mellow yellow. I created this at my job at Arby’s, so if it isn’t available, Mountain Dew could work I guess.

20:18 a bit off topic but i just had to give props to the editors making the ice transparent so you can still see the background is a good attention to detail

1:50 i dont think thats any better bro

20:59 I think Sam meant he was the Nancy Kerrigan of this experiment 😂😂

One of my favorite tricks I learned at a summer camp on a college campus was when combining Mountain Dew with equal parts blue Powerade (and SPECIFICALLY POWERADE) it tastes and looks almost exactly the same as Baja Blast

@21:30, got to call you out here Matt!!! Most recipes would have it written as 1/8 cup + 1/16 cup of whatever_ingredient and expect you to realize that it is the same as 3/16 cup or 1.5 fl oz or 3 Tbsp or 9 tsp.

2:46 Diet coke + sprite + lipton (iced tea)

I recommend equal parts mountain dew and sprite/starry, with a splash of lemonaid, but pepsi and a&w is also pretty good

orange soda + lemonade + sprite is one of my fave mixes, my go to at chipotle is coke zero, dr pepper, and root beer.

I tried the merhods used in this and have found my new favorite mix. One part cherry coke, one part diet coke, two parts blue powerade. I work at a gas syation and i tried this with an actual fountain. Yes it does in fact make it better. Ice is a nice addition as well. Hope you try this sometime mat😊

It’s been YEARS since I’ve had an “unaliving yourself” drink!! I’d enjoy these at Skate City growing up. Awesome episode Mat Pat!! Appreciate the nostalgia😁

Dispite not having drunk any soda beverages for years, this vid is delightful.

I just tried this at my DQ , this taste awesome!!!! ❤

I’m going to miss you, Mat.