Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Coke in a Bottle on the Cheap

Have you ever noticed how, even though you can hardly ever find a Coca-Cola in a glass bottle in the store anymore, the bottled version is consistently used in Coca-Cola commercials. There's a reason for that. Coke just looks better in those hourglass bottles. My Sweet Baboo also is absolutely convinced they taste better in those glass bottles.

Now as a Dr. Pepper man, I can tell you that DP DOES taste better in those glass bottles. My grandmother used to bribe us to behave by promising us a bottle of Dr. Pepper if we didn't tear the house down when we visited. It worked like a charm and that's saying a lot given the ADD hellions we were. Of course DP in the glass bottles at least used to be made with cane sugar and the ones in the cans and plastic bottles is made with corn syrup. The taste actually is different. Now DP used to make Diet Dr. Pepper in glass bottles and it tasted better than the canned stuff, so my wife may actually have something there.

Here's a neat little trick for enjoying a decadent soft drink experience in spite of marketing people deciding to deprive us of Coke in bottles. We true-blooded Southern Americans will not be denied! When we want a Coke, this is what we're talking about!

So, I tried this little experiment for myself and found that I agree with her. It's the bottle!  My experiment was simple.

Materials:
  • Coca-Cola (or any other soft drink for that matter.
  • Old-fashioned Coca-Cola bottle. You can still rarely find them in stores. You can also buy them in the old-fashioned wooden cases at antique stores. Well worth the price, I'm telling you.
  • Small funnel
Directions:
  1. Clean bottle thoroughly
  2. Use funnel to pour Coke into the bottle. Tilt the bottle and pour slowly so it doesn't bubble over. If you pour it straight in, it will bubble over and you'll lose half your drink.
  3. Now lift that bottle to your lips and marvel at how much better it tastes in that cold glass bottle.
Hint:

You don't have to use Coke. I sometimes pour Diet A&W Root Beer into the Coke bottle and it does taste better. It feels decadent.  If you want to be really cool for a party you can save up a couple of dozen bottles for a party.  You can even find these little plastic caps that fit on the bottles to retain their fizz after you pour them up. Won't last as long as the original sealing process, but it will help the bottles retain most of the fizz during your event. Nothing as delicious looking as a bunch of those bottles stuck in a mound of ice in a bit old tub of ice.

And hey, who doesn't need a little decadence once in a while.

© 2016 by Tom King

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear that as a Texan you remain true to Dr. Pepper. My father always maintained that the smaller the bottle, the better they tasted. Now you have me wondering if my mother was refilling those 8 oz. bottles.

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  2. I understand they made the bottling plant in Dublin stop making the cane sugar Dr. Pepper in the original DP bottle. I started buying Diet Dr. Thunder and putting it in the old Dr. Pepper bottles.

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