At the crack of ten O'clock, our follow the food group (pictured partially above) set out on the quest for Coke. Being as our tour of the Coke factory is tomorrow, we didn't have anything too specific to do. Our solution to get to know our product better was to go straight to the source -- that is brewing our own batch.
First stop, the bakery! Surprisingly enough, the bakery had almost all of the ingredients that our recipe called for. On that note, our recipe was found off the internet and apparently is from the papers of Coca-cola creator John Pemberton himself. On another note, we raided the bakery for delicious fresh bread and other sweets.
Here was the fruits of our labor. That is fifteen pounds of sugar right there, along with the essential oils of various and sundry fruits and herbs.
The only things our immensely helpful bakery staff couldn't find were the citric acid, citric caffeine, naroli oil, and alcohol.
So off we went to the medical supply store, in search of the missing ingredients. What we found was creepy medical implements -- clamps and whatnot.
How do we put this all together then? The CIEE office has no kitchen to speak of, neither do our dorm rooms. Ajaan John, our faculty advisor/translator, says his house has no kitchen either. Luckily, before we were stuck with an ungodly amount of sugar, Ajaan John called up a friend of his who lives in town to let us borrow his hot pot and porch. Below, Elly and Stef set up the cauldron on the hot plate.
We went about figuring out the recipe. If you haven't looked at it yet, you won't really realize just how vague it is in quantities of ingredients and exact steps to take. We did our best approximating.
This is what our pot of boiling water, sugar, lime juice, and recently added brown sugar (instead of caramel) looked like initially. Aroi mai? (Delicious?)
When it dissolved and cooled, we added the flavoring oils. Until then, we amused ourselves, talked, played with the cat, ... and ordered pizza. Seeing that we were in Thailand, it was a very American afternoon.
Us stuffing ourselves while the pot cools.
We eventually got impatient, trying to cool the concoction by adding ice cubes. Needless to say, they didn't do much but melt exceptionally quickly.
So then we decided stirring would expose the coke to more air flow, thus cooling it. This plan worked much better. (Stevie stirs the coke below)
Our cooking had caused some overflow. We cleaned up the area. Incidently enough, the house we worked in is actually a dog breeder's house. There were golden retrievers in pens in the room behind the hot plate.
Stirring with ice cubes. The consistancy wasn't quite syrupy, but still thicker than water, real Coke, or most liquids. It was kind of similar in texture to orange juice.
Soon it cooled enough. The time had come to taste test!
Not everyone was a fan.
We bottled the sugary syrup up in water bottles. In my opinion, it tasted like a really sweet version of coke, but with more lemon flavor. I think we may have added a tiny bit too much lemon. Not bad if you mix with seltzer.
Our end product.
Can you spot the difference between ours and Coca-cola's products? Me neither.
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