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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

I noticed a similar thing with regular Coca Cola years ago. Some PET 2 l bottles went stale and tasted terribly, like mold. Other people thought that it wasn't so bad, but did detect the bad taste after being told about it.

I suspected it was an effect of sunlight on sugar, but had no way to know for sure. Nobody would admit that the bottles were transported or stored in inadequate conditions either.

Then I quit regular coke and later diet coke too, so no idea if it's still a problem.

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Here in Norway I think "Pepsi Max" was the gold standard for years while diet Coca Cola mostly sold because of the brand name.

Then something happened: Coca Cola launched Zero and after a few iterations it tasted good! Meanwhile Pepsi Max always yaste stale now since the start of the pandemic or something.

I don't really know what happened and it could just be my taste changing but I don't think so.

Same observation in Sweden. So I'm not going crazy! Not sure if our Pepsi is bottled in the same place, but our Coca Cola isn't.

Carlsberg Sverige and Ringnes AS (also Carlsberg), I'm guessing it's made locally.

Haven't notice anything with the Swedish Pepsi max and I'm drinking _a lot_ of it. Didn't get the flu yet so my taste buds should be good! Coke zero got a lot better after the new recipe if you ask me but still a Pepsi guy :)

I drank a lot of Pepsi Max since 2006 to sometime just before the pandemic when I started feeling the difference.

Recently I have only tried the ones from Norway since the border has been closed for so long && local shops have reduced prices to Swedish levels for now, but the Pepsi Max I get here all tastes stale now across all shops and all bottle sizes I have tested.

I used to drink coke years ago. But it only tasted ok to a pizza. Then I didn't eat pizza for a while (no local pizza place) and after that I couldn't even enjoy a coke to pizza any more. Not sure if they changed something in the recipe or my taste just changed. I haven't had more than a couple of cokes the last 20+ years because they just don't taste good any more. Neither diet or normal.

(Sweden)

I don't know, maybe I got used to it real quick. When the new (and better :P) coke zero came out people didn't shut up about it, so would be strange if they changed pepsi and almost nobody noticed. But I did have that happen with beer though, a beer I liked started tasting real bad, then I had it for the first time in 10 years or more last summer and it was good again. Think tastebuds works in mysterious ways and changes a lot more than we think.

I think what happens is

- sometimes a brewery changes the taster/mixer master

- other times I suspect they start cheaping on ingredients

- in one particular case I almost expect the brewery did it on purpose: A particular brewery here in Norway produced a very tasty low-alcoholic beer that was sold durt cheap in one particular chain 8f grocery stores. Then at some point around 2008-2009 that particular beer changed to taste like the smell of a fox farm (I grew up next to one so I know that smell). I checked back a number of times but the quality didn't recover until years later. One possible explanation would be that they had an extremely bad deal and was actively sabotaging this product to sell less of it at loss.

Might have been the new Coke Zero making the Pepsi feel worse in comparison, but I do feel like it goes flat faster than a few years ago.

I don't think its related to OP, but maybe to your experience. I have a friend that pointed out to me that Regular Coca Cola in both cans and bottles taste different between the product labeled as "Made in GB" to those that are not labeled as such, even with full UK labeling and identical ingredients. Once you pick up on it, you can tell straight away. I suspect UK cans without "Made in GB" are produced elsewhere in Europe, and has a slightly different recipe.

I've seen the same in France. Coca Cola sold in heavily discounted stores used to taste quite a bit worse than regular « Made in France » Coca Cola. I suspected it was made on the cheap somewhere and imported, like a lot of products there. I don't think I could find it anymore, as those stores have mostly disappeared (and those that still exist like Lidl and Aldi had to go up-market and significantly improve their quality and image). As it happens it's a retail model that's much less popular here than in Germany.

The real difference is Coca Cola made with real sugar than the more common HFCS.

Are you American ? In Europe, sugar is much more common than corn syrup. Germany and France are massive sugar beets producers.

In any case, you might be right in this instance.

That is interesting; I didn't know European countries would prefer sugar over corn syrup. Do people there also have the opinion that real sugar is more subjectively superior in it's taste and aftertaste?

I don't know that anyone has an opinion on it, regular sugar is just the norm. Corn syrup is just not common enough that people would be exposed to the point of single it out. We don't really have a « big corn » lobby, and GMOs which are meant for that type of production are verboten anyway.

The quotas on isoglucose have been lifted a few years ago in the EU, so that might become more common. But I think it's really meant for export, especially considering sugar is meant lower in manufactured products anyway.

Local water, not Coke's recipe.

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