There's a Reason McDonald's Coke Tastes Better Than All Others | Hacker News Reader

There's a Reason McDonald's Coke Tastes Better Than All Others

allrecipes.com

40 pointsbookofjoe61 comments

> most fast food restaurants have their Coca-Cola syrup delivered to them in plastic bags, McDonald's gets their syrup specially delivered in stainless steel tanks.

No need to wade through the SEO spam.

That seems less relevant than:

> McDonald's sets their machines for a syrup-to-water ratio that accounts for melting ice. Which means there's a little more syrup than most other fast-food restaurants.

Also you can see the article is clearly just an inflation of this primary source: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/faq/why-does-coca-cola-ta...

Basically ad copy.

That varies a lot based on location. Some McDonalds have a bare minimum of syrup going into the water.

They're supposed to calibrate it regularly. I did it many times.

i also recall that calibration, being dialed up when friends were likely to come in after a school dance, and the secret "dead product" bin full of fries mostly plus randoms, being shoved through the window, to a car full of friends upon request.

Yup, and notice how the primary source doesn't mention the steel tanks of Syrup? Because it's not universally true. I worked at two McDonald's in high school and I changed the syrup many times... it was in plastic bags. It was like a bag of wine, there is a small connector on the bag where it feeds into the syrup distribution system.

McDonalds also apparently has much better quality control about having the correct syrup/water/carbonation ratio, other vendors are often much sloppier about this or intentionally use too much syrup.

I would argue the opposite. It feels like many vendors use too little syrup. To stretch the already fantastic profit margins on the soda.

Too much syrup? I don't think I have ever seen that. To little is common though, to save pennies I guess.

Once upon a time I worked grill but still occasionally got roped into maintaining equipment.

Back in the day, if you pulled the nozzle off the machine then the soda and syrup would come out unmixed. They had a little graduated box you could hold under the machine and it would tell you if the mix was off. Then you fiddled with some controls and tried again.

Usually the problem with a drink was that the syrup had just run out mid pour, but sometimes the settings would get off kilter. I suspect perhaps as the filter reaches end of service life and the pressure changes.

There is also mention of filtration, pre chilling of the tanks, and the syrup ratio.

I worked at McD’s in high school (which is why I haven’t set foot in one in twenty years) and had a roommate who managed one a few years after, which was about the time they started their race to the bottom on food quality.

Glad to see they still use the metal canisters for the soda (milkshake mix did come in plastic at the time). Those fuckers were hard to move though. Need some upper body strength which as a cyclist I did not have.

> which is why I haven’t set foot in one in twenty years

Care to elaborate?

Might be similar situation to me with Dairy Queen. Just don't like the food after working there.

Partially the food, partially costing them more income than they made off of me.

Working food service taught me the value of an education. People (and by people I mean bosses) assuming you're a moron because you applied to work there was a lot to take in. Only one of them was good at his/her job and it was the one you would have thought, on meeting them all, was the fuck-up.

He probably had ADHD. But when he was in the Zone he was a prodigy. He was also the only one who consistently treated people like humans.

Every day - every single day - my mom gets in her car, and drives 2.5 miles (each way) to the nearest McDonald's, to buy a diet coke. That's the only item she gets.

She has done this for over a decade.

This used to drive me insane. But somewhere around the 8th year of this, maybe because I matured a bit, I started to finding this extremely endearing.

Well now you are driving me insane with this story. I hope she instead has a secret love affair with the register person instead. Would make more rational sense than driving + overpaying for a beverage you could keep at home.

Plus the environmental impact of driving to get a single coke.

For a single person doing this: zero impact

In the U.S. it is quite common for people to drive long distances for equally trivial reasons. It’s not that she alone is significantly impacting the environment it’s that this story is indicative of a nation that has normalized such behavior.

That is exactly the mentality that will doom us.

It could be insane and endearing!

McDonald's greatest strength is consistency.

That said, bottled coke bought in bulk, the right amount of ice, and some straws would do it.

On the other hand, keeping it a drive away maybe keeps her from over-indulging.

I do something similar for coffee.

It's more than the drink to me it's a big part just getting out of the house and a change of pace.

It's her morning coffee which millions of people do every day.

Coffee you can at least make the argument that the place uses better beans, equipment, technique, or just laziness of self-preparation. I am a tough sell that a Coke served by McDonalds taste significantly better than the options available at home.

Maybe? I would argue that for most people the routine is the most important thing.

You should donate to plant some trees.. a lot of trees for this fuel and plastic.

I know a guy who used to go to McDonald's simply for the Diet Coke. I love McDonald's Diet Coke myself, although my local one lately has been messing the mix up somehow... I will admit that the Diet Coke alone will steer me to choose McDonald's over something else to eat sometimes!

The whole article reads like sponsored content. Full of unsupported assertions, from the assertion that everyone thinks McD’s coke tastes better to the assertion that stainless tanks make a difference, to the assertion that their water filtration is superior.

I can help assert some bits of it. Having been a cog in the McMachine, I've learned a bit about various suppliers and hardware and pieces of the soda fountain puzzle.

https://www.pentair.com/en-us/landing-pages/mcdonalds.html

These folks supply 90% of McD's in the United States with their filtration requirements.

That then just gets fed into a (fairly mundane, actually) bag-in-box soda syrup system, just scaled up to the demands of a large fast food restaurant. The only special thing is - yes, the Coca-Cola syrup is delivered by bulk tank instead of the BIB.

The bulk tank? It's the McBulk! https://files.chartindustries.com/10718219_McDonalds_Syrup_I...

Other than that it's your bone standard Cornelius fountain setup; though a bit beefier carbonator system.

Cold chilled water hops through the carbonator, then to the fountain, where it's then dispensed in the correct ratio required. Coke NORMALLY is 5:1 ratio, but the McCoke is 4.75:1.

If you wanted to somehow replicate this at home, you could, though it'd be a costly endeavor.

> The whole article reads like sponsored content.

It reads like a blogvertisment [1] for McDonald's.

[1] a blog where the blog content is just an advertisement for some product, but written so as not to look like an 'ad' at first glance.

Anecdotal, I don't know a single person who likes McDonalds (or any other fast food's) sodas. I'm not in the US, if that makes a difference

The consensus among close to a 100% of people I know is glass bottle > can > plastic bottle > fast food dispenser

I prefer can first, especially cold.

Same. The syrup in fast food soft drinks is weak as hell. I read this article headline and said "wtf?" out loud. It makes no sense to me.

The exception is Chick-Fil-A and a small handful of chipotles.

Yeah that's my preference too! I think it has to do with gas pressure, with glass bottles and cans able to hold more CO2. The more CO2 in the soda when you drink it, the better it tastes! That's because the CO2 lowers the pH of the drink, giving it a sour taste which offsets the large amount of sugar in it. Everyone knows how disgusting and cloying flat soda tastes and that's why!

For me it depends on how well maintained and cleaned the soda fountain is.

A few bars in America do coke with ice exceptionally well. Not sure what the trick is but it's always from that multibutton nozzle liquid delivery device.

> Not sure what the trick is

The 'trick' is, more often than not, simply a slightly higher syrup to water ratio. Or, alternately, the proper ratio while everyone else is running a slightly lower than proper ratio to further increase the already huge profit margin on soda fountain drinks.

I prefer the fountain. Canned or bottled coke is too carbonated, too acidic, and too sweet. It tastes corrosive, gives me hiccups, and hurts my teeth.

Cola from the fountain tastes more interesting, like the other flavours are more prominent over the raw acid and sugar flavours.

Anyway I prefer Pepsi :)

Funny because I only drink coke if it comes from McDonald's. I always thought it tasted a little different but didn't know why.

(I'm a Diet Coke addict, so below is only about that, not regular coke.)

I personally never find McD's are better than others. If anything, I found their ratio on the leaner side.

Out of my mind RN, I think Jimmy John's has the best drink. Their unsweet tea is great, too.

Freestyle machines often (but not always) suck, but I figure most of people already know that.

Also I think variation between stores are sometimes bigger than variation between brands/chains.

Not sure, when visiting NYC, coke tasted like chlorine und was undrinkable at McD: "McDonald's filters its water before they add it to the soda fountain, so it guarantees your Coke will always taste fresh".

This was also my recollection when visiting NYC back in 2011. So what they give you free water in restaurants when it tasted like "Chlorine Springs".

Apparently I took quality tap water for granted. Same surprise when visiting a friend in Lublin. Water in Tricity or Warsaw is perfectly drinkable, even if it tastes a bit more neutral after an ion exchange filter.

>Why Is New York Tap Water So Good?

https://www.ediblemanhattan.com/food-for-thought/why-is-new-... ............................

>Why New York’s tap water is called ‘the champagne of drinking water’

https://archive.curbed.com/2017/2/2/14453584/new-york-city-t...

Most assuredly some issue at the restaurant as surely you're aware of the reputation NYC's drinking water has.

So NYC is considered different? Because whe I did visit other parts of the US, like Florida and California, water tasted also heavily like chlorine. Which is strange, b/c in Germany I only drink tap water.

Is this an American thing? The McDonald's Coke is terrible where I live, and sometimes I'd rather just get water.

Some time ago we did a blind tasting of various colas (commercial, bottled, among the candidates were the typical brands).

Our simple result was, that there is a direct correlation between tastiness and the declared amount of sugar content...

Edit: so a plausible reason for Coke tasting better at McDonalds may be that they mix the syrup with slightly less water.

<sarcasm> If you haven't gotten diabetes of colon cancer eating at McDonald's you're really missing out.

What fat unhealthy computer geeks really need is more junk food! </sarcasm>

Seriously, No One should eat at McDonalds, or drink coca cola...

While I'm not a fan of McDonald's nor Coca-Cola (nor any unhealthy giant for the record), I love how they care about the details for making it the best of what's possible with they have in this sense.

But it doesn't. At one point in time McDonald's was the only cuisine of Coca-Cola the had permission to use more water. So yes it tastes different, but I wouldn't say it tastes better.

Diet Dr Pepper at Chick-fil-A is in a class by itself

Do go to the international section of the store and get the Mexican Coke that is made with cane sugar.

High Sucktoes Corn Syrup is exactly that in comparison.

Ah, I prefer Dr pepper instead.

(2022)

OK, carbonated beverage production is part of what I do for a living, and I see these articles all the time. They are mostly FUD.

Yes, most soda comes in a clear bag, and light could be detrimental, but that bag is in an opaque cardboard box. The system is literally called BIB (bag in box) and the box has a nozzle that pokes out of the side. They’re usually in a rack in a closet or cabinet. Soda syrup is exposed to little to no light anywhere. Nobody takes the bag out of the box. The bag just shrinks as the syrup is pumped out, no air enters. The stainless steel tanks are simply an economical function. I guarantee nobody could taste the difference between plastic and stainless steel containers if nothing else were different.

It is true that most places don’t adequately chill the liquid which decreases carbonation. I’m not sure what McDonald’s actually does in this area, they may just run it through a second pass of a cold plate. Which I advise anyone to do.

I don’t know what water filtration McD’s uses but I doubt it’s any different than anyone else. All soda machines are just installing the same carbon filters. Even if theirs was better, I don’t think any minerals in the water would taste noticeably different. (I will say, lots of crappy restaurants/gas stations don’t do a good job of changing filters at regular intervals, so McD’s may have better quality control there than a lot of places.)

The straw width may be important. I’m not sure.

The biggest factor by far is they simply use more syrup than everyone else. Soda syrups are meant to be mixed 5:1 with water. There’s a little adjustment screw you can use to calibrate it and change the ratio. Crappy gas stations dial it down a little. McDonald’s dials it up a little (I think approx 4.8:1). They syrup is very strong so it definitely makes a big difference. If you ever goof around with a soda gun and the little brixing cup (named after the measurement brix that really just means percent sugar, even though the cup is really just collecting the syrup and water separately because they come out of the nozzle separately and mix in the glass, and is used for sugar-free syrup as well) while calibrating and taste the results, you’ll see the massive difference an extra 5% syrup can have.

> I don’t know what water filtration McD’s uses but I doubt it’s any different than anyone else.

I'm not sure what anyone else uses, but I worked at two McDonald's in high school and they had a big rack at the back that had water filters, shelves for the syrup BIBs, and it also had something that sounded like a compressor. I'm not sure if that was for carbonation, but I assume it was since we changed a lot of syrup bags but never once changed a CO2 tank.

That’s the McCann Big Mac carbonater (funny enough, no relation to the McD Big Mac) probably. Or the syrup pump which can be electric or CO2 powered.

Most places that serve a lot of draft beverages have a big tank outside the building that gets filled from a truck, otherwise they have a service contract with a local company that swaps out CO2 tanks. A McDonald’s would probably use 100# tanks (which weigh like 150 full) so you wouldn’t have employees do that.

Still tastes like shit.

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