Dr Pepper is now as popular as Pepsi. It's still shrouded in mystery | Hacker News Reader

Dr Pepper is now as popular as Pepsi. It's still shrouded in mystery

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I love Dr Pepper, it is definitely my favorite pop. To control the damage to my waistline, I drink the Zero Sugar variant. It is surprisingly close to the regular stuff. Like, close enough that I once inadvertently picked up a pack of regular Dr Pepper when I meant to get Zero, and I did not notice until I was a few bottles into it that I was drinking regular Dr Pepper.

I still love the real sugar kind best, like Dublin Dr Pepper. Just slightly more complex flavor, a bit fruitier. I'm still miffed that Snapple cracked down on them selling it direct to consumers.

I always associate the word “pop” with America. It has at least two uses in the US ( fizzy drink / father ) that don’t exist in the UK.

It's really regional to the midwest part of the US, use of the term can be a giveaway to someone's area of growing up.

I’m from the West Midlands in the UK and there a lot of people call it “pop”

Interesting, there’s even a Reddit thread about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/qo491p/does_anyone_a...

Note for non-UK people, any references to “north” in the thread are for the north of England only. English people will call the north of England “the north” even in a UK context.

It’s further complicated since the West Midlands will be considered north by southerners but south by northerners

Reminds me of game of thrones when they go north of the wall and get called southerners. It’s all the south or deep south to me!

Or like the way that in the U.S. north a Yankee is someone from New England, in the U.S. south a Yankee is anyone from the U.S. north, and in much of the rest of the world, a Yankee is anyone from the United States.

It’s regional here, too. Soda is common in much of the country, pop in others (especially the Midwest), coke(!) in the South.

Businesses often use “soft drink” regardless of region but people rarely say that (but it’s not that weird if they do)

> coke(!) in the South

Haha. Can confirm. I am from Arkansas, and before they passed on, my grandparents usually kept a variety of soda in the house for us grandkids (they never drank it, they of course loved their coffee).

it didn't matter what kind of soda was actually in the fridge, every soda was a coke. my grandma would grab a dr. pepper or a pepsi and say "ya'll want a coke?"

good times. miss those two.

We never say "Pop" in New York.

Oh, I believe most of the US has now flipped over to calling it soda, even in the PNW where I live. I even call it that myself sometimes. But I have a streak of contrarian in me so I like to keep calling it pop -- that is what we always called it growing up.

https://popvssoda.com

^ Roughly accurate but not 100% because my mother's family used "pop" in N. Texas.

I've grown fond of the 'wild cherry' zero sugar variant- these are almost always sold out at my local grocery stores.

If you, like me, are wondering "has anyone just run it through a mass spectrometer to see what the ingredients are?" the answer is yes, they have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbDP0TF_70

I'll follow up with John Green's blind tasting. Which is just one of my favourite videos related to Dr Pepper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcOM3H06KI4

Like I never gave the drink a second thought before this video. Now I can't get it out of my mind.

I don't even drink soda.

104 year old: "2 doctors have told me that if I drink it I'll die, but they died first"

Yeah, cherry vanilla soda is definitely always what I thought it tasted like.

When I was a kid, I had to take this medicine that came in a very cherry-flavored syrup. I hated it. To make it tolerable for me, my parents mixed it into a shot glass of Pepsi.

When I grew up, I tried Dr. Pepper, and immediately recognized the taste.

The secret ingredient is benzoic acid.

The thing about trying to work out food ingredients via analytical chemistry is that it largely boils down to "lots of compounds in ppm, ppb, and ppt quantities" which if you're missing one of them causes the taste to go off. So it will tell you lots of things, but it won't really do anything to clarify what "natural flavors" are in the ingredient list.

IMO, the most distinct flavors in Dr. Pepper are cherry and almond. Benzaldehyde, an "artificial cherry" molecule listed in this spectrometer video, is found in both cherry and almond extracts.

If you're familiar with the taste of amaretto or marzipan, try thinking of those next time you drink a Dr. Pepper. That will unlock the flavor discrimination for you.

Amaretto is a key ingredient of a Flaming Dr Pepper, which does indeed taste surprisingly close to Dr Pepper.

You can potentially take a list of the finite natural flavors that are commercially sold in quantities to produce Dr pepper world wide and perform some sort of likelihood analysis based on these concentrations in the sample.

The article says it's owned by "Keurig Dr Pepper" and according to wikipedia, it's manufacturer in some countries is Coca-Cola and in other countries is PepsiCo.

I think Coke and Pepsi sometimes distribute it depending on location, but don't produce it.

Soda is usually produced locally. They likely produce and distribute it under license in some areas.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to make beverages somewhere else if you could make them near to the consumers, because almost all beverages are mostly just water, and water is heavy, so if you make it somewhere else you're also paying to move water for no reason.

The drink is mostly distributed as a concentrate and water is added locally

The syrup is manufactured by Dr Pepper themselves (they couldn't keep the recipe secret otherwise, as Coke famously did). Sometimes the carbonated water is added and bottled by various distributors to be more specific. But there are also clearly economies of scale with bottling plant size, location, shipping costs, retail channel partnerships, jurisdictional regulations, etc that factor into where this bottling takes place.

You’d think so, but then there is Fiji Water, which is literally brought across the ocean from Fiji.

In Europe it’s PepsiCo, and it tastes awful compared to the US version.

Glenn and friends cooking had a fun deep dive into creating Dr Pepper, multiple videos, part 1 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG499GYHdgk

Dr. Pepper forever! Several years ago I started drinking Dr. Pepper with Cream Soda[0]; it's really good! The strawberry version is also pretty good IMO.

Pepsi has this weird taste to me, so I'm not shocked if it's falling out of favor somewhat. Of course, that's all subjective, and I'm sure some people can't stand Dr. Pepper but love Pepsi.

[0]: https://www.drpepper.com/s/products/dr-pepper-cream-soda-MCX...

I think you forgot the link?

Thanks, fixed!

Problem with Pepsi is you cant get one without sweetener anymore. I havent bought a single Pepsi since they made that giant blunder. Only diet and a sugar+sweetener mix which tastes abhorrent

Was there ever an unsweetened Pepsi?! No sugar or other sweeteners?

I guess the parent means that all of the formulations contain artificial sweetener (while some also contain sugar).

Presumably they mean sweeteners that are not cane sugar.

translation snafu, definitely meant artificial sweetener

They've been selling "real sugar" (i.e. no corn syrup) Pepsi at my grocery stores for years now.

There's also a "real sugar" Mountain Dew variant that seems to be seasonal.

Though I'm pretty sure regular old blue-canned Pepsi is still sweetened just with HFCS.

> There's also a "real sugar" Mountain Dew

By far the grossest pop I have ever drank. Give me HFCS Mountain Dew every time. It is not intended to be anything remotely natural, and trying to make it with cane sugar really ruins it for me. I have no idea why the flavor is so different from the HFCS version.

Is that only in certain markets? In the US, Pepsi lists the ingredients as:

CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CARAMEL COLOR, SUGAR, PHOSPHORIC ACID, CAFFEINE, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVOR

What's interesting to me is that it has both HFCS and normal sugar.

https://www.pepsicoproductfacts.com/Home/product?formula=350...

HFCS replaced sugar due to cost cutting, and does taste different than sugar. They could be using a blend to try and bring back the sugar profile without raising costs as much.

Reminds me of Euro Shopper energy drink that made similar change from full sugar to partially sweetened. Some rumours indicate that sales dropped by multiple tens of percent... Some retailers even indicated it to be one of the most stupid changes in history...

Aside, but if you're drinking Diet Dr Pepper: give the Walmart clone a shot ("Diet Dr Thunder"). It has stronger caramel notes and may be a better drink overall.

Big claim for an "own brand" clone but in this rare case it may exceed the drink it is copying for less money. For context, I don't consider Pibb Xtra to be better than full sugar Dr Pepper.

Second Diet Dr. Thunder. It's surprisingly pretty decent, and ridiculously cheap.

I don't drink caffeine anymore, so I haven't had any for about a year, but it was something I would always order like a dozen 2-liter bottles of whenever I did Walmart Instacart (NYC doesn't have Walmarts so I can't get them in person).

What caffeine free drink(s) are you consuming these days?

Well almost all my soda consumption nowadays is tapped from a keg that is stored in a kegerator, which has ended up making me kind of irrationally happier than it should.

I make my own a lot since that's considerably cheaper and generally pretty fun: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40578693

If I'm not feeling as ambitious, I go back end forth between a caffeine free diet root beer (https://www.webstaurantstore.com/boylan-bottling-co-5-gallon...) and occasionally Diet Caffeine Free Coke (https://thetastetrade.com/products/caffeine-free-diet-coke-s...)

A 5 gallon box of soda syrup makes 30 gallons of soda, so the diet root beer ends up being about $3.30/gallon, with the Diet Caffeine Free being almost exactly double that price. I've been looking to find suppliers to find cheaper rates but both Coke and Pepsi get bizarrely indignant if you're a non-business consumer asking to purchase a box of soda syrup.

its pretty crazy because when dr pepper says 23 flavors those are only the 23 we have discovered so far. i've been hearing of research that at least 3 new flavors have been found in the last couple years but the papers are still in peer review.

> but the papers are still in peer review

Probably p-hacking with results that can’t be replicated.

Apologies… cynical former researcher… I had to.

I don’t drink soda anymore, but when I did, it was mostly Coca-Cola. After moving to the US, I decided to try Dr. Pepper. Couldn’t get past the first sip, because this thing tastes like cough medicine (the bad kind). I know taste is very subjective and individual, but it puzzles me how people can drink—and like—this thing.

My grandma really liked it when i was little, so when I’d go to her house and have it sometimes. Probably just having it in early childhood like for most things.

Dr Pepper is the only one that has great diet/zero-sugar variants that appeal to (a good number of) the people that like the original sugar-full drink. While there are people who swear by Diet Coke and Pepsi offerings, not even they will say that they are a close match to the real thing (although there are of course oblivious exceptions).

I don't know what it is with low sugar sodas of the Keurig Dr Pepper company lineage but 7up zero is also extremely good for a zero sugar variant, Diet Sunkist kicks the hell out of even regular Fanta, and A&W Zero Sugar is probably the better of the popular root beer options as well.

Now if only there were a better Mountain Dew alternative :).

I've grown to really prefer the taste of the diet versions of soda, but I will agree that Diet Coke is an entirely different thing than Coca-Cola.

The Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar really does a pretty decent job approximating regular Dr. Pepper, though I can still taste the artificial sweetener in it. It doesn't bother me, I like the fake sugar, but I suspect that the taste might bother some people.

Not surprised it's doing well. I and multiple other people I know had our sense of taste damaged by Covid such that Dr. Pepper was the only soda that retained something like its former taste, others such as Coke gaining a bitter, harshly chemical edge.

Sell outs. Even quashed the last real Dr. Pepper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Dr_Pepper

All my homies hate Snapple Group. Typical and lame that they missed the opportunity for a niche win-win agreement.

Damn. I was just thinking the other day about gifting myself a couple dozen bottles of my favorite sodas around Christmas each year to supply my annual soda intake with only good (to me, anyway) stuff, and that would have been four to six of the bottles.

Normal Dr Pepper is something I’ll drink, but certainly doesn’t make that exclusive cut. More room for stuff from Reading, I guess.

My big drink "idea".

Take your preferred drinking vessel.

Fill it 2/3rds full with orange juice. Adjust initial amount to taste.

Open a can of LaCroix. Plain, grapefruit, or tangerine. The flavour is mild.

Fill up the rest of the drinking vessel with LaCroix.

Enjoy your drink. Add more LaCroix as you drink, watering down the orange juice. Perfect for when I get home after walking my dog for an hour in summer. It doesn't feel as cloying as soda, I can't stand Coke anymore and Dr Pepper is heading the same way.

I love how random this comment is. It's like if you gave chatgpt the headline of the article, and set the temperature to maximum.

Negative; I am a meat popsicle.

O_O ..

If we're doing custom soda recipes...

I "homebrew" my own soda for my kegs nowadays because it's really hard to find caffeine-free syrup that isn't absurdly expensive.

I do a 5 gallon keg (about 19 liters). I purchased some flavor emulsions from Bakto Flavors (https://www.baktoflavors.com/). Specifically I have the cola, key lime, and cherry emulsion.

I do the following mix:

9 tsp of the cola emulsion

6 tsp of the cherry emulsion

1 tsp of salt

6tsp of the key lime

8 grams of anhydrous citric acid (food grade)

10 grams of pure aspartame

Mix everything except the aspartame into a 5 gallon keg thoroughly with 5 gallons of water.

The aspartame likes to clump up and be really irritating, so I usually do a little slurry in a spot glass with some water and crushing it with a spoon. You'll probably still have some clumps but try and get them as small as possible. Pour that into the 5 gallon mix.

5 gallons of water is pretty heavy, but if you can shake it around a bit more to give it a bit more mixing.

Plug your keg into a CO2 tank at 19 PSI and let it carbonate for two days and enjoy. It tastes a bit more fruity than Cola, but it's pretty good and ends up working out to about $1.10 per gallon last time I computed it. Obviously you can adjust the flavors to anything you want, some people prefer sucralose over aspartame, and if you do caffeine then obviously add that in there as well (though getting pure caffeine is actually kind of hard to come by nowadays).

There are 23 flavors THAT WE KNOW OF

I like trying and hearing about some of the smaller or older producers. Some have interesting products or interesting stories. Squirt (also Dr Pepper brand), Moxie, Frozen Run Birch Beer, etc.

> Dr Pepper is now as popular as Pepsi [on US][1]

[1] > had joined Pepsi to become the nation’s second-best-selling soda.

Also, to me Popular != Best selling.

Love my Dr Pepper but thinking how ubiquitous Pepsi Max is, I don't think that market share is remotely the same in other markets

I am amazed that despite the confluence of mainstream public health and influencers on the evils of excess sugar consumption that people still drink so much soda.

I'm not, alcohol kills 200,000 Americans every year.

"Worldwide, at least 2.8 million people die each year as a result of being overweight or obese, and an estimated 35.8 million (2.3%) of global DALYs are caused by overweight or obesity."

I mean... how do you describe what Coke tastes like? Most soda is kind of mysterious.

Cola nut and sugar.

There's also a prominent cinnamon baking spice

I miss Dublin Dr. Pepper made with real sugar. Sometimes Dr. Pepper will bring back the original but not often.

[It begins:

“Prune juice.” “Barbecued water.” “Elixir of the gods.” Those are just some of the phrases used to describe Dr Pepper, the un-pin-downable soda brand whose secret recipe is said to include 23 flavors. This week, we learned that the purplish-red canned beverage (see, even its label contains an enigma!) had joined Pepsi to become the nation’s second-best-selling soda, behind category-dominating Coke, according to trade publication Beverage Digest. (Dr Pepper is technically a smidgen ahead, but it’s essentially a tie.)]

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