The World of Coke

2003-03-25 - 4:21 p.m.

I got to see the Coca-Cola labs today :-).

One of the women in my group works for Coke, and since Ross and I are about to start running some reactions for her, we headed over there to discuss what she wanted, what she needed us to do, and generally formulate a plan. I didn't contribute much because we're going to use a technique I've never used before but need to learn - hence me also partaking in a project that somebody else my year is working on.

So first of all, you could drink Coke products free all day long. There are refreshment rooms all over the place. So that's pretty cool :-)

Probably the funniest thing was the way things were stored in the lab. The food-grade refrigerators (well, maybe not all of them are, but these were food grade) were all Coke refrigerators, like you'd see at a convenience store. And they stored things in soda bottles. I was in the emulsion lab, where there were about 24 different orange soda formulations in glass bottles with the metal tops. It was wacky!

Some of the labs have other machinery you wouldn't normally see in a lab - like the soda fountains you see at restaurants or those slushy, frozen Coke machines. That's apparantly very difficult to make, actually. It is a delicate balance to keep that stuff the right consistency. That's why they don't make diet ones, because the lack of sugar makes it difficult to keep stable.

There is also a lot more science involved in Coke than you would normally imagine. I knew there was a lot, but I didn't realize how much. Lots of problems come up, especially since they only use natural ingredients (well, I guess except for the artificial sweeteners). Different sources of things such as lemon oil are completely different and thus need to be compensated for.

They're really VERY private with their formulation. Theresa does not know the recipe for the syrup. The research she does involved Cola, but she gets the syrup and works with it from there. Even the people who make it don't know what's all in it. The ingredients are given code names, and only a very select few know the code. Funny story - apparantly some guy who worked for Coke took some from the refreshment room and tried to analyze it so he could back out the composition (apparantly a daunting, nearly impossible task, even with the best analytical equipment). Well, he was caught and they, well, frowned on that behavior.

Shoot, I got all sidetracked. Oh well. It was REALLY cool! :-P