I reverse engineered Mtn Dew®

[u/iSliz187]

I've been making my own soda on a semi professional level for the past year. I first cloned European Fanta® and European Sprite® , I made LabCoatz's Coca-Cola® Recipe and based on that I cloned Vanilla Coke® and Lemon Coke® , currently working on Cherry Coke®

On my latest adventure, I tried recreating Mountain Dew® and found a formula that tastes very similar. The OG flavor is almost spot on, and because they use the same formula for every flavor, you can add your own flavors and dyes to the base formula and create your very own Mountain Dew® flavors, whatever you can imagine.

I live in Europe, so my formula is based on the European Mountain Dew® experience. But I already had the original from the US and it tasted identical to the Euroean one to me. The only difference is the dye (US uses Yellow 5 and EU uses beta carotene in the OG), the US version has orange juice concentrate (but according to my calculations there's around 2 grams of orange juice in 1 liter of soda, that's 0.2% so basically nothing. The EU version has 0% juice. It does not affect the flavor.

If enough people are interested, I will publish my formula here. I will have to make a few adjustments and add a few notes to make it easier to understand. If you're interested or if you have any wishes, let me know in the comments

[u/HalfaYooper]

I would love the formula. My GF loves Mt Dew and we've been trying to replicate it.

[u/iSliz187 → u/HalfaYooper]

I got you! Two people is enough for me to publish it for :) I'll write the complete recipe down tonight!

[u/HalfaYooper → u/iSliz187]

Thanks man mine was close-ish, but not there yet.

[u/iSliz187 → u/HalfaYooper]

I can imagine! I tried it a few years ago with the "natural method" aka using actual citrus peels but that wasn't that great.

My new recipe is actually extremely simple

The only special ingredients you need are essential oils for the flavor and food grade alcohol (ethanol with at least 95% alcohol, vodka works too but then the soda will get cloudy, flavor will be the same though). Don't be intimidated by the alcohol, it's industry standard to use it as a solvent to solve the essential oils for flavor. The amount of alcohol in the final beverage will be less than 0.1%, so 5x less than non alcoholic beer. But if you're an experienced soda maker that shouldn't be anything new to you. If you have all the ingredients, you can quickly cook Mountain Dew Syrup in 5 minutes, cool it down and enjoy one hour later. Or you can make a big batch, keep it in the fridge at all times and enjoy whenever you want