I have seen the future of Soda… and it is glorious! The Coke Freestyle is a soda dispenser capable of mixing a multitude of flavors, up to 104 to be precise, which is exactly what this machine. It uses inkjet style technology to precisely mix together different flavorings.

Coke is just starting to roll out the machine across the country. I came across this one at the BGR Burger place in Dupont. I tried out three different concoctions before crying mercy: Diet Orange Fanta, Diet Pibbs Extra and Rasberry Minute Maid Light. I am a fan of diet, caffeine-free sodas, which are sometimes hard to come by in restaurants. Thanks to this machine, there are tons of choices… probably 20 or more.

I haven’t been able to find any detailed information on what exactly gets mixed together to make the drinks. I did find that the different concentrates are stored in 48oz containers. the machine is about the size of a large fridge, so there clearly isn’t enough room for a different container for each flavor. My guess is that they have base flavors: sprite, barqs, coke, pibbs… etc. To that they mix a sweetening syrup, either Diet or Corn Syrup. Next, I think they add in flavorings, like raspberry, cherry or vanilla.  Of course, this is just my humble guessing. If you know more, please enlighten us in the comments!

 

The Coke Freestyle reminds me a lot of the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. We visited it a couple of years. We are not rabid Coke fans, but it was right across from the aquarium, which is awesome.  A the end of the tour they have 100s of different soda taps where you can try different varieties from around the world.

 

 

Unlike the Coke Freestyle, these are not simply weird combos of flavors (ie Orange Lemonade), but a whole ton of unique flavors. I remember there was a carrot flavored soda from Japan that was actually pretty good. As you can see, I was very enthusiastic about it. However there were a bunch of flavors that were pretty bad and promptly dumped. That was actually one of the things which caused Coke to redesign the beta Freestyle machines… people were doing a lot of tasting and dumping and the overflow container keep getting full.

Let us know if you find a Freestyle machine and what you favorite flavor is!