Why is it that when I go to places such as Taco Bell, I put ice into the cup, and when the soda falls into the cup, there is very little "soda expansion" to the top of the container?

When I'm at home, I have to wait for the "fizz" to settle down when I pour from a can or even the 2 liter bottle. What's the deal?
< When I want my soda, I want it NOW…I hate waiting for the fizz >

I have tried tilting the glass, pouring from different angles, but to no avail. How does the fast food restaurants set up their soda machines to eliminate damn near 9o% of the fizz when it hits the glass and how can I achieve that at home without a ga-zillion $$ soda machine?

--Allen

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The soda at Taco Bell is flat?

quote Originally posted by KingOfKings: The soda at Taco Bell is flat?

No, there is "fizz," it's just not jumping out the top of the glass like when I pour it @ home.

Funny you should mention it. This is the first thread I read while coming inside for a drink. My pepsi hits the ice and by the time the fizz settles down the glass is but a quarter full. Or 3/4 empty depending on how your day is going.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they're mixing the syrup with the carbonated water while pouring, and that somehow eliminates the fizz foam...?

sticking your fingers in it will help the fiz settle down. my dad taught me that, he says its an old bartender's trick

The fountain at most fast food places is usually out of adjustment, so you either get too much or not enough carbonation.
Fountain drinks taste better than bottled, WHEN they're adjusted right. But unfortunately, that's rarely the case because people don't give a crap anymore.

Wax paper cups.

quote Originally posted by derangedsheep: sticking your fingers in it will help the fiz settle down. my dad taught me that, he says its an old bartender's trick

If I saw a bartender do this to my drink I would leave asap.

Yeah! The brix on the Taco Bell machine is off. At restaraunts they actually have the carbonized water mixed in with the soda surup at the soda dispensing point. Unlike bottled or canned soda, which it is already mixed in.

There is a fine line for brixing this acuratly. And each soda flavor will have it seperate brix point.

Another thing about soda dispensers at fast food places or convience stores... majority of them are not cleaned and sanitized properly or at all. So they are pretty gross.

quote Originally posted by fierodog: If I saw a bartender do this to my drink I would leave asap.

You don't ever want to see how your food is prepared in a restaurant, then. They actually, *gasp* touch the food!!

Seriously, though, it does work. Try it sometime. On your own drink, of course.

I work on soda machines. Since Brix was mentioned, I'll start there....

Actaully this likely has nothing to do with Brix. Brix is the ratio of syrup to water, usually 5:1. It can be set by a couple methods and is actually quite easy to set. A comon method is a Brix Cup that has 3 pockets. The pockets are usually set for 5:1 and 5.5:1. There is a small tube that fits into the syrup port in the nozel and diverts it to one of the side pockets on the Brix cup. The Brix is set correctly when the chosen side pocket fills at the same rate as the center water pocket. It only takes a few tries to set right once you've done it a couple times. The other common method is to use a refractometer. (Versions of which can measure many sorts of liquid mix, including your car's antifreeze and brake fluid.) If Brix is so far off the soda is flat... you likely wouldn't want to drink it. It would be nasty syrupy.

You can see one Brix cup set here. http://www.boneville.net/soda/brix.htm I don't know why he felt he had to alter the cup... but at least you can see how it works. (The cup doesn't need any seal. It just needs the syrup and water streams split.)

Once set, most dispensers will maintain perfect Brix thru their entire life as long as system gas pressures are set correctly. If the gas regulators are changed/adjusted for any reason, odds are you will have to reBrix the dispenser. You may also have to reBrix if a syrup pump is changed on a box feed system. (You should at least check it in case the new pump feeds a little more or less.)

In this case...I would say the Carbonator unit isn't working right. IE the soda water that is coming from the tap is flat. There are a few things that can cause this.

Most resteraunts use post mix due to lower cost and less need to change tanks/boxes of syrup. Most regions now use box systems that are easier to handle and there are no refilling costs to the distributor. The empty boxes just go in trash. (Syrup boxes are much like Wine boxes... Plastic bag of syrup in a cardboard box.)

The way a Post Mix machine works is as follows....

At the machine... When you push the switch, Two solenoid valves open. One is Syrup, The other is water. On a soda/pop tap the second is Carbonated Water. On a Punch/Juice tap it is just water. These valves are right in the tap head where your drink is dispensed. The mixing of syrup and water actually happens at the very last second in the nozell that you see the drink pour from. If you watch those nozells carefully you will often see that the mix isn't even and that water is pouring from some spots and syrup/water from others. The stuff is still mixing when it hits your cup.

The water is carbonated by a special pump rig before it even enters the machine's cold plate and taps. (The WATER is carbonated. Not the syrup.) The pump boosts the line water pressure and sprays it into a tank under full CO2 pressure that should be up around 100PSIG. If the gas pressure in this tank is low, the pump is weak (leaving water pressure low) or the water is way too hot/cold, then it won't pick up the CO2 at the rate it should, leaving you with flat soda. The carbonator may be under the machine or even in the back of the resteraunt.

The cold plate may actually be a water filled chiller tank. It depends on the machine. A machine with Ice dispenser usually has a cold plate at the bottom of the ice tank. A "dry" machine with a refrigeration unit over the taps actually has a tank of water in the base that serves as a heat exchanger between the syrup/water supply tubes and the refrigeration's evaporator. (There is also a stiring motor in that tank to help keep it from freezing and to improove heat exchange.)

If you are really seeing this at multiple resteraunts, I would bet that your one of your local soda suppliers has a few service people that don't know what the hell they are doing. Even tho the resteraunts are different chains, there are only one or two soda service suppliers in most regions. That means the same supplier is feeding many food chains.

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The only thing George Orwell got wrong was the year.

The Ogre's Fiero Cave (It's also at the top of every forum page...)

[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 09-12-2004).]

quote Originally posted by theogre: I work on soda machines. Since Brix was mentioned, I'll start there....

What he said.

As I’m sure theogre knows, Brix is just a term commonly use in the fountain industry today. What you are actually doing is setting the “ratio”. Brixing is the setting of the sugar content of the drink with a refractometer (as stated above). The reason they went to ratioing is because of the diet drinks (because they have no sugar). We still use the refractometer on our Minute Maid juice machines. As stated above, many things affect carbonation. Water quality, cleanliness of nozzles and diffusers, co2 pressure, etc.. I could throw a cheap shot in here and say it is the Pepsi being poured ant your Taco Bells, but it happens in many outlets (if it didn’t I would be out of a job). One question is are the drinks you pour at home from warm cans? The drink needs to be below 40 deg to hold carbonation. I worked this weekend and had 3 calls today for flat drinks, 2 were out of co2 and 1 had film on their glasses (from the dishwasher).

BTW, I have been working on fountain equipment for over 20 years, with the last 12 exclusively 8 hs a day 5 days a week.

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...Perfection....

[This message has been edited by wkayl (edited 09-12-2004).]

wow

Brix. Heh, learned a new word today, cool!

JazzMan

the ogre is not only wise in the ways of Fiero's... he is wise in the ways of carbonated dispensing units...

Silly rabbit... BRIX is for kids!

Actually ists b/c the soda is cold already and my cat is eating me alive!

As a side note, we ratio our drinks at 4.75-1 on sugar based drinks. Formula is reasoned that when 4.5-1 soda is poured over cubed ice, it will melt the ice to a ratio of 5.0-1. McDonalds has always been at this ratio for as long as I have been doing it. Burger King is now as we speak changing over to this ratio (it will take a few weeks for all of them to be done). Some people say some places have the "best tasting" drinks. Most of these accounts have water filter systems and multiplex units in the back rooms that cool the drinks and circulate the cold soda water and syrup all the way to the dispensers.

...Put the lime in the coconut and drink them both up... You put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em both together...

Wait... we were talking about soft drinks, weren't we?

I never worked on post mix machines, but I have worked on wilshire juice machines. Of course these are non carbonated. The brix setting is adusted using a refractometer. Depending on the squeeze tubes and the pump speed, the factory setting for brix will be off. But of course post mix machines are different.

But I have to give it up to wkayl for saying that water filteration makes a big difference and probably is one of the most important aspects for a good tasting drink. Also! Thanks theogre for the bit on post mix. I'm guessing most post mix run off of water pressure for dispensing instead of p-pumps.

Rub yer nose, then touch the fingertip to the fizzy. see what happens.

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: Rub yer nose, then touch the fingertip to the fizzy. see what happens.

I just did it, and the only thing that happened, was that my wife said that I looked like an idiot with my finger in a glass full of fizz, and that she's not going to drink it.

If you have any oil on yer nose, it will eat through the bubbles like acid... Try it on a guiness..

Soda machines are one of the more fun things I've worked on. I don't do it full time probably helps that.

Using the Brix cup makes setting any given tap pretty easy. Yes, wkayl is right. It's not really a Brix. Everyone just calls it that. I didn't know McD's was using a strong mix. Makes sense. Their Barq's does have bite. I don't use ice in most drinks as the machine is often cold enough already for me.

Yup... oil/grease/etc on your hand or the glass will kill foam on allot of things. It can drive good bar tenders nuts. If I remember right, using a stick with a bit of lard on it was used to knock down foaming when Maple Sap was being boiled into Syrup at the place up the road from me when I was a kid.

In a post mix machine you can have different water pressures at different taps. Soda water is often higher pressure than the plain water used to make punch/juice. Sometimes even two Soda or Punch taps have different water flows because of issues with the plumbing in the machine. Any dif in water flow does affect the ratio and add that the syrup feed rates may also vary depending on what type drink it is, it can make it a bit of a puzzle to set the mix.

This will show you a bit of what a carbonator looks like. It's mosly a pump with a tank that sprays water inside. The water spray picks up the gas and now you have nice fresh seltzer on it's way to your taps. It's just the first one I hit on google.
http://kegman.net/carbonator.html

I love carbonated water. I have not drinked soda in 13 years. I would like to get a carbonater for my home.

Maybe a spritzer bottle, if those things are still around.

Yes, you can still get seltzer bottles. Try a resteraunt supply store if you want a local source. Kegman above has them. If you don't have good water, you might want at least a Pur water tap filter or something you can stick under a sink. That will make both your drinking and seltzer taste better.