As you all know, I’m a Dr. Pepper fan. Have been for way too many years. I don’t like anything but the drinks sweetened with sugar. In Texas, I could get Dr. Pepper that only had sugar for the sweetener. Here . . it’s corn syrup. I moved a pretty good stash of sugar sweetened Dr. Pepper with me but I’ve long since been out of those. I’ve mostly resorted to making a simple syrup with sugar/water, keeping it in the fridge, and making lemonade. I’ve also been drinking water but I do drink one or two Dr. Peppers per day. My goal is one and with it so hot now, I drink more water so it’s pretty easy to stick with one Dr. Pepper.
As with everything else, the cost has gone up. I used to could easily find 12 packs of Dr. Pepper on sale 2 for $5. No more. About the best I can find now is $8.50 for a 24 pack and that’s for DP sweetened with corn syrup. That’s about 35-1/2 cents per can. Not outrageously expensive but way more than I was paying (about 21 cents per can).
It’s more about the corn syrup than it is the sugar.
Vince suggested we dig out the Soda Stream and start using it again. We found it, made sure we had a good CO2 canister and went to find the flavors we wanted. Every single one we could find had sucralose in it. When we first started buying Soda Stream flavors years ago, we were able to get syrup that was sweetened with sugar but we couldn’t find any now.
I looked online and found Real Sugar Soda. Their cost for a 32 oz. bottle of syrup is $10 if you order 12 of them. The shipping is free. That would make the cost about 61-1/2 cents per 12 oz. serving, which is substantially more than buying a 24 pack of Dr. Pepper at Walmart.
There are 33.8 fluid ounces in a litre. The Real Sugar instructions say add 1 part soda to 5 parts water. If my math is correct (stop laughing), I should be able to fill my one litre soda bottle about 5.68 times. I’m putting less syrup because I filled it about 7.5 times with one bottle of syrup. I like my DP with not quite so much syrup. The fridge measures how much water comes out of the spigot and I put 33 ounces of water in the bottles. That’s 247 ounces which is about 20 – 12 oz. cans. With the syrup being $10, that’s still about 50 cents per 12 oz. serving. But, I don’t always drink 12 ounces. Depending on the time of day, I’m usually happy to drink probably 8 – 10 ounces and since I’m pouring out of a 1 litre bottle, I don’t drink as much as if I were drinking out of a can so it lasts me longer and . . no corn syrup.
What matters most though is the taste. When I first found Real Sugar Soda, I ordered four containers of syrup. You can order 2 bottles for $30; 4 bottles for $50 or 10 bottles for $120. I first ordered the four bottles to try it. I got Dr. Doctor (which is like DP), Coconut Lime, Vintage Root Beer and, for the life of me, I cannot remember what the fourth bottle was. Mostly I just wanted to taste the Dr. Doctor. I liked all three that I can remember but the Dr. Doctor was so much like Dr. Pepper, I did a taste test and could not tell the difference. I did the same thing with Addie and she couldn’t tell the difference. So, I ordered the 10 bottle package.
I’m really impressed with it.
Nancy H. says
With our soda stream we just make the carbonated water and add lime juice. What I really want is the bubbles so I haven’t even been adding sugar.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I feel that way a lot of time too. But I still have to kick the Dr. Pepper habit. I have a Cirkul water bottle and I only use the unsweetened flavors.
Vicky says
I love Fresca but our area grocery stores stopped selling it. I switched to a Mexican made grapefruit soda that is much like Fresca but made with sugar. I love it. There are other flavors- I like the orange too. There are other flavors. I’m sure there’s a Dr Pepper-like flavor. But it’s some weird name I can’t remember.