The ingredient list for OpenCoke is as follows

• 10.0 g food-grade gum arabic
• 3.50 ml orange oil
• 3.00 ml water
• 2.75 ml lime oil
• 1.25 ml cassia oil
• 1.00 ml lemon oil
• 1.00 ml nutmeg oil
• 0.25 ml coriander oil
• 0.25 ml neroli oil
• 0.25 ml lavender oil

Cassia oil is an ever green that is native to China and Vietnam. It is a close relative to cinnamon and is commonly referred to as “true cinnamon” or “vietnam cinnamon.” Coriander is, get ready for this, cilantro. Yes, that leafy little green thing that is commonly used as a garnish in fancy restaurants could be floating around in your Dr. Pepper or Coke. Since Dr. Pepper was advertised as having medicinal properties, I think it is very likely that Coriander either was, or still is, apart of the recipe. Folk medicine uses Coriander for the relief of anxiety and insomnia. When boiled, Coriander also has diuretic properties and can be used as a general digestive aid. Coriander is also used as a carminative, which, if you look it up in wikipedia, also lists anise seed, basil, cardamom (ginger family), epazote (Mexican vegetable/herb, used to flavor black beans for its antiflatulent properties), ginger, lemon balm, liquorice, marjoram (sweet pine and citrus-y), muna (a digestive aid made into tea), nutmeg, peppermint, rosemary, saffron (those stigmas that are used as seasoning or coloring), spearmint, thyme and wormwood. Any of those sound like Dr. Pepper material? I thought so, too.

In conclusion, Dr. Pepper has stepped away from our traditional lemon, lime, cherry concoctions and has stepped into a world of spices, herbs and green leafy things. Working backwards, I would be interested to find the actual medicinal claims of Dr. Pepper because the list I’ve complied here is mostly digestive aids (which, makes sense given the medium) but if one was able to find those claims, then the list could be broadened to include other natural aids such as laxatives, blood pressure remedies, or appetite suppressants for example.

Being a big fan of Snicker’s candy bars, I would normally just eat this bar regardless of it being healthy or not, but wow, it tastes like shit*! In addition to a normally good Snickers bar, the Snickers Charged contains the aforementioned 60mg of caffeine (the same as a cup of coffee), Taurine and B-vitamins. Considering Taurine makes up a large part of bile, which is very similar aftertaste of the Snickers Charged, I would assume this is the major assaulting ingredient in this case.

Why, Snickers, why? Couldn’t you just stop with the caffeine and b-vitamins? Did you really need to go and ruin a perfectly good candy bar? As a coworker of mine just pointed out, no one drinks energy drinks for their taste, specifically because of the taurine, so what was the idea of adding it to a candy bar. Call me crazy, but I never eat a candy bar because I NEED to, I eat it for the endorphines that are released when I shove my face with the sugary chocolaty goodness of a candy bar. Endorphines were most definitely not released in this case, as I had the vague impression of eating, then throwing up, the chocolate, then eating it again.

But don’t take my word for it. If you enjoy eating chocolate covered Yellow Jackets and rinsing the whole thing down with a Full Throttle spiked with concentrated Rockstar, then this is totally the candy bar for you. Me? I’ll just go hungry, thanks. It’s been 30 minutes after the fact and I still have the ruminates of a bile taste in my mouth.

*shit: sour after taste, bad grass, like chewing the worst part of an energy drink, Snickers taste lasts only about half way through chewing, kinda of like vasaline too.

Hot Dr. Pepper smells like:

-Boiled dried fruit (raisins and apricots to be exact)

-Cherry Syrup

-Lip Smackers brand chapstick

-Cherry Lifesavers

-Sassafras (rootbeer)

-Brownies

-Coffee (empty glass at 30 sec)

-Artifical chocolate (empty glass at 1 minute)

-Caramel (empty glass at 1.5 minute)

Hot Dr. Pepper tastes like:

-Cherry lifesavers

-sugar water (go figure)

-sweet tea (Arizona brand to be exact)

-Cinnamon ACT mouthwash

-boiled raisins

-sassafras

-artificial strawberry

-lemon

Cold Dr. Pepper smells like:

-Cherry

-Clean cardboard

-Cat litter

-Crensha melon

-Black tea

and tastes like:

-black cherry

We literally burned out our tastes buds during this test so when it came time to taste cold Dr. P everything just started melting into one big blob of flavors. We can however safely assume that Dr. Pepper does in fact have

-Cherry

-Sassafras

-Lemon

-Cinnamon

-Chocolate

-Caramel

-Vanilla*

Some other likely flavors are

-Prunes

-Melon

-Strawberry

-Black cherry (not as sweet as a regular cherry)

And some flavors we can’t explain yet are

-Black tea

-Coffee

-Sweet tea

-Fresh cardboard

-Cat litter (well, we do have 4 cats, I’m sure that explains something)

*I also have the theory that every flavor of Dr. Pepper (berries n’ cream, cherry vanilla, cherries n’ chocolate etc) are using flavors that are already in regular Dr. Pepper, they’re just using more of the flavor to make it stand out more then before. With this in mind, we can also add vanilla to the list of assumed flavors even though we couldn’t identify it last night.

For the record, I love prune juice.

Other flavor guesses are your generic vanilla, cherry and cola (is cola an actual flavor or a brand? Now I’m confused) and some far reaching but understandable flavors are black licorice, blackberry, rootbeer (again, flavor or brand??), orange, and lemon. My favorite guesses however are amaretto, caramel, pepper (did we not see this coming?), anise (explains why Paul likes it, at least), molasses (compliments the high fructose corn syrup) and, of course, plum! (or, we could just call it prune, really, no one will be offended)

Since there is no hardcore evidence at all out there proving what is or isn’t in Dr. Pepper, I’m interested in conducting my own investigation taste-testing. I’m going to need a case of real Dr. P and a room full of super-tasting nerds.

Oh wait, thats just Paul’s work…okay, nevermind.

Next, I’m going to conduct a taste test between Diet, High Fructose Corn Syrup and <gasp> because we do live in Texas, mere miles from the plant, Real Sugar!

Flavors from Kulterblog