What's The Flavor Of Sonic's Fan-Favorite Ocean Water?
Though you can order typical fast food items like burgers and fries, Sonic is known primarily for its drink options. In addition to milkshakes and slushies, the chain even allows you to customize any beverage with different syrups, fresh fruit, and even candy. Despite these add-ons being free, many people still stick to ordering the drinks as they're listed on the menu, with one of the most popular options being Ocean Water.
When Sonic first opened in the 1950s, root beer was the restaurant's signature drink, but that all changed when Ocean Water was introduced. Sonic started using the name Ocean Water in 1982 (assumedly when the drink was officially added to the menu) and went on to trademark it in 1996, likely due to its growing popularity. Since then, Ocean Water has continued to be a customer favorite, and in 2021, Sonic even released a drink mix version of it, allowing customers to enjoy Ocean Water at home.
The apparent appeal of the drink is that it tastes like the ocean — or at least how you imagine it should. It's refreshing, cold, and blue, and it has a specific beach-like flavor that you can't quite put your finger on. As it turns out, that flavor customers came to love so much is a pretty common one: coconut.
How Sonic makes Ocean Water
It's likely that customers assume Ocean Water gets its signature flavor from blue raspberry Powerade, given that it's one of the drink bases Sonic uses pretty frequently. But a Sonic employee revealed in a viral TikTok video that it comes from blue coconut syrup. Judging by other TikTok videos posted by Sonic employees, the blue coconut syrup is either made by Sonic or manufactured exclusively for the fast food chain because the bottle always appears unlabeled except for the words "blue coconut." Almost every copycat recipe, however, suggests it consists of coconut extract and blue food coloring.
In addition to the special syrup, Ocean Water also contains Sprite, supplementing the coconut flavor with fizziness and a slight lemony tang. On the other hand, the powdered drink mix gets its taste from a combination of other ingredients, including citric acid and other "natural and artificial flavors."
How to recreate Sonic Ocean Water
Contrary to what many copycat recipes suggest, there's more than just coconut extract and blue food coloring in the syrup responsible for Ocean Water's unique taste. An up-close look at a refill bottle shared to TikTok by another Sonic employee shows that the syrup also contains water and high fructose corn syrup, meaning the coconut flavor is diluted and sweetened.
The ingredients are simple enough to recreate Ocean Water at home, but if you don't want to bother making the syrup from scratch, you can also buy a similar version online. Just make sure not to accidentally get blue curacao or blue raspberry syrup because even though they're the same color as Ocean Water, they definitely won't taste the same. It's better to instead add your own blue food coloring to the undyed coconut syrup. Once you combine this with Sprite and ice, you'll have a drink that pretty closely resembles the flavor of Sonic's Ocean Water.