Why Drinks From A Coke Freestyle Machine Always Taste Different
Coke Freestyle machines are renowned for their ability to deliver over 100 different flavors of Coca-Cola and other Coke products, from routine options like Cherry Coke to exotic combinations like Vanilla Seagram's Lemon-Lime Seltzer. But this remarkable versatility can come with a downside: the difficult-to-identify Coke Freestyle taste.
The reason that drinks from a Coke Freestyle machine can sometimes taste a little off is primarily because of the nozzle that dispenses the drink — as well as every other drink that comes out of the machine. With this mechanism, traces of the previous customer's Cherry Diet Coke could wind up in your Orange Vanilla Coke Zero.
Coke Freestyle machines have gone through several iterations since their 2009 debut, but they all have this same unusual design issue. One can mitigate this freestyle backwash effect by flushing the nozzle with plain water for a few seconds before making a drink selection. While it will help with that issue, drinks from a Coke Freestyle machine taste a little different for another reason too.
Coke Freestyle's flavor storage also affects taste
A typical soda (or pop) fountain uses bag-in-box soda syrups and combines them in the fountain with carbonated water to make the soda. A Coke Freestyle machine, however, uses what Coca-Cola calls ingredient cartridges to load the flavors into the machine, almost like putting dozens of ink cartridges into a giant printer. Unlike bag-in-box syrups, the soda flavors in a Coke Freestyle machine are kept separate from their respective sweeteners, which are a more traditional bag-in-box design within the machine. The soda flavoring, sweetener, and carbonated water are all combined in the machine to produce the requested drink.
Without the ingredient cartridges to reduce space requirements, a Coke Freestyle machine would be unfeasibly large and complicated, if it could even be built. But separating the flavor and sweetener and blending them on-order will taste slightly different from other Coke preparations, and no amount of nozzle flushing will change that. And as with all soda fountains, cleanliness is an underrated X factor.