inka kola zero
if a Diet Coke is a fridge cig, what's an IKZ?
On the last episode of…
Fiona and I embarked on our trip from Chicago to Lima to kick off Honeymonth! The city was covered in thick humid fog the night that we came in. So thick was the fog that we couldn’t tell if it was truly fine rain, Stephen King’s greatest novella or simply niebla. It reminded us of the fog that often covers San Francisco (which the twitter dubbed Karl for some reason) and felt dewy and fresh. The Mario Vargas Llosa books that we’ve been reading had made it sound like the city was quite rainy and when we arrived, it seemed to live up to that image we had in our minds.
As the sun rose, we found that Lima was pleasantly warm and upon further reading it is one of the driest capital cities in the world, surprisingly drier than Cairo, Egypt. What we had witnessed was the winter garúa, or a combination of fog, mist and a fine rain, which seems to provide enough to keep the Costa Verde…green. We are working this week, so we mainly hunkered down but we had a beautiful dinner at the Muelle de la Rosa Nautica, watching surfers and el sol drift under the clouds far off on the horizon. Pisco sours, scallops, corvina (sea bass) tiraditos (a Japanese-influenced ceviche) and rice dishes. We had a great sobremesa about our next steps in life and how much we are excited to support one another.
Recap
Total Miles: 13,087 mi
Miles Traveled: 4,133 mi
Current City: Cusco, Peru
Best thing I’ve consumed
The last few months, I have been on an absolute tear of Coke Zero. I haven’t had Coke Heavy for many years, but all of a sudden a new dog graced the cooler that I had to try. I always wanted to like Diet Coke, but the flavor was not for me. It wasn’t my Coke. My Coke always had HFSC and a red can and tasted the way it was supposed to in my mind’s eye, while Diet Coke missed the soul I was looking for. It’s clearly not the sweetener I learned because both Coke Zero’s and DC’s use aspartame (though CZ adds acesulfame potassium, referred to as Ace-K to round out the aspartame’s bitter aftertaste). I think there is logic to DC’s use of citric acid, to bring brightness, in place of its conjugate base potassium citrate, which works in the opposite direction.
Aaaaanyway, my eyes have been reopened to the world of soda, and one of my favorite’s has always been INKA KOLA (queue sick guitar rift).
Inka Kola came to the world in 1935 by a British immigrant to Lima, who used the prized hierbaluisa (lemon verbena) to create a soda that is truly unique. I have loved it since I first tried it over a decade ago at a pretty solid Peruvian spot near my hometown. It tasted like bubblegum and cream soda had a baby, and it cloying sweetness paired well with the plate of roast chicken, rice and french fries (why choose one carb?). As a younger guy, I didn’t care much about the 40g of sugar in a can, but I don’t operate in that world anymore. So when I saw Inka Kola Zero, I knew there was another food scientist out there doing God’s work.
Daily Gratitude
Today, I’m grateful that the Coca-Cola Company got their ass kicked in Peru by a little start-up called Inka Kola. So much so, that they acquired 50% of Inka Kola as a defensive strategy to be able to turn a profit in Peru since their own products could not outsell a local product tied to national identity. This joint venture gave Inka Kola more resources to churn out a zero-calorie version of their soda, which has made me almost weep tears of joy today.