Chocolate Milk Hell

Okay... so the carbonated chocolate milk wasn't the best.

I was intensely curious about carbonated chocolate milk and made it my first experiment with the CO2 setup. I put about a half liter of 2% milk and some Hershey's syrup in my empty and clean 7-up-bottle-'o-pressurization and ran it up to about 40psi with the CO2 bottle. I shook it thoroughly to mix in the syrup and to get the carbonation kicked off right (agitation helps the CO2 to mix in), left it in the fridge, and went to bed.

When I went to try it the next day, I immediately discovered a few problems with this drink idea:

Issue #1) Chocolate doesn't stay in suspension in normal milk. Maybe this is why premade chocolate milk is always SOOO thick and bizarre when you buy it. When I opened the fridge, I found a bottle of slightly brown milk with a big layer of chocolate sediment under it. I was able to shake the bottle a bit and get it to redissolve, which might have contributed to issue #2.

Issue #2) Now I know why they don't carbonate liquids that are significantly thicker than water... there was a bit of a foam problem:

It was fine until I started letting off pressure hoping to open the bottle. I even let off the pressure very slowly hoping to avoid a flare-up like this, but apparently that's not enough when dealing with a relatively thick liquid. It took me about 10 minutes of letting it settle and then slowly letting off a bit more gas before I could even get the top off. I expect if I had yanked the top off quickly there would have been a very impressive mentos+coke-like fountain of chocolate milk foam.

Issue #3) Mmmmm... tastes like.... pecan shells?
To be fair to myself, I fully expected this to be a disgusting drink (hopefully I mentioned this in the last post). Due to the carbonic acid that forms when CO2 is mixed with water, I expected the milk to be curdled and foul. It did not curdle and it really wasn't THAT bad, but it definitely had a bitter and astringent quality. It tasted l ike I'd mixed in some of that bitter reddish wood that's inside pecan shells nestled around the tasty pecan nut. I hate when you eat a piece of that stuff by accident - and I pretty much hated my carbonated chocolate milk. Even my special makes-everything-better freezy cup couldn't save it:




Still, though, I had to do it in the name of science :-)

Next up (whenever I get around to it): Orange juice!
I expect OJ to carbonate pretty well and be fairly tasty. It may have some foaming problems, but it is naturally sweet enough that it should counteract the bitterness of the CH2O3 fairly well.