How To Keep Homemade Dirty Soda From Curdling

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Dirty soda has been all the rage in recent years. It originated in Utah, which has a large Mormon population that drinks dirty soda as an alternative to alcohol, coffee, and tea, which are strictly prohibited by their religion. While you can get it ready-made at chains like Swig and Sonic, you can also make dirty soda yourself at home, since most recipes are pretty straightforward. For instance, Sonic's dirty sodas simply add sweet cream, coconut syrup, and lime syrup to soda, which you could easily recreate yourself. However, when making dirty soda, you may run into an unexpected problem: curdling.

One Reddit user posted several images of dirty sodas with unpleasant-looking curdled cream in them, expressing that the same thing had happened to a drink they ordered. As users in the comments expressed, this is completely harmless, but it can make the soda look unappealing and affect the texture of the drink (much like cake batter curdling, which happens due to a temperature mistake). 

Luckily, though, there's an easy way to ensure you avoid curdling altogether. All you need to do is regulate the amount of creamer you use in the soda. You should try adding around 1/4 cup of creamer to a full can of soda, as an overabundance of creamer tends to curdle. Too much cream will also affect the flavor of the drink more generally, so it's always a good idea to temper the amount you use regardless.

Dirty soda typically curdles because of the interaction between its ingredients. The dairy in the cream and the citric acid in the soda have very different acidity levels, causing them to not mix very well and separate when poured together. This can keep the flavors from mixing together as fully as you'd like with a dirty soda, which is why many people understandably seek to avoid it. Reducing the amount of cream obviously reduces this interaction, because there's less that needs to be mixed in with the citric acid. Given all this, another way to help prevent curdling is to change the type of creamer you use. TikToker @girly.pop.mqt, who runs a mobile soda shop in Marquette, Michigan, conducted a test where they added Torani syrup and three different kinds of cream to sodas. 

Ultimately, they discovered that coconut creamer and Violife dairy-free creamer produced no curdling, while regular half-and-half did. Essentially, this means that a coconut-based or otherwise dairy-free creamer may curdle less, and you can use more of it for a stronger, sweeter flavor too. Coconut creamer is a particularly popular choice, as it's considered one of the best dairy-free creamers. However, if you're not a huge fan of the coconut taste, other dairy-free creamers like Violife's lentil-based vanilla creamer (which you can find at Walmart) will also work well and produce a more aesthetically-pleasing dirty soda.