Food - Drink
Why Does Canned Soda Taste Different Than Fountain?
By CHRIS SANDS
While some prefer the flavor in cans to that in bottles, others are die-hard believers in fountain drinks, even going so far as to choose chain restaurants according to which ones offer their favorite fountain sodas. But how exactly are the two so different?
For starters, most people who drink canned sodas don't pour them over ice, unlike fountain sodas, thus enjoying a more concentrated flavor with more sweetness. However, aluminum is more porous than bottles or plastic, allowing more carbonation to escape, which makes for a flatter-drink taste.
Fountain sodas, on the other hand, are customizable in a way that mass-produced cans never can be. For instance, McDonald's pre-chills its syrups before they go into the fountain dispenser, filters all its water, and even tweaks the ratio between the two to allow for the presence of melting ice.