Mountain Dew From Scratch
please don’t poison yourself
Adding moonshine is optional!
I got a request for it, so let’s do it.
I grew up in Florida, where Mountain Dew is almost more common to drink than Coca-Cola. But for those who haven’t had it, this is a very intensely flavored orangy-citrus drink with a huge kick of caffeine. Apparently, the reason this stuff is so strongly flavored is due to the fact that it was originally designed as a mixer for moonshine!
So let’s get started.
Ingredients:
3 oranges
2 lemons
2 limes
1/2 cup granulated sugar
400mg caffeine (optional)
soda water
preparing The fruit
This recipe is actually really simple; all we need are three oranges, two lemons, and two limes.
However, instead of just using the juice from the fruits, we are going to use a pretty awesome technique to help extract some of the flavor from the rinds.
To do this, start by peeling the oranges. Using a vegetable peeler here would work pretty well - I seemed to have lost mine in the move, so I used a knife instead. When peeling the citrus, try and remove as little of the white pithy part as possible (although having some doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal).
Once you have completed this step for all of the oranges, repeat with the lemons and the limes.
Now, depending on the type of limes you have, the skin may be much thinner than the lemons or oranges - this was certainly the case for me. So I just opted to zest the limes with a box grater, which accomplished the task just as well.
Once we have zested the lime it’s time to create our oleo sacrum.
Making the oleo sacrum
Add ½ cup of sugar to the citrus, and give it a good mix. We really want to make sure every citrus peel is fully coated in sugar.
As the citrus sits in the sugar, a very potent oil contained in the peel will start to extract. This oil is a concentrated version of the citrus and will give us that sharp flavor of Mountain dew.
We want to let that sit for anywhere from 2 hours up to a day - the longer it sits, the more oil we can expect to extract, and the more flavorful our mountain dew will end up.
While that sits, we can move on to juicing the citrus. Simply juice the lemons, limes, and oranges, collect the juice into a bowl, and place it into the fridge.
A few hours later, you should see a sugary oily mix has accumulated at the bottom of the bowl with the citrus peel and sugar, and let me tell you - this stuff is super flavorful and delicious. We want to grab every last drop of this stuff that we can.
Initially, I just sieved the contents of the bowl. But then I had the bright idea of using the citrus juice to rinse off the peels. Mix up the citrus juice with the oleo sacrum, and then sieve it all to separate the liquid from the peels, and bam! We have our mountain dew base…. Well sorta.
Add the caffeine
To me, Mountain Dew wouldn’t be Mountain Dew without its jarring amount of caffeine. Now, I cannot reiterate enough that this step is completely optional, you really only need to add this if you want.
So, to provide the caffeine kick to the syrup, I crushed some caffeine tablets. *A word of caution: you really, really have to be careful here - you could poison yourself or others with too much caffeine.
The amount of Mountain Dew syrup that we have made will give about 8-10 servings of the drink, so I added 400 milligrams of caffeine. This corresponds to 40-50 mg of caffeine per serving - on par with a can of Mountain Dew. 400 mg of caffeine is the recommended daily maximum, ensuring you really can’t poison yourself with this batch. Please be very careful with this caffeine; it’s one hell of a drug.
Ok, mix the caffeine in and give it a good stir. It should dissolve pretty well.
Unfortunately, I discovered after the fact that there was a stupid gel coating on these particular caffeine tablets, so I just sieved it to get rid of that.
Make the mountain dew!
We are now ready to make our mountain dew. Just pour 1-1.5 tbsp’s of the syrup into a glass and add in some soda water, and that’s it!
This stuff will definitely put some pep in your step. Feel free to enjoy it as it was intended, with a little moonshine.
Alright, that’s it for this week, I will see you guys next week, bai!
Links:
Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker: https://amzn.to/3xMn228
Ice Cream Container: https://amzn.to/3etQd2q
Kraft Mac n Cheese: https://amzn.to/3imfI6I
Mixing Bowls: https://amzn.to/3yZbEjA\
Thermometer: https://amzn.to/3rhzt3j
Ice Cream Scooper: https://amzn.to/3hMghrE
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