The taste of Coke

I tried contacting Coca Cola directly, but not sure if the email reached the correct people / company, so here goes.

I’ve been a big Coke drinker since I left school many years ago, averaging about 2L a day, sometimes more in summer. I do have rather fine taste and thus I don’t really like most of the drinks out there (like coffee, alcohol, etc.), but I have always liked my Coke (as long as it’s not flat).

From around 2005, every now and then I would get a “bad batch” that would either taste horribly disgusting or have an extremely nasty aftertaste. As the years went on, this was occurring more often (the taste and more specifically, the aftertaste kept getting worse) until somewhere in the 2010s, the situation had become so bad, that finding a drinkable batch was like winning the lottery. I eventually stopped drinking Coke altogether, but I would always buy a couple of cans / bottles per month just to check if there wasn’t a drinkable batch. When I find one, then I buy thousands of rands worth of Coke and I’d drink it over the following months. The last time that happened was towards the end of 2016 until now…

By some luck I recently found multiple drinkable batches in a row. First there was a drinkable batch (expiry date of 26 June), then another (batch expiring 17 August) and then the last one was the batch that expired on 14 September. I have exactly one and a half bottles of the 14 September batch left (less by the time you're reading this), but I would really like to keep drinking Coke. Clearly these last few batches are proof that you still know how to make Coke that tastes good like it used to (even with the reduced sugar recipe).

Is it perhaps possible to track through your quality control, the conditions under which the above batches were produced and advise of newer batches that are produced under the exact same conditions? I’ve tried random batches (plastic bottles) that expires in October, November, 27 December and 7 & 9 January and I haven’t been able to find another drinkable batch yet. I don’t know if it is the concentrate that is contaminated or the source of water that it is mixed with to produce the end result (however Coke is made), but obviously something is different between the good batches and your regular batches. Someone has pointed out that it might be the way it is stored, but that’s not likely. My last stock has been standing in the hot garage for over a month and are almost a month past the expiry date and they’re still fine.

If it is the water source that is bad (and not the concentrate), I would even consider getting a soda fountain like they have in the restaurants and mixing it myself with my own purified water, but I think that setup is somewhat expensive and I don’t want to gamble that money away on something that might not solve the issue.

So, any recommendations or is this the end of the road again and back to plain water for another few years?