Cocktails with Cola
Cola is a sweet, carbonated soft drink with a spiced, caramel-brown profile, usually caffeinated.
Substitutes for Cola
Dr Pepper or root beer pours at the same measure and holds a rum-and-cola together — sweeter and less sharp, but recognizably the same kind of drink. The flavor is a spice blend nobody outside the companies knows, so nothing reproduces it. What a substitute can cover is the other three jobs — gas, sugar and acidity — and any sweet carbonated drink covers them while making a different drink.
Often confused with
Cherry cola and flavored colas
A fruit flavoring over the same base makes them sweeter and softer on the spice. The drink loses the dry cola bite that was doing the balancing. They change a classic build more than the label promises, and a Cuba Libre made on one reads like a soft drink with rum in it.
Mexican cola and cane-sugar colas
Sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn syrup, which reads cleaner and slightly less cloying, and a useful upgrade in a two-ingredient drink where the mixer is most of the glass.
Storage
Sealed and cold, and poured from a bottle opened recently. Gas leaves an opened big bottle overnight, and flat cola in a highball is sweet brown water with no lift at all. Small bottles beat a large one for a busy bar.
