Build Your Drink
What a dirty soda is, and how to make one
A cold soda poured over ice, with a flavoured cream laid on top and left there. That is the whole of it, and the cream is the part that makes it dirty.
Built at a counter
The format came out of Utah around 2010, where a large Latter-day Saint population avoids alcohol, coffee and tea and a cold drinks counter filled the gap. What goes on top there is usually coconut cream or a bought-in creamer rather than dairy, and that is a fix rather than a shortcut: milk splits in an acidic drink and a cola is acidic, so a plant fat gives the swirl without the curdle and holds at room temperature while it does it.
Built by you
Here the problem it solves barely arises. Pasture-raised dairy is in every fridge in the country and cream whips in a minute, so the top can be cream rather than a stand-in for it. You choose the can and you make it yourself, so nothing is settled in advance, and a flavour drop carries no sugar or sweetener at all, which leaves the sweetness where you can still reach it.
- Fill a tall glass with ice and pour the soda in fresh, leaving room under the rim.
- Jerk it: one drop per 150 ml, or a spoon of flavoured syrup, stirred through.
- Make it dirty: lay a flavoured cream or a foam on top, and leave it there.
The two moves are separate, and a glass can have one without the other. A drop or a syrup jerks a drink, which is what it tastes of. A cream or a foam on top is what makes it dirty. A plain cola under a cream is dirty and never jerked; a long black with a caramel drop in it is jerked and never dirty.
Six to start from
Every one of these is a dirty soda: a soda with a flavoured cream on top. Each opens the Basedrop Builder with the base, the flavour and the top already picked, and it counts the drops for whatever glass you are holding. Change anything from there.
- Cola + Cherry Cherry cream on top Open in the builder
- Cola + Cream Cream on top Open in the builder
- Creaming soda + Hazelnut Cream on top Open in the builder
- Orange soda + Cream Cherry cream on top Open in the builder
- Lemonade + Custard Custard cream on top Open in the builder
- Ginger beer + Cookie Caramel cream on top Open in the builder
The method, and the cream
How to make a dirty soda has the pour, the headroom and why the cream holds. How to make dirty soda creams and foams has the four ways to make the top, and covers almond, oat and soy milks, ranked by which holds a foam longest. How to use the drops is the flavour half, and the soda jerk story is where the format came from.