Welcome to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey. 

This series has largely been steeped in alcohol. This has the benefit of keeping me from delirium tremens in the name of work but also excludes the non-drinkers of the world.

Fortunately, thanks to Olivia Rodrigo and Joseph Smith, an alternative blew up this over the past month that allowed me to expense $20 worth of Coffee-Mate flavored creamers. “Dirty sodas” have long been a staple across Utah, a state whose majority Mormon population is prohibited from hot caffeinated beverages like coffee or tea. Beginning in 2012, however, the Church of Latter Day Saints — Smith’s outfit — decreed caffeinated cold beverages were fine, leading to a slow soda boom in the region.

So outlets across the state have jumped into the craft soda game. Or, specifically, a game in which they craft their own sodas by adding syrups and cream to layer flavors into a pre-existing base (Coca-Cola, Sprite, etc). The whole adventure is kinda like decorating a prefabricated, modular home.

Anyway, chains have popped up throughout the Beehive State with rejected tech start-up names like Swig, Sodalicious and Fiiz and are thriving because, you know, no hot coffee.

Ms. Rodrigo posted about the beverage back in December and it recently went viral on TikTok. While it feels new, it’s been trending in some form since 2016. If you’re reading this from Utah or any other location with a heavy Mormon population, you’re probably feeling real hipster-y about the whole subject, having known about it before it was cool. Congrats on that; maybe send a few recipes my way? Because soon you will realize I have only a very basic grasp on proper dirty soda architecture.

This is the combination that started it all. For me, specifically, since it was the one that blew up on TikTok. For everyone else it was probably Mountain Dew, six pumps of coconut syrup, and some limes or a Sprite mixed with maraschino cherries and French vanilla creamer because otherwise that’s just a Shirley Temple.

The base for me on all these was Coke Zero Sugar (which I’m just gonna refer to as Coke Zero because that’s how we all know it, right? Like how for five years after the NCAA named it the FCS we were all still calling it I-AA football?) and sugar free Coffee-Mate, because otherwise I’d be taking in 500+ calories per day in dirty sodas alone and it’s tank top season. Next comes the creamer topper (roughly 10 parts cola to one part dairy-adjacent goo). For each drink, I started with a simple soda/creamer mix to start, then added fruits that either:

a) were part of popular mixes, or

b) sounded good to my refined palate, which also defaults to pizza bagels for dinner more often than any grown adult ever should.

First off, Coffee-Mate’s coconut offering tastes exactly like sunscreen smells. My first instinct is to slather this on my body rather than drink it, which seems like a problem.

Secondly, Coffee-Mate and Coke Zero don’t seem to want to mix all that well. The creamer sinks to the bottom, creating a brown gradient that suggests the back half of this drink is going to taste very differently than the start. Stirring it barely helps. All in all, a great way to kick off this experiment.

The first impression of the dirty soda is … Coffee-Mate. It tastes like Coffee-Mate. I don’t think I added an egregious amount — basically just a splash on top — but the Coke has been washed away and all I’m getting is hollow SPF. I’m gonna add the recommended lime now and see if that helps.

Yes, surprisingly enough, the lime makes A BIG difference. Even if it seems to mix with the dairy to create a weird, granulated texture to the liquid itself. There isn’t enough milk in Coffee-Mate to provide the entire cement mixer shot experience of curdled cream, but the citrus mutes the overwhelming coconut flavor, brings out more of the soda, and makes the entire beverage roughly 100 percent more palatable.

After hating the first few sips, I’m very much into the full recipe. It’s pina colada cola, which makes me want to do a very un-Mormon thing and add rum to it.

And I will, once it’s not 9 am.

Anyway, the original layout lives up to the hype. There isn’t enough caffeine to fully replace my morning coffee, but it’s a solid, 2pm supplement. The lime-induced separation of the dairy creamer as it sits is a bit concerning, however.

Round two came in the form of chocolate caramel Coffee-Mate, which happened to be the next open creamer in my fridge. This one seemed to have friendlier relations with Coke Zero, as it mixed uniformly into the glass to give me a big, iced-coffee looking concoction.

Again, the Coffee-Mate takes center stage with its chocolate, but there’s more of a Coke balance here. The carbonation in the last round was mostly washed out by Coconut Creme; in this case it snaps back at the end for a crisp-ness that provides a decidedly un-coffee feeling. There’s an acidic tang that cuts through each sip that the previous drink was sorely missing without fresh-squeezed lime.

Despite the solid review, I decided to mess with it anyway. Living in Wisconsin means perpetually keeping maraschino cherries in the fridge as a prime ingredient in brandy sweet old fashioneds. I added a couple of those along with a teaspoon or two of the sugary juice, muddled them up the best I could, and dug back in.

The result was … fine. The cherries added a little extra flavor but ultimately didn’t make much of a difference. It’s a good drink that stayed that way after adding another ingredient. If you really wanted to be fancy about it you could sneak a couple Luxardo cherries in there, but I’m not trying to drink a $4 Coke at home.

It’s a creamy vanilla Coke — a little more potent than the canned versions the brand sells every so often. It reminds me of being a kid and my mom making a special, syrup-heavy drink for me when I’d visit her during her shifts at Friendly’s. The cream provides a little extra thickness and sweetness, but it’s mostly sort of forgettable.

So, let’s do that thing where I add citrus to a dairy drink and see if I can finish it before it curdles.

Oh hell yeah. The creamsicle taste I was hoping for actually worked out. The end result is rich and fruity and still a little crisp thanks to the carbonation of the cola. The orange doesn’t create the same, unsettling separation reaction the lime did with the dairy, either. Most importantly, it’s a balanced mix where no one side is claiming dominance over the other (see Coconut Creme above).

Also, I hate pulp in my orange juice but I got a few bits through my straw with this one and they were awesome. I wonder how this will fare with a little vodka in it but, again, this is replacing my morning coffee.

(but yeah, look out for a future BOTW where I booze these up at an appropriate hour)

Well, this one is weird. The cream doesn’t really come through like it does in any of the other flavors. It’s thinner and it already tastes like there’s a little lingering citrus involved. This mix is disappointingly boring; I’d be happier with a glass of unadulterated Coke Zero instead.

But hey, we’ve got already Italian cream and citrus notes. Let’s see if we cant make this a caffeinated, booze-free limoncello.

Welp, the granulated curdling has returned. That’s going to linger in my brain with every sip I take, raising concerns about the potential hurricane picking up strength in my stomach.

Buuuuut,  it made the coconut drink significantly better, so I’m keeping an open mind. The citrus does help — the lemon and cream work together and the Coke underneath plays with the acid introduced. The lesson here appears to be that if you’re making a dirty soda and it stinks, just throw a fresh wedge of some kind of fruit in there and it’ll fix things. It also suggests the reason why Utah’s shops serve these in opaque, styrofoam cups isn’t for insulation but to keep you from seeing just how gross your beverage looks.

All in all, Italian Sweet Creme and lemon is the worst of the bunch, but it’s not bad. Given the amount of dumb crap I put in my coffee just to change things up, I can absolutely respect the hustle of adding a slight twist to your caffeine delivery mechanism.

If I’m ranking them, I’d go:

How’d they do as a morning eye-opener? Not great.

I had two after one cup of coffee on Day 1 and didn’t feel jittery. I had two without coffee on Day 2 and have a lingering headache that might be from caffeine withdrawal or simply the fact I have a child in preschool and getting sick is now a bi-weekly affair. As a pure, wake-me-up-I’m-dying option, dirty sodas pale in comparison to hot coffee — but that’s also coming from someone who’s used to coffee and has a fairly high caffeine tolerance.

So I get dirty sodas’ place in the Utah landscape. And they’d make fun kiddie cocktails because, again, they’re basically just jacked-up Shirley Temples. But if you’re trying to go from coffee to sodas, you’re probably gonna be disappointed.

But if you’re gonna mix them with booze, well, I’m intrigued.

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