Summer’s here! And that means hydration, people. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!

Isn’t that annoying? That’s what my Intermittent Fasting app is texting at me every hour on the hour.

This column has a convoluted, meandering genesis and it has nothing to with cooking. Just creative hydration. Here’s a timeline of my latest Byzantine brain spasm:

About five years ago, I first encountered Coke Freestyle self-serve machines at Five Guys, and the ability to mix flavors at the touch of a touchscreen just knocked me out. (I still think Coke should add a wildcard button and let the machine mix a beverage at random. If you love the customized beverage, it gives you a code you can access at any Freestyle machine on the planet. Just a thought.)

In the summer of 2019, I got a great deal on a Yeti bottle and I started carrying it with me everywhere. I don’t go anywhere without it. It’s my comfort animal, especially in the summertime.

And then COVID hit. One of the victims of the supply chain shortages and product line shrinkages was my beloved Peach Fresca. The only place I could find it locally was at Super Stop & Shop in Old Saybrook until the Hartford Coke bottling plant dropped it from their production lineup during the quarantine.

So I’ve been alternating Coke Zero, Fresca, Diet Canada Dry and umpteen flavors of Polar Flavored Seltzers through my Yeti. And that’s when I hit on a weird discovery. I had left a little Polar-flavored water in my bottle with some ice and dumped diet soda in on top of it. And lo, it was good. Like, really good.

But the surprise was not just the flavor, but how little Polar-flavored water it took to really change the flavor of the soda. I had thought of Polar waters as “lightly infused” with flavor. Which turned my thinking around to this: Polar isn’t just a flavored seltzer water; it’s an unsweetened soda. Heavy flavoring, no sweetener.

My first official remix was Fresca with Polar’s Georgia Peach water. After working on the ratio of soda to water, I narrowed it down to 16 oz of diet soda to 1 oz of the peach seltzer. And there it was, my excellent replacement for Peach Fresca. As a bonus, adding a shot of flavored seltzer to any soda dilutes the sweetness, which makes it even more refreshing on a hot day.

As I broadened the testing to other 16 flavors of Polar seltzers, there were a few standouts: Ginger Lime Mule, Pineapple Pomelo, Pink Apple & Lemon, Toasted Coconut and the 2023 limited edition Seaside Watermelon Punch.

I’ve been doing these remixes daily for the last couple of months and decided to test it this week on my co-workers at The Day. I sent out an email to my editrix (aka Trixie), and asked her if I could conduct a blind taste test of “new diet sodas from a local bottler.” She agreed and I had my lousy research assistant (Chat GPT) write up a questionnaire for a soda taste test. I quickly got five volunteers from the staff plus Trixie to sample the beverages. I also offered them a free lunch because I wanted soften the blow in case they thought all the sodas tasted like swill. Here are the results, ranked in order of the highest individual scores:

Fresca + Polar Toasted Coconut: High score 100, Low score 30, Average score 70. Best comment: “I would buy this as a mixer with vodka...”. Worst comment: “Like I chewed a baby aspirin.”

Diet Canada Dry + Polar Pineapple Pomelo: High score 95, Low score 40, Average score 66. Best comment: “Just right, perfect level of sweetness.” Worst comment: “Not a fan of ginger ale unless I’m sick.”

Fresca + Polar Summertime Watermelon Punch: High score 90, Low score 70, Average score 78. Best comment: “sweet, citrusy, tropical.” Worst comment: “the taste of that drink before a colonoscopy.”

Coke Zero + Polar Georgia Peach: High score 50, Low score 20, Average score 35. Best comment: none. Worst comment: “...like a flat cola you’d get in a dive bar.”

I was relieved to find that the flavors I liked the most were the ones with the highest individual scores. I selected the seltzer flavors based on the complementary pairing and also the uniqueness. There aren’t any bestselling coconut, pineapple or watermelon sodas in the U.S. market. But if you can make a blended beverage that suggests something tropical or summery, you might be onto something. The coconut seltzer especially surprised me. I never drink it by itself, but mixed with Fresca, it smoothed out the high citrusy notes and gave it a creamy quality. One tester even said it was “too sweet” even though it was slightly watered down with seltzer.

Going into this taste test, I already knew the Coke Zero remix was a dog. Why did I include it? Mostly because I needed a baseline for grading the other flavors. Give ’em something iffy and the others taste better by comparison. Why was it such a pooch? Because you don’t screw around with Coke. Coke is a completely engineered flavor and it’s embedded in the international psyche. The Coca Cola company keeps introducing new remixed variations of Classic Coke, but we all know they will disappear from the shelves in short order. I lived through the New Coke scare of the 1980s. You mess with Coca-Cola, you get slapped.

Through all of this testing, there was one thing nagging me. Last year, I took one of the blue Polar bottle carriers (see photo) from the display at a local supermarket. I told the cashier I would just tote my bottles to the car with it and I’d bring it back. But when I got it home, it proved to be way too convenient to store my Polars. I was tired of knocking them over like bowling pins and tripping over them in the pantry. Hell, I was raised by hippies and knew people who furnished entire houses in the 70s with stolen milk crates. When it came time to ask Lisbet Crowley, press spokesperson for Polar, for a response on the taste test, I begged for amnesty. In her ultimate wisdom, she absolved me of my crime. I can now live a guilt-free life with zero calories and no net carbs.

Two cups of your favorite diet soda + 2 Tbsp of any flavor Polar flavored seltzer. Add ice and commence hydration. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!

Rich Swanson is a local cook who has had numerous wins in nationally sponsored recipe contests. He is also the layout specialist here at The Day.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Rich Swanson can be reached at TheSurlyTable@gmail.com