🥤 How to make your own Mountain Dew

🥱 The Story That Never Ends

Jurors went home for the second night in a row without a verdict in the murder trial of Robert Telles, a former public official accused of murdering a reporter. At one point, the jury asked questions about video evidence. [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

• A nice guide to how jury deliberations work. [KTNV]

🚨 Baby Behind Bars

Lil Baby was arrested on the Strip near Desert Inn for having illegal possession of a firearm. TMZ says the rapper was at a nightclub inside Wynn Encore and according to his reps, has an out-of-state license to conceal and carry. [TMZ]

🎒 School Year Off to a Rough Start

Watch out for kids out there! In just the first 10 days of the Clark County school year, eight students walking to or from class were hit by cars and about 1,200 tickets were issued to drivers in school zones. [KVVU]

• Why are Vegas roads so dangerous? [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]

💸 Campaign Spending Picks Up

Former President Trump now has four campaign offices in Southern Nevada and a fifth in Northern Nevada. Vice President Harris has 14 offices across the state. Both parties have each spent about $10 million on Nevada campaign ads over the past four weeks. Yikes. [Nevada Independent]

• Harris and Nevada Democrats are planning to sharpen their focus on affordable housing during the campaign season. [KLAS]

So … why would you make your own soft drink at home when you can just buy one already made?

“A fresh soda tastes so much better than a soda you buy from the store,” according to Tomas Curras. “Most sodas you buy have been on the shelves for at least three months. The acids inside start to break down the oils, which changes the flavor.”

Curras is the founder of Vintage American Cocktails, a Las Vegas-based website for at-home bartenders with an iPhone app and YouTube channel. He discovered there was interest in not only cocktails, but the art of making sodas from scratch.

🩺 It’s What the Doctor Ordered

Curras found a lot of his classic soft drink recipes in old pharmaceutical manuals, since soda fountains were traditionally inside pharmacies. Some were medicinal in nature. “Chocolate was a good choice, because it masked the bitterness of the opiates,” he points out. Vintage sarsaparilla, for example, used sassafras oil, a component of drugs like MDMA 🥴 Contemporary recipes use star anise instead.

🧐 Ingredients Are Everything

Curras’ recipes are essentially the same as what the big corporations use. “The only difference is mine are not made to sit on shelves for months,” he says. “There’s no preservatives or artificial coloring in mine.”

🍸 Yes, Alcohol is Involved

If you see “natural flavors” on a product, it usually means a natural oil is emulsified in alcohol. However, the amount in the final serving is so small, it’s negligible, much like using vanilla extract in a dessert. For his sodas, Curras only uses cold-pressed or steam-distilled oils without fillers.

🪖 Cola Wars

The original Coca-Cola recipe was revealed on NPR during an episode of “This American Life.” The classic Pepsi recipe was listed in a bankruptcy filing. Is there really a difference between the two? “Their bases are almost identical,” Curras says. “Coke is a little more lemony and Pepsi is a little more cinnamony. The major difference is that, I believe, about 7 percent of Coke syrup is coca leaf extract.” The original recipe contained elements of cocaine, but that’s no longer the case. Still — “Coca leaf tastes like yerba mate mixed with green tea and bay leaf. It's got a very herbal, tea-like flavor to it.”