Carbonated suanmeitang — 1990s Beijing summer street soda. Smoky-plum acid with fizz, served ice-cold.
Beibingyang (北冰洋, est. 1936) began bottling soda in 1956 (after merging with Shanghai Watson's), with sour-plum among its original four flavors — sweet orange, mandarin, sour-plum and lemon; shelved after the 1994 Pepsi joint venture took control, then revived in 2011 — roughly a fifteen-year hiatus. The orange-glass-bottle relaunch is now a Beijing summer signal.
Beibingyang 248ml glass bottle is non-deposit but locals return them — the bottle alone trades on Xianyu for ¥3-5 empty. Hebei Riben Coca-Cola tried a sour-plum cola in 2018 and pulled it within a year. The Beibingyang factory in Yizhuang produces 600 million bottles per summer.
Deep tea-amber, fizz visible against the glass. Smokier and more acidic than canned suanmeitang because the high CO₂ pressure carries the wumei phenols straight to the nose. Sweet level lower than cola. Drunk straight from the 248ml glass bottle, no ice.
Concentrated suanmeitang base (wumei + hawthorn + licorice + osmanthus decoction) cut with carbonated water at 4-5 atm in a counter-pressure filler. The acid-CO₂ balance is the trick — too much sugar muddies the smoke, too little fizz drops it back to flat suanmeitang.
Variations
Beibingyang 北冰洋 (Beijing benchmark, glass bottle), Arctic Ocean export PET version (sweeter), Hankow Er Chang (汉口二厂) Wuhan-style craft sour-plum soda, homemade soda-stream version with Tongren Tang concentrate, and the Sichuan dried-tangerine-peel hybrid.
On the Palate
Where Sour Plum Soda sits in the Chinese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 1How it's made
3 steps · 1 min active + 1 hour 32 min waiting
- 190 min
Brew suanmeitang base (smoked plum, hawthorn, licorice) and chill (see #2079).
- 22 min
Mix 100 ml chilled suanmeitang with 200 ml chilled soda water in a tall glass.
Watch outMix roughly one part chilled syrup to two parts soda — too heavy on the base buries the smoky plum, too light and it drops back to flat suanmeitang.
- 31 min
Add ice; stir once gently to preserve fizz.
Watch outAdd ice and give it one gentle turn only — over-stirring beats the fizz flat.
