What is in the can
One active ingredient, and the tab that lets it out.
Caffeine, from black tea. Fruit, for the taste and the little sugar there is. Water with gas in it. Colour from carrots, safflower and spirulina. No taurine, no vitamin blend, no sweeteners, no added sugar.
Caffeine
From the same leaf as the çay.
The caffeine in every can is extracted from black tea — the plant that grows on the hills above Rize and ends up in every glass on every kiosk counter in the country.
It is the same molecule whatever it comes from; we chose tea because it is ours, and because it lets us count in glasses of çay, which is how everybody here already thinks about it. A glass is about 20 mg. The 22:00 can is four glasses; the 05:00 can is one and a half.
Sugar
Three to four grams, all of it from the fruit.
An ordinary energy drink carries more than twenty grams of added sugar in a can this size. Ours has none added and no sweetener to fake it, so it tastes of the fruit and is not very sweet.
| can | fruit | sugars | kcal | caffeine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:00 Vişne | sour cherry juice from concentrate (15 %) | 4.1 g | 18 | 80 mg |
| 01:00 Limon & Zencefil | white grape juice from concentrate (10 %), lemon juice (5 %) | 4.0 g | 17 | 50 mg |
| 03:00 Kara Dut | black mulberry juice from concentrate (15 %) | 3.4 g | 15 | 40 mg |
| 05:00 Nane & Misket Limonu | apple juice from concentrate (10 %), lime juice (5 %) | 2.7 g | 12 | 30 mg |
| 07:00 Kayısı & Ihlamur | apricot purée (15 %), linden blossom infusion (5 %) | 3.6 g | 16 | 0 mg |
The ring-pull
A lever, a rivet and a score line.
Lift the ring and the tab turns about the rivet; its nose presses on a panel scored into the lid. At about eight degrees the score lets go — that is the crack you hear — and the panel folds in under the nose while the gas leaves.
The ring-pull is Ermal Fraze's, from the early 1960s; the tab that stays on the can instead of ending up on the pavement is Daniel Cudzik's, from 1975. The stiffening bead round the opening is why the lid does not buckle when you push.
The can
Why the numbers are silver.
The hour on every can is not printed. It is the aluminium itself, left bare where the ink stops, so it catches the light when the can turns and there is less ink on the can to begin with.
250 ml slim cans, 53 mm across and 134 mm tall, about ten grams of aluminium each. Aluminium goes back into cans without losing anything; put it in the metal bin.