I tried Dua Lipa’s Diet Coke so you don’t have to

British pop sensation Dua Lipa set the internet ablaze when she shared a TikTok video of her preferred Diet Coke concoction — Diet Coke with pickles, jalapeños and their respective juices.

I am no stranger to Diet Coke mix-ins. I’ve willingly covered everything from Oreo-flavored Coke Zero to protein Diet Coke . I also come up with zany Diet Coke combinations off the clock. My latest go-to is Diet Coke with grapefruit juice. For a while I was actually juicing grapefruits but that was taking way too long and was way too messy, so I quit and just started buying grapefruit juice instead.

The point is, I’m not afraid of adding a little bit of extra zing to my Diet Coke, and I figured the people who decry Dua Lipa’s mocktail are overreacting. I’ve even dabbled in the jalapeño flavoring, adding the jalapeño limeade from Trader Joe’s to a cold cola on occasion.

The pickle juice, however, was new to me. And I expected to like it because I’m a briny baby. If it’s pickled, it’s better, in my opinion. I’ve never met an olive, caper or pickled pepper that I didn’t like. Though I draw the line at those pickled eggs you can buy at truck stops, but that’s mostly because I can’t get over the visual of those viscous orbs floating in a sickly yellow liquid. I’d probably love them if they were presented to me in a blind taste test.

So I expected to like the pickley kick in my Diet Coke when I recreated Dua Lipa’s recipe in my own kitchen.

But, as it turns out, what makes pickles, olives, capers and pickled peppers so appealing is the sensation of biting into something that has been marinating in a brine. It’s like a little pop of umami that punctuates a meal.

The brine alone is missing that textural element and is, in my humble opinion, kind of one note. Especially when mixed with Diet Coke.

I could barely get even the slightest hint of jalapeño, even though I added equal parts jalapeño and pickle juice. The pickle juice totally overwhelmed the beverage. Even the Diet Coke.

What I hadn’t realized about pickle juice is that it’s actually a little bit sweet. So adding it to an artificially sweetened beverage was like putting sweet on sweet. And I’m not 7 years old, so that’s no longer appealing unless we’re talking about frosting on cake, in which case I do have the sensibilities of a 7-year-old, but we’re not talking about cake, we’re talking about Diet Coke.

It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t good. It did have the advantage of not looking revolting, unlike the protein Diet Coke I recently made, but after a few sips, I was done. And I will not be drinking it again any time soon.

But I wish Dua Lipa all the best. I hope her preferred Diet Coke continues to serve her the way mine serves me, usually around 2 p.m. when that caffeine really hits.