Ace K Sweetener, Acesulfame Potassium Powder, 200x Sweeter Than Sugar Zero Calorie, Kosher, Semi Natural, Granular Sweetener (12oz / 340g)

I forget how I came upon the knowledge that sucralose and acefulsame K, when added together, negate each others after tastes. It takes them from a 8/10 (when sampling individually RAW) to a mere 2/10. Granted, the taste is absolutely not like sugar, but it does cancel out bitter tastes well, like in coffee & tea. The other advantage to this in raw form is that there are no additives, so if you need a 100% sugar free option, this is it!

This is good if Ace-k is what you need. If you’re shopping for something that tastes like sugar, you might find pure aspartame a better choice. I deducted one star for taste and another for country of origin (China). I’m not a fan of digesting manufactured foods from other countries. This is definitely concentrated and likely pure as stated. A small amount on the tip of a teaspoon is enough make your coffee as sweet as 4 sugar packets. It’s definitely more economical than packaged sweeteners, which have fillers and other sweeteners mixed in. That said, the pure Ace-k may be too bitter without cutting it with aspartame. I’ve been on a quest to find a viable sweetener that does not have a bitter aftertaste. I tried both name brand sweeteners, and the underlying substances where possible. The list includes Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, saccharin, Monk Fruit, Stevia, swerve, erythritol, aspartame and acesulfame potassium (“Ace-k”) Many of the name brands have fillers and flavors added to them. In the case of some retail packaged sweeteners, they contain a mixture of Ace-k, aspartame and dextrose. The closest I could get to real sugar was swerve and Equal. Swerve was very expensive and did numbers to my stomach. Equal was better but it still had a bitter aftertaste. Lesser than the others, but it was still there. I decided to try the two sweeteners in Equal separately. The Ace-k was very bitter and worse than Equal. The aspartame turned out to be almost identical to sugar with zero bitterness at all.

This is a very effective sweetener. However, the amount you need to sweeten a cup of tea or coffee is vanishingly small, and it is way too easy to use too much. It tastes terrible if you put too much in, and the aftertaste from too much can linger for an annoyingly long time, but if you get just the right concentration, it's a very good alternative to sugar. I guess that's why you see it listed as an ingredient in so many mainstream diet sodas.

Just my opinion; but this stuff tastes awful. After one tiny sample, I threw the entire bag away.

Tastes pure! If you are using this in a DIY soda, don't use too much, and use it in combination with another sweetener. I recommend this ratio: "131 mg aspartame + 15 mg ace-k" per 355 mL of water. That's the same ratio commercial diet colas use.

My go-to with this is to dissolve it in water, then mix the dilute AceK half and half with liquid sucralose and put it in a dropper bottle. This is an extremely strong sweetener, so doing it this way is helpful to give you the right amount of control over how much sweetness you add. Add more water to weaken it if you find you need to make finer adjustments for level of sweetness. It's the best sweetening with the least aftertaste I have yet discovered. Buying it in this form is also super cost effective; one bag of this lasts me at least six months when I prepare it this way, and I use it multiple times a day every day. The liquid sucralose is also very affordable. It's way cheaper and produces a lot less waste than buying packets of sweetener.

I REALLY wanted to like this. After learning Coke Zero uses this to make the soda taste so close to the real thing with no sugar, I had to try it to help cut back on my sugar intake. Unfortunately, every way I tried it just added too much bitter after taste, the reason I generally shy away from sugar substitutes in the first place. I've tried mixing it with sucrose as others suggested to help alleviate the aftertaste, or at least lessen it, but it's still way too much for me. The positives are, if you can tolerate the aftertaste it is extremely sweet and very little goes a long long way.

Since so little info is provided here, I went directly to the seller's website for more, and found something confusing. According to them, 24g of their Ace-K is supposed to be equivalent to 1 cup of sugar. Since one cup of sugar is 225g, that would make this product only (225/24)=9.4x sweeter than sugar. If that were true, then that would mean this product is actually only 5% Ace-K, with the other 95% being an unspecified filler. And consequently this product wouldn't be a good value at all. So I emailed them. You'd think they'd want to clear up something like that, right? But a week goes by, and no response. I took a chance and purchased anyway. Fortunately, it seems to be 100% Ace-K (or very close to it). Where I'd normally put 4 Tbsp. of sugar in my large coffee mug, 1/200th of that (3/32 tsp.) made it just about as sweet. Also on their website is the claim that it has "no funky after taste". And here they claim it has a "clean, sweet flavor without an odd after-taste". But look up Ace-K almost anywhere else, and you'll find these claims are false. For example, Wikipedia says "Like saccharin, it has a slightly bitter aftertaste, especially at high concentrations...Acesulfame K is often blended with other sweeteners (usually sucralose or aspartame). These blends are reputed...to give a more sucrose-like taste whereby each sweetener masks the other's aftertaste..." Looking at the ingredient list of commercial products (diet sodas, sugar-free cookies and candies, and so on) I have yet to see any that use Ace-K alone. It's always in combination with another sweetener. Indeed, my quick test with the coffee did taste a bit funky. Not horrible, though there was a clearly noticeable aftertaste that I'd describe as metallic. But using half as much Ace-K, then making up the difference with sucralose, greatly reduced the aftertaste as expected - and tasted better than either sweetener alone. In my experience, blends containing three or more well-chosen sweeteners can be darn near impossible to distinguish from real sugar; and although I haven't tried it yet, I believe Ace-K would fit well into such a blend. In conclusion, you'll probably like this product if you're willing to experiment, blend, and figure out how to best use it. But, you'll probably hate it if you planned on using it alone based on the seller's false claims; or worse, follow their bogus measurements!