Okay, full disclosure, I love soda and will drink it regularly most every day. I also drink a lot of soda water. I have heard that it is possible to make my own drinks at home, using a little machine. I also saw some neat ideas online about building a carbonation contraption that does the same as the little machine for a “fraction of the cost.” I think both of these are really good ideas, but hate to front the money for a machine and the materials if it really isn’t worth doing.
Does anyone here have experience making their own soda? What about carbonated water? Is it tasty (in general)? Does it really cost any less in the long run?
Also, space is a premium in my house right now, especially in the kitchen. I am hoping that a few remodel projects we are working on now will pay off, and I will have a larger storage pantry off my dining room, but I think I could make room for this if I became more motivated about it. It just drives me nuts that for even a cheap 12 pack of carbonated water is over 2 dollars, and for bottles it is usually around $4 for 6. I like the bottles much better, because I can re-close them, but man, that is expensive.
I look forward to the straight dope on home drink creation…
A lot of Home Brew stores carry syrups for making root beer and cola using dry ice. I have never made it, but I have drank homemade root beer that was dry ice carbonated and it was tasty.
When Soda Stream started to advertise last year, it gave both my wife and I a giggle.
We had a Soda Stream machine back when we were firsts married, in the mid 1970s.
The Soda was OK, but there were some issues.
[ol]
[li]You couldn’t make the soda very far ahead as it would go flat in a day or so[/li][li]If you had a bunch of friends over, making drinks for everyone took a while[/li][li]After several months, getting replacement CO2 cartridges was difficult.[/li][li]You can store a bunch of soda in the space that the machine, bottles and several flavors of syrup take up.[/li][/ol]
I don’t know much about carbonating machines, but the procedure I have generally been interested has been just putting the flavoring and sugar in a 2 or 3-liter plastic soda bottle with a bit of yeast. That’s for things like root beer or ginger beer. If you just want carbonated water, you probably don’t want a yeasty water with nothing covering the taste.
Looking at the stuff on amazon, it seems that the machine would aim for a liter at a time, which is fine. I could definitely go through a liter of carbonated water per day. I’ve thought about checking out a homebrew store, but I live in the middle on nowhere, so that isn’t going to be for a month or so. I wanted to buy a machine, but they seem kind of scammy. Also, I don’t ever have people over, so that isn’t a big deal, and I doubt my wife would be up for it (I made my own bread a few times, but she continues to buy naan when she wants it instead of me making it…hah). My son doesn’t drink a lot of carbonated drinks, or usually just takes a drink or two of ours when we have drinks around, so making a lot quickly isn’t an issue. It would be more like tea. I get up to run, come in, and by the time I get out of the shower, my water is ready, then I make the tea and get dressed. After that, I go to work. Making a liter of carbonated water then would seem like a reasonable action (I give myself from 5:00-7:45 in the mornings before I leave).
I have a SodaStream and I love it. I don’t use the flavorings that they sell for it because they’re very artificial tasting. I make pop with frozen fruit juice concentrates, or you could use the syrups they sell for flavoring espresso drinks and Italian sodas. You can make soda, Italian sodas, New York Egg Creams, and fancy sodas with lavender or rosemary and sparkling water with a little lemonade concentrate. The CO2 cartridges are simple to replace; you just pay online and leave them on the porch and new ones are delivered in their place. If it’s cola or Sprite you’re trying to replace, you won’t get the same thing, but if you’ll be happy with sparkling juices and soda water, you’ll love it.
Get thee to a home brew store. What you need is a system to carbonate serious amounts of soda. They have everything you need. Here is a real simple system.
Hint: The best root beer we ever made used tow parts root beer extract to one part cream soda extract.
I found a couple - it seems like anywhere from 40-80 is normal for those, and then I would need the CO2 cartridges. These look suspiciously like the same type of thing we rammed into pellet guns when I was a kid, and later paintball guns before we got a larger tank. I wish I had the room to just get a large CO2 tank and rig up something that a regular bar would have, but I won’t have that unless we buy a house with a basement and that won’t happen any time soon. This may be the way to go, if each little charge canister can do a liter, I’d go through about 1 a day - then I could buy them up from somewhere like Amazon, with 100 for $40.
I have a SodaClub/SodaStream machine at home and another at the office. I drink about 2L of carbonated water a day, and have been very satisfied. I replace the cartridges about every 8 months, so it’s cheaper than buying two-liter bottles at the supermarket and requires a lot less lugging. SodaClub has recently been pushing into the retail market again through department stores and Bed Bath & Beyond—but with a new model that uses smaller-capacity cartridges.
The soda syphons are good for a few dozen squirts. That’s fine for a party or two, but not for consumption with every meal.
I have investigated ways to put a big CO2 cylinder under my sink and have a soda gun, like you find in bars. The problem is that the water needs to be cold to hold the gas. That’s why soda fountains run the tubes through a “cold plate” under the ice bin. Some notes here.
The flavorings that come from SodaClub weren’t impressive, but you could experiment with Italian soda syrup or even get a friendly bar or restaurant owner to procure a box of syrup for your favorite commercial soft drink.
That seems like it would be worth it to buy the SodaClub stuff if it would last that long at that high usage. I don’t mind to buy a used one either, if that wouldn’t have a large effect on it. Most stuff I buy is used, honestly. I don’t care as much for the flavorings, as I figure if I’m making it myself I may find a combination of something I like, and I do know a few restaurant owners and a few people at our local(ish) soda distribution places. More than that, though, I actually dislike fountain drinks of the soda I usually like. I’m honestly sort of picky about it. I like pepsi and ski in a glass bottle, or coke in a can, but not pepsi in a can or coke in a bottle. The link you provided though is pretty awesome. It would be pretty cool to have a full fountain drink machine in the house, just because it would be cool. I think it would get less use than I would ever think, but still…
I once worked at a place that had a Coke machine on the breakroom counter. It was about the size of two four slice toasters stacked atop each other. It dispensed 12 ounces for a dime or something. First the soda, then the syrup. I always let half the soda dump in the tray to get an “espresso” cola.
I would buy one of those if they were readily available. I assume that it would cost about the same per serving as a 2 liter but would not go flat.
From what I’ve read, the soda syphons lose their carbonation if you don’t use the entire canister within a few hours.