My mom is bugging the shit out of me to come up with MORE things I want for Christmas! I’m perfectly happy with the new HP LaserJet (wireless) printer and about $150 of other smaller things she already has for me…but she insists on spending the same amount on all five kids and won’t take NO for an answer! :rolleyes:
I really think I would enjoy a SodaStream soda machine but there are at least six or seven different models and I can’t figure out what the heck is different from one to the next!?!? Most of them tend to fall in the $99-$129 range currently with rebates and sale prices.
Does anyone have one of these? If so, which one and do you use it regularly? Would you buy it again?
I use it all the time, but I don’t use it with their flavors. I like real cranberry (not the stuff in “Cranberry Juice” in stores) so I buy the concentrate, fizz up the water in SodaStream, and add the concentrate to taste. It foams up, so gotta do it carefully (SodaStream’s flavors don’t foam up when you add them nearly as much), but it comes out well.
I heard people complaining that the gas cylinders are pricey, and I also heard of people who hook up industrial CO2 cylinders up, so the gas costs are like 1/10th of what SodaStream’s replacements go for.
We just got one as a wedding present a couple of months ago. It’s one of the cheaper models I think, plastic cowling all round and plastic bottles.
We use it a lot, and have stopped buying soft drinks. You’ll need to get a few more bottles, one’s not enough, so there’s always cold water in the fridge to carbonate. The little CO2 cylinder doesn’t last that long (just over a month with our 1-2 bottle a day habit). I haven’t bothered working out the actual marginal cost of each litre of soft drink, but would suspect it to be in the order of 40-50 cents (that’s not counting the intial purchase).
We don’t add the flavouring to the bottles - just the individual glasses, so you’re not stuck with half full bottles of a flavour you don’t like. And while the Soda Stream flavours are pretty good, our favourites are other brand’s syrups. Hell on a hot day just straight cold soda water is pretty damn good.
Using Terr’s I found our model.. Weirdly the Amazon prices for all the extra bottles and such seem higher than what we pay here in New Zealand in a physical store (albeit when a sale was on). You really want to shop around.
Oh and the little cylinder I referred to above is not the tiny little starter one you see in the picture - I doubt you’d get more than six or seven fills out of that thing.
We have one but I’ve only had a few sips of the product so I’m really not able to give firsthand opinions. My husband and two sons, however, LOVE it. They both enjoy making it, the farting noise the thing makes being a big attraction.
We bought quite a few flavoring syrups not made by Soda Stream, plus have done some Internet searching on homemade recipes. Apparently if you do that you can actually save some money.
I have one too – I think it’s also Source. I like it for simply carbonating water, which I prefer over still water. My biggest complaint is that, with very few exceptions, all of the SodaStream flavors contain sucralose, even the non-diet varieties. Suffice it to say that sucralose does not agree with me, so I can’t use any of them.
There are some fruit flavored “essences” or something that come in little airplane liquor bottle-type containers and are not made with sucralose, but they are extremely subtle flavors, like a squirt of juice in seltzer water, not soda syrups. And I learned early on that trying to carbonate anything but water leads to an incredible, sticky mess.
Not to hijack, but I’d love to hear about other sources for syrups that are mentioned above.
I’ve got one, the Dynamo I beleive. You won’t save any money using their proprietary CO2 tanks, though. I bought this mod, which paid for itself quickly. A 24-oz CO2 tank costs $3.50 to refill at Sports Authority, compared to, what, $30 for the tanks SodaStream makes?
To the people who own and like their Sodastream: Do you feel your drinking water tastes good? I thought one of the pitfalls of the device would be using the water out of the faucet, which tastes pretty bad in my area. I once got a water filter that attached to the end of the faucet, and it worked pretty well to remove the chlorine taste. Unfortunately, I found it was hiding a fishy taste underneath it.
We have one of the basic ones, with the large tank installed, the syrups are generally “meh”, I’ve started trying my own mix ups though…
Lemon juice, lime juice, and a touch of sweetener makes a nice lemon/lime with a nice bite to it
Today, one of my friends at work brought in some real ginger mixes from Indonesia (she’s from there) and I’m going to make some REAL Ginger Ale with the ginger and brown sugar liquid mix she gave me…
Dammit! I have actively eliminated High Fructose Corn Syrup, Aspartame and Sucralose from my diet over the last few months. I use Stevia and (in limited amounts) Pure Cane Sugar (preferably RAW, unprocessed) and I also buy a soda at Whole Foods that is sweetened with Agave.
Not hijacking at all- I need to find some alternatives to the SodaStream syrups also!
The flavors that I was planning to buy were Cola, Cherry Cola, Ginger Ale and (my favorite) GRAPE Soda! I’ve I pay as much as $5.99 for a 4-pack of Organic Ginger Ale, Cola and (when I can find it) Grape Soda. So I will save some serious money making my own…so I’d love to learn about some alternatives!
The DaVinci Syrups look great! Which flavors have you tried?
The Peach sounds really good in addition to the ones I mentioned earlier. They have a line called “Fruit Innovations” that are specifically for cold beverages (such as sodas)…
Our tap water tastes fine to all of us so that’s what we use.
As for syrups, you can use pretty much anything. It’s just carbonated water after all. I often just add it to orange juice to water it down a bit and add a little fizz.
We got one for Christmas last year and have only used it a handful of times. The bottles are not dishwasher safe so our used bottles sit in the sink for a loooong time before any one washes them.
We also don’t care for the Soda Stream syrups. The initial cost, plus syrup, plus CO2 canisters means it would take a while before you’d actually save money.
I also feel like too much of the carbonation is lost when you add the syrup to the carbonated water.
You don’t know how lucky you are! I grew up in North Georgia and we had a spring-fed well which was the best tasting, most pure and ice cold water I’ve ever tasted!
Eventually, we hooked up to city water (wells aren’t cheap to maintain, especially if the pumps keep getting hit by lightning) and it wasn’t bad. As an adult, I was fortunate to live in areas of Atlanta with excellent water quality.
Then I decided to build a house next door to my parents, about 20 miles northwest of where I grew up. I am once again on well water and it is awful! It stinks, it tastes horrible and it streaks the toilets and sinks with iron stains…
So I buy gallons of Spring Water to drink and to make tea or cook with. I’ll also be using it in my SodaStream…
LOVE IT. Source. But I bought the adapter and use a paint gun cartridge to save money. Diet pink grapefuit and diet Dr Pete (Pepper, who are you fooling, Pibb?) are the flavored we like, but at 1/4 to 1/2 strength.
As I said, I don’t really drink it, but the fruit flavored ones have been used quite a bit by the others in my house. We got some flavors for coffee at the same time, which I use in my ice coffee in the summer, so that’s really the ones I have experience with. The brown sugar and white chocolate ones are fabulous! (I use the splenda ones, rather than sugar.)
Trust me I know - I’ve lived in places with horrible tap water too.
Seriously mix it in the glass. If I want cola and she wants grapefruit then that’s no problem at all. Even if we both want the same flavour we tend to differ on how strong we like it. If I think mines to weak I’ll add another dash of syrup. Or if her’s is too strong just take a sip and add more soda. The bottles only ever have water or carbonated water in them and carbonated water is pretty much a cleaning fluid anyway (hell when I part timed in a bar we used it as such at the end of the night, the little nozzles at the end of the bar taps went into glasses of soad water at the end of the night). Give the bottle a rinse when filling up and straight back in the fridge it goes.
Oh and the suggested mixings on all brands of syrups are insanely strong - I’ve seen suggested quantites of 1 to 6 which is undrinkable for me. Some flavours I mix to near homeopathic levels - barely covering the bottom of the glass in syrup. Designed to sell more product I guess.
Well, I made the REAL ginger ale with the ginger syrup, it’s a smoky, cloudy pale amber color, and the carbonation at four blasts is a lot of tiny champagne style bubbles
The flavor is subtle, but clean, no syrupy mouthfeel, the carbonation is pleasant and there is the subtle bite and heat of ginger that lingers almost as an aftertaste, if anything, it’s weaker than expected, I’ll put more syrup in on the next batch
The most amazing thing though, it doesn’t have any of that chemical/fakey taste that commercial ginger ale with HFCS or a synthetic sugar substitute has
I have 19 syrup packets left, so I need to make them last…
Hmm, wonder how it’d taste with a splash of lemon juice as well, next glass I’ll find out