Quite Curious

emember how health experts proposed a tax on soda as a way to fix America’s obesity problem? Sure, mass-produced soda is terrible for health, but does it have to be THAT bad? The answer is no, it doesn’t.

So forget all that crap that’s in soda, and make your own! The only things needed to make soda are 1) carbonated water 2) a sweetner 3) flavor - which can all be natural instead of man made. Soda is way too sweet to begin with. Way, waaaay too sweet. It’s probably the whole reason why we rarely drink soda in the first place, and if we do, it’s always that expensive stuff once in a while you get at Whole Foods. And while soda will never be nutritional or beneficial in the first place, it’s really nice to have that delicious, all-natural soda once in a while. (Or sparking water).

So I bought Mike a water carbonation kit for Christmas. He loves it! I took photos of what it’s like to use it.

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Making Homemade Soda: Part 2 »
SodaStream website»

Installing our new SodaStream machine

I bought the Genesis Seltzer Starter Kit in red, from SodaStream, and it came with a lot more than I thought it was going to. I was expecting just the machine and CO2 bottle, but it came with a huge collection of sample soda flavors. Some were diet soda flavors (blech), the others were ok…not exactly what we’re looking for when making our “craft sodas”, but fun to play with anyway.

Mike unpacking his present

Mike screwing the bottle to the machine. Just for reference, the bottle has a custom thread, so you can’t just carbonate your flat Coke from the bottle. But it’s probably better not to carbonate anything other than water anyway, to avoid gunking up the nozzle.

The starter kit came with two plastic bottles, one with a plastic lid and bottom, and one with a metal lid and bottom (which is a little nicer). From the photos the bottles look like soft plastic, but they’re actually hard, durable plastic.

It came with one CO2 canister, which can carbonate up to 60 liters of water. (In case you’re wondering, 1 liter = 1.05668821 US quarts). The carbonators are part of an entire system, where you can exchange the canisters to be filled up. We’re probably going to go with the most cost effective option, the 4x exchange, which at $50 for 4 exchanges, comes down to $0.20 a liter, which for us is about $0.06 per glass since we get about 3 glasses from one liter.

The CO2 canister can be see from the bottom of the machine. What’s cool is that the machine doesn’t need to be plugged in! It uses no electricity, the “machine” is really just a device to hold the CO2 cannister and bottle in place, which makes carbonating water super easy. I like how it doesn’t use electricity, it would be fun to have it outdoors for a party.

The CO2 canister nozzle.

Carbonating the Water

Here we go! All you have to push a button to add CO2 to the water. It takes about 3 pushes to carbonate the water to how we like it, and it stays carbonate in the fridge for a few days. The beauty of carbonating your own drinks is that if it goes flat it’s really no big deal, you just carbonate (your now cold) water. Cool, huh?

Oh, and isn’t the design gorgeous? It was the best looking one, and the red color is awesome.

Check it out! Carbonated seltzer from filtered tap water. It’s practically free. (FYI, we have a Brita filter).

Like I said, the water stays carbonated in the fridge for a few days, but if it goes flat, it’s easily carbonated again. The instructions say to add the flavor to the bottle and shake it up, but we decided it’s probably better to only keep carbonated water in the bottle to keep it cleaner, and to avoid having the bottle smell or taste like other flavors. The bottles are a great size too, they sit well on the shelf. It’s also nice to keep cold, uncarbonated water in the bottle so that it’s cold already when you carbonate it.

Adding Flavor

The machine came with a bunch of flavors we weren’t wild about, but was fun to play with. Each of the samples is enough for one bottle of carbonated water, although Mike doesn’t like his soda sweet, so he only uses about 2/3 of the syrup.

SodaStream says that there’s no high-fructose corn syrup in regular flavors or aspartame in diet flavors…thank god. That’s the whole reason why I got the SodaStream - to avoid putting bad stuff in our bodies. But…the sweetner used in the sample packs is Splenda, which as we all know, tastes disgusting.

These three glass vials are not really “syrups” as they don’t have any sugar. They’re for making flavored water, such as Vitamin Water.

Mike is adding the Cola flavor to carbonated water.

So…we decided to experiment. Mike is adding a little bit of vanilla extract to get that cream soda flavor.

Adding honey for a little sweetness. Healthier and tastier than sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.

Making Our Sodas

This post got so long, I made a second one instead! See what I learned about flavoring soda.

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SodaStream website »