Make Sparkling Water or Soda at Home with SodaStream – Save Money and Help The Environment
I’m completely addicted to sparkling water, and so is my whole family. We go through quarts of the bubbly stuff every day, and believe me it was getting expensive! Even when we stepped down from imported to store brands, we were easily spending $30 per month, not to mention lugging it home from the grocery store.
So last summer I learned about SodaStream, and we had to give it a try. Bottom line: I’ve never been happier with a product I’ve bought for the house. Check out the video above – the machine is incredibly easy to use. You just fill up one of the included, reusable quart bottles with water, screw it into the machine, and depress a button a few times to release the CO2. In a few seconds you have a quart of delicious, refreshing sparkling water. By pumping more or less you can adjust the carbonation level to your own preference.
Ok, I can’t help it, I’m just in love with this thing. It makes a terrific gift, by the way!
Here are 10 things I like about it:
- Saving money: You’ll spend less than $100 upfront, but then each canister of CO2 makes 110 quarts of water. If you were paying $2 each, you’ll be ahead of the game in just a couple of months and never look back. I figure we save at least $25 each month.
- Bottled water is an environmental disaster. Even if you use glass bottles, you have a huge amount of energy used to transport it from around the world to your grocery store and then home to your house.
- Carting home lots of quarts of water from the grocery store is a pain in the neck! They are heavy and take up lots of room.
- The heavy-duty plastic bottles are BPA free and you can reuse them for up to 3 years.
- You’ll never run out. You can make more sparkling water in just a few moments.
- The customer service is terrific. When you need supplies, you just place an order on the website and put the old canister outside. A few days later, new ones magically appear. Tip: there is free shipping if you get two at a time.
- Soda Stream also offers flavorings (like lemon essence), and soda packets if you want to make cola or lemon-lime etc. beverages at home. I’m not a big soft-drink drinker, but I do like to add a little bit of fruit juice sometimes. Pomegranate is especially delicious.
- The machine is easy to use. Installing a new canister just takes a minute, and you only have to do it every few months (depending on your usage level of course), and making bottles of waters takes literally seconds.
- The unit is compact and looks nice on your counter.
- And it doesn’t use any electricity at all! It is completely driven by the compressed gas.
Just get one. You can thank me later :)!
When I first wrote this article, the only option for exchanging the empty gas cylinders was by mail, which I’ve always done and it has always been seamless and trouble-free. Nowadays you can also exchange them at many major retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, etc.
We have one of these! We love it. My kids make some of the sodas with it and so I don’t have to buy all of those cans or return them at the grocery store! And I love to make sparkling water with it and add a little Pom or something to it.
ooh! I love sparkling water, this would be perfect for making italian sodas!
Hello!
I just love sparkling water! I really should use this great machine!
I’ve been thinking of getting this! Thanks for the review.
I love it! I wish more restaurants would make their own.
It’s now on my b-day list!
I love this too! I’ve had mine for about a year and a half and it is so much better than bottled as I like some big fizz. Also, I think I was spending as much on seltzer as your family, and it’s just me and the cat. And he doesn’t drink seltzer. Beyond the expense, I also kept filling up the recycle and kept thinking “There is no way I will ever buy enough polar fleece in my lifetime to recycle all of this plastic.”
My only problem: altho I too I am in Seattle and in the delivery area, I cannot get them to pick up the bottles for the last 3-4 deliveries. I now have 7 empties. The folks on the phone are very nice but no one can seem to get this to work now when it used to work great. Actually calling them again now…
AH! Michael, you’re a man after my own appetite! I have wanted this for a long time, but I don’t drink nearly enough to make an excuse viable enough to purchase it! I will just stay at home and think about you and the other people that actually bought one, while I drink my boring tap water.
Ahhh!!! I too drink tons of sparkling water and carry a rather guilty conscience due to all of the problems with the bottles. I saw the ad for this on your site the other day and actually clicked on it. I think I may be sold. Thank you for the testimonial!
I’m having the same pick-up problem! Last person I talked to said they’d add a note to my account so I don’t get charged for it…but the empty is still sitting on my front porch. STILL– we LOVE our Soda maker. 🙂
That’s annoying! I just had a pickup/dropoff yesterday and it went
perfectly. I wonder why they aren’t getting your empties.
I love your enthusiasm because that’s exactly how I felt when I got mine! I was telling everyone about it. Someone also told me how the purity of the water used for Talking Rain (my former sparkling source) is questionable. Love the post!
Could this also work to revive a flat bottle of soda?
I think it would work, but you’d have to put it in the special bottles, and
to keep the unit clean you really want the carbonator nozzle to only touch
water. So maybe not the ideal use for it.
Michael
Great Product
saves money and you have the convenience of not having to drive down to the store to buy soda.
That looks awesome! I love seltzer, but lately to save money have been buying the plain store brand and adding lime juice for flavor, this would be one step even better…as soon as I recover from today’s sneaker purchase I’ll look into it! 🙂
Sounds great, but I’m concerned about the pick-up comments. Do you mean there are bottles connected to using this device that must be picked up? Please explain before I purchase. Thanks. (Love the fleece/recycling comment.
There are CO2 (carbon dioxide gas) canisters that provide the carbonation. You can exchange them either by mail-order (which is what I do, never had a problem) or nowadays you can exchange them at many major retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, etc.
How much do the C02 canisters cost? Last time I look they were pricey.
They cost about $30 for an exchange, which sounds like a lot until you realize that each one makes about 110 liters (120 quarts) of soda. So that is around $0.27 cents per liter! A lot less than what you’ll pay for sparkling water at the store.
The sodastream is the greatest thing ever. If you are on a tight budget and dont want to spend 19.95 on the refill at the big bix store, just go to a paintball store. Most of them refill CO2. Ours refills it for 5 dollars a piece.