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Sodastream: Fantastic soda maker, terrible syrups
The Sodastream home soda maker will save you money and help keep plastic bottles out of the waste stream — just stay away from the company's Splenda-infused syrups.
Tue, Jun 22 2010 at 11:45 PM
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Photo: Sodastream USA
I admit to drinking a lot of soda in my younger days. I never really picked up the coffee-drinking habit in college, so I would rely on the enamel-eating scourge of Appalachia Mountain Dew for my late-night caffeine fixes. Thankfully my mainstream soda days are mostly over, though I still enjoy a Reed's Ginger Beer or a local Maine Root soda every now and then.
A friend turned me on to the Sodastream home soda machine, and I sent them an e-mail asking for a review unit. My biggest gripe with the soda most of us drink is the high-fructose corn syrups and other preservatives they contain, so I thought a Sodastream might be a good way to get my occasional soda fix without having to spend $2 on a natural soda at Whole Foods or having to ingest a bunch of yellow #5 or sodium benzoate.
The Sodastream PR people got back to me quickly and arranged for a review unit to be shipped to me along with a full selection of their soda syrups. I received the package last week and have been having a blast (of CO2) making my own fizzy sugar waters.
Carbon dioxide is amazingly tasty stuff.
Unfortunately, the Sodastream soda syrups are not. In fact I have a hard time even drinking a soda made with the official Sodastream syrups. Why? Blame Splenda, or to be more specific, blame the Sodastream taste engineers who decided to use the artificial sweetener in the entire line of syrups. This obviously comes down to personal preferences, but I find that Splenda, along with all the other artificial sweeteners, taste terrible. There's just something wrong about how they taste.
Look, soda is not healthy and never will be. It's just fizzy sugar water. Even the most all-natural soda found in the crunchiest natural foods store is a big bottle of empty calories. Yeah, it tastes great, but it will never be anything other than a diversion from the Healthy Eating Express. I really wish Sodastream would just embrace that fact and cut out the Splenda. Give us real soda syrups made with real sugar. Maybe keep the Splenda line for the people who don't mind its chemically cloying flavor, but give the rest of us some good old-fashioned sugared syrup.
Luckily, it's really easy to make your own syrups. You can follow any number of recipes for old-fashioned soda syrups or just simply mix lemon or lime juice with some maple syrup right before adding the freshly carbonated water. Orange juice is a nice additive, too; the right ratio of water to juice will make you swear that you're drinking an Orangina.
The Penguin soda machine itself is a beautifully engineered piece of kitchenware. It's easy to use, requires no cleanup, and looks stylish on the countertop. It's fun to operate and gives you store-quality soda in well under a minute. The Penguin is Sodastream's only model with glass carafes; the others use BPA-free plastic. Some of the company's other models allow you to see the CO2 being injected into the water, but the Penguin, by dint of its design, keeps that process hidden away.
All Sodastream makers use a standard CO2 bottle that's available online and at select kitchen stores. (10/28/12 Update: Read about how to save money refilling your CO2 tanks using the SodaMod).
If you drink soda, you should look into getting a Penguin. Sodastream says it costs about $.20 to gas up a liter of water, the same bottle bought at the store can costs five to 10 times that much. The cost of buying those bottles of soda adds up over the course of a year, and for some soda drinkers it wouldn't take terribly long for their savings to offset the ~$200 price for a Penguin Starter Kit. When you factor in all the plastic bottles you'd be saving, you start to see how, if you do drink soda, a Sodastream is the greenest choice available. It's not green, but it definitely is greener.
If you don't want to drop $200 on a soda maker, you can find other Sodastream models for less than half that price. They also make a version designed specifically for the green market — their Eco model is made using recycled plastic and packaged with greener packaging.
Which just makes me wonder: why don't they do the same with all their models? Why not package everything they sell in more eco-friendly packaging? Why not use recycled plastic whenever possible in all their products?
You can follow Sodastream USA on Twitter and read the corporate blog, Ms. Fizz.
UPDATE: I've been told by Sodastream that they have an "all-natural" line of syrups coming out that will be sweetened with simple sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup). I'm looking forward to trying them.
Again, in full disclosure, Sodastream sent me a free Penguin and a collection of flavors for review.
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i agree with your review. the syrups that come with it are gross and unhealthy. i would much rather have had real sugar. we bought passion fruit in a jar with natural syrup and we added that and it was great. you can just get real fruit and cook it down with sugar and add that to your water. so you could use anything...cherries, peaches, plums. so far i love this thing, just minus the gross syrup they give with it.
Excellent review. I've been thinking about a Sodastream, but I can't get past the proprietary CO2 either. I feel shafted if it costs me more than $4 to fill a 20oz paintball tank. Let alone $25-30 for a 17oz SodaStream cylinder.
I'm a fan of natural, and I've found that homemadesodaexpert.blogspot.com has some good recipes from real fruits. There's a recipe for an attempt at homemade mountain dew, caffeine optional.
I use paintball tanks with my sodastream. I purchased a adapter that lets me use my 20 oz. tanks. It's called sodamod Check out the link. Give the page a chance it loads slow. http://www.criticalpaintball.com/SodaMod-p/sodastream-sodamod.htm
Here is a video on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqV0NS2Vn_k
I too did not like the proprietary CO2 thing, but I found that you can buy an adapter to go on your paintball tanks and get them filled and the same place that the paintball tanks are filled. Better yet, I bought an adapter for the large 50lb CO2 tank and now I fill my own for almost free per serving.
I hadn't thought about the sodium content. Thanks for the information about the CO2 canister. I tend to go without using it much because I know I am toward the end of a canister and don't have interest in dealing with the lousy parking lot to get the refills at the store near us. How big is a 50lb canister?
The syrup alone costs more to make 2 liters than a two liter bottle (including deposit) sells for a Walmart! This is obviously aimed at the mathematically challenged!
If you have been adding a whole bottle of syrup to 2 liters of water you must have a very strong stomach. You only add a small amount to the water...it makes MANY liters ( I bought 5 flavors when I bought my machine and still have most of them left 4months later.
I'm not math challenged but you obviously can't read the instructions.
The $5 bottle of syrup makes, for me, close to 40 of the half liter bottles. that's 10 2-liters. Show me where you can find a 2-liter of good soda for $0.50.
I have yet to make any "good" soda with this machine.
I HATE splenda, and it sucks they made all the "regular" sodas with this sweetener.
I love my Sodastream Fizz machine, but so far ANY syrup, even the ones with regular sugar, give me diarrhea, still trying to figure out why. I can't drink or eat anything with aspartame or Splenda, so I bought the regular Pink Grapefruit syrup.
Read the ingredients. The "regular" flavors include Sucralose (Splenda). I just got the machine yesterday, and I think I will be looking for other syrups.
pour a little bit of the orange in the "red bull" flavor...its awesome!
My boyfriend got a SodaStream for his birthday and it's great for him because he's diabetic and drinks diet soda all the time. I just tried the regular lemon-lime and it's terrible! I HATE artificial sweeteners and I couldn't believe they did that! Thanks for the tips on soda syrup recipes and the fact that they plan on making regular syrups without Splenda!
The non-Splenda syrups are available in my area. After writing off their syrups, I was pleased to see them, tried them, and they're very comparable in my opinion to traditional sodas.
I got a Soda Stream for Xmas along with sample packs. I tried a couple of them and thought, "euuw artificial sweetener"! So I looked on the ingredients and sure enough, there was artificial sweetener. Not enough to be a low calorie beverage, yet without the taste of the full-sugar equivalent. Why do they do this?? I have it without any syrups now, just plain. I know they do a 'natural' range but it's hard to find the full range in my country.
My wife is addicted to Diet Coke...we bought a Soda Stream a year or two ago and love it. We don't buy the syrups - the point for us was to save money and to find something healthier to drink. We use a ratio of about a 1/4 glass of juice and the rest fizzy water - quite a tasty and healthful drink. Freshly squeezed lime or lemon as a garnish is great! Certainly a lot better than Diet Coke...
My family agrees that the syrups are no good. But a few other complaints about the SodaStream system: the bottles can't be sterilized properly, You can't put them in a dishwasher, or use in hot water, and regular bottle mouths don't fit in the system. The proper measurements for the syrups can't be easily located, or are specified in the manual to make sure you use the correct amount of syrup with the carbonated water.
I use mio to make flavored water with my soda stream.
Instead of the Soda Stream, I got the Isi Twist and Sparkle, it carbonates any beverage except dairy and is only around 50 dollars. You can choose any beverage and not just aspartame sweetened ones :)
We also could not stand Soda Streams syrups. Absolutely horrible tasting. We have bought a gallon of RC Cola syrup and a Mt Dew knock off and are mixing our own now. Took us a couple of times to get the mix down correctly but wow what a different taste. As good as what you can buy in the store
http://www.athomesoda.com/syrup.htm
Try these guys. This is where we got the syrup at. They sell name brands and generic brands. We bought the 1 gallon containers and then transfered them to 1 gallon milk jugs
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