Buy Sodastream Bottles
The best performing and best looking soda maker is the SodaStream Art, which made the fizziest water with the easiest set up, and held carbonation easily over 24 hours. The SodaStream Aqua Fizz performed just as well as the Art, and was the only model tested that featured glass bottles. For people who want an alternative to SodaSteam, and the ability to carbonate more than just water, the Drinkmate is an excellent option.
buy sodastream bottles
Many people have found themselves buying the counter-top soda making kit called SodaStream. The only problem is, you are still overpaying for that product because you are stuck with one manufacturer for their CO2 Tanks, refillable bottles and any replacement parts that may be needed.
Now on to the good news, you can get a soda carbonating setup that does the exact same thing, but for less money upfront, and you will save ALOT of money in the long run not having to pay $30 a pop for CO2 refills and $10 a piece for their carbonating bottles.
What you need is a Keg Outlet Home Soda Carbonating System! These Carbonating Kits come with everything that you need to start carbonating your soda and water at home, and cost less upfront than the SodaStream. The kit comes with a Universal Soda Carbonating Cap, which fits onto a standard store bought 2L soda bottle (and also fits many other standard sized bottles). This means no paying for over priced bottles that only fit a specific machine. All you need to do is screw your carbonating cap onto any standard sized soda bottle and carbonate!
There is a premium SodaStream model called the Aqua Fizz that sells for $160 and uses glass carafes instead of plastic bottles. There's also an electric version of the Terra called the One Touch for $130. While I haven't tested either of those yet, I plan to and will update this review with my thoughts.
It takes 93 weeks or almost two years to pay back the investment. If you only drink a liter of sparkling water every two weeks, it would take over seven years! If you normally buy 2 liter bottles of water from Safeway, it will take much longer.
One neat thing about the SodaStream is you can add flavors to the carbonated water and make your own soda. Soda is expensive so surely you can save money this way! The bottles of flavor syrup cost $5 each and make 12 liters of soda. Add that to your carbonation costs, and you can make soda for $0.70 per liter. How does this compare to buying soda at the grocery store? We walked over to the grocery section of our local SF Walgreens to find out the Coca-Cola pricing per liter by container type:
Given that the average American consumes 170 liters of soda a year (whoa!), you can recoup your investment in a SodaStream Pure in about 2 years if you normally drink from 2 liter or 1.25 liter bottles at home. If you drink from cans or 16.9oz bottles at home, you can break even much faster.
A regular gas canister is 60L in volume and can produce 60 bottles of soda. Using 2 pumps as the recommended number for carbonating, it is safe to assume that 0.5L is equal to 1 pump. If you divide 60L by 0.5L (per pump), you get 120 pumps before your gas canister runs empty.
Kinds of fizzy water. You can carbonate your own water at home with A SodaStream machine (explained below), or purchase bottles of fizzy waters. Most of them are similar and all fall under the banner of "Sparkling Waters." There are sparkling waters that come from the ground naturally bubbly. Perrier and Pellegrino are two popular (albeit expensive) brands; their sparkling mineral waters come from specific locations in France and Italy. They naturally contain gas that produces bubbles. Seltzer water is widely available in stores and is plain water that has gas bubbles added to it. Club Soda is similar to seltzer but is high in sodium, so I choose to stay away from that for frequent drinking. Tonic has both sweeteners and bitter flavors added to it.
How my SodaStream works. I purchased the "cream of the crop" model that uses glass bottles. I generally prefer glass over plastic, but also like that these are dishwasher safe and look attractive on the table for serving. However, the more economical machines that use BPA-free plastic bottles, work well, too. Here's how mine works (pictured below)
In particular for us the soda cans were a staple and also a huge cost. But again, all of this varies based on whether or not you can deal with off-brand flavors, buy in bulk (especially at wholesale retailers like Sam's Club), and the convenience of the packaging (2-Liter bottles are a bit hard to pack in a lunchbox). When people see the SodaStream in stores their first thought is "that would probably save us money on soda by making our own" but there are a lot of extra costs to consider that make the math a bit harder. 1. The Device - I'm lucky that we didn't pay for our machine, but they go for $80-$100 in stores. That's the first investment people make, with the thinking that they'll probably save money in the long run.2. CO2 - The SodaStream needs carbon dioxide to make that water fizzy and when you buy a device it usually comes with your first carbonator. SodaStream makes proprietary tanks for their devices so you have to buy these tanks from them and their resellers. Buying spare tanks will run $30 and exchanging an empty for a full one is $15. These tanks make 60L of soda (They make a 130L version but it's harder to find in stores and only has a slight discount for the larger size, it's more about convenience of not refilling as often). We go through a tank in about 3-4 weeks.3. Syrup - SodaStream makes a large line of syrups for the device to flavor it and many are knockoffs of well known brands (they don't sell any official brand name versions). The flavors can be hit or miss but we've mostly been happy with them. A bottle is $5 and makes 12 liters of soda (33 cans). 041b061a72