Erik won the good husband award this Valentine’s Day. He surprised me with my very own soda making machine. This is not a SodaStream–it’s better. It’s an industrial strength CO2 tank topped with sturdy dials and valves and whatnot, all sourced from the local homebrew shop. He’s going to do a how-to post soon (tomorrow maybe?) on how to put together the parts, and how to use it. So hold on for those details! Right now, I’m just going to gush.
I’ve been wanting something like this for a long time, because I use a lot of sparkling water. For various health reasons I drink very little caffeine and almost no alcohol and I try to avoid sugary drinks as well, so that leaves me with a total drinks menu of water, herbal teas, sparkling water and for big thrills, sparkling waters with add-ins like fruit juice, shrubs, a bit of homemade syrup, etc. I go through quite a lot of sparkling water on a weekly basis.
Now, as a rule I try not to drink stuff out of plastic bottles. Mineral waters still come in glass, but club soda is pretty much always in plastic these days. I’ve had to relax the plastic rule just to have club soda to work with, because fruit juices and delicate flavors don’t blend well with mineral waters. This gift frees me from those plastic bottles– Hallelujah!— and will reduce our recycling load overall.
The set up isn’t cheap — we’ll talk about the price of the parts in the next post. I’m the first to admit it won’t make sense for every household, but it is actually a very worthwhile investment for us.
The other great thing about this device is that it will carbonate just about anything you can cram into a bottle. You’re not limited to just charging water and then adding flavor to it. The mind reels with the possibilities. My first projects are going to be carbonating jamaica tea, then a barely sweet white sage lemonade, and maybe some rosemary infused water. Erik suggested carbonating a bottle of terrible Riesling he’s got in the fridge, but I don’t think that will make it any better.
I also really like that this set up is so solid and simple. No extra parts. No plastic shell. No proprietary bottles. No fiddly buttons. Nothing to break which can’t be easily replaced.
And all I got him a lousy card.
Curious cats providing scale. See the tube? You connect that blue thing at the end of the tube to your water bottle and then open the valve. A minute later you have sparkling water. Easy as pie.