Sodastream Home Soda Maker

If you want to do soda, try some Italian soda syrups instead of the stuff that SodaStream sells. Much better, IMHO.

Agreed. Their Coke Zero ripoff is pretty decent, though.

Thanks for the heads up on that, Shmtur. I didn't realize they had another diet cola variety. I'll definitely give it a shot.

I made the Red Bull clone (Energy) and it tastes exactly like Red Bull. The Orange MyWater flavor isn't bad either.

Anyone ever tried the Tonic?

I have tried the tonic, yes, and it works fine as a mixer. Only I can't find it anywhere that sells it locally anymore.

It's nice that flavors are available online, but the shipping really kills it, at least to an Amazon Prime member like myself that isn't used to paying for shipping per transaction. Bed Bath & Beyond and the SodaStream site both have a great online selection but depending on how many flavors you buy, the shipping is at least $6.99. It would be nice if Sodasteam offered free shipping for orders over $50 or something like that.

Speaking of Amazon Prime, you can get a decent selection at Amazon through both Amazon and third parties, but the base price of the of flavors is at least one to dollars higher than it is in store. I wonder if this is somehow forced on Amazon by Sodastream to either encourage people to buy directly from them and/or to make sure people go to their brick and mortar retail partners for supplies and flavors. I suppose it's possible that Amazon itself ups the price of the flavors to cover shipping costs of the heavy liquid.

I got two bottles of the Coke Zero knockoff syrup last year for about $2.50 apiece at my local kitchen store. Still working through the first bottle.

Great deal!

Has anyone ever done a carbonator exchange in-store? The Staples by my house apparently has exchange carbonators. Do you just go in with the empty, grab an exchange carbonator off the shelf and then go up to the register and give the cashier the old while paying for the new? I'm a ways off from needing a new one, but I'd like to know how it works.

Something like that. I do it at Bed Bath and Beyond though, because you can use those 20% off or $5 off certificates on the exchange price, which brings it down from $14.99 to either $9.99 or $13.49 depending on what coupon you have.

That's how I remember it working. Something like that, anyway.

That's how it works here in Australia.

According to this page: http://www.sodastreamusa.com/CarbonatorInfo.aspx it's the same in the US.

Yeah, I exchange mine at BB&B all the time. Definitely preferable to doing it through the mail. They keep the exchange canisters at the customer service desk, so just bring your empties there and they will set you up.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, guys. Good tip to go through BB&B. I know my wife has a thousand of those 20% coupons.

I would, but sadly they still don't stock the 130L tanks at any stores.

A little vanilla makes the SodaStream flavors better as well.

I stocked up on a variety of diet soda flavors this weekend. The Cola Free (Coke Zero) flavor is better than the regular Diet Cola, but still not very good at all. The Diet Fountain Mist (Diet Mountain Dew) is okay, though it tastes nothing like Diet Mountain Dew. I find that the more successful diet flavors are those that have some inherent tartness to them. The Diet Orange and Diet Ruby Red Grapefruit are actually good, especially the later. The Diet Ginger Ale, on the other hand, while not offensive like the Diet Cola, is bland.

I decided to try Diet Tonic as well. I typically buy regular lime tonic, so I can't say whether the Soda Stream diet tonic is better or worse than other diet tonics, but I did not enjoy it. I'll try the regular tonic. The diet tonic was improved by adding a little of the lemon/lime MyWater flavoring to it, though.

Finally, the Diet Energy (Diet Red Bull) flavor is spot on. So if you like Diet Red Bull, you can't go wrong there.

I haven't found a single ginger ale syrup that was nearly as good as when I just made some myself.

I've been tempted to try out some Ginger beer recipes because damned if I don't like a good pungent ginger soda.

Since I bought the Sodastream for sparkling water primarily, I regard all the soda flavors as bonuses. Before going through the trouble of making my own ginger ale syrup, I'll just keep a 12 pack on Diet Canada Dry on hand and be fine with that. Still, it's nice to be able to whip up a quick batch of soda, ginger ale, tonic and diet Red Bull for booze mixing options. For mixing the ginger ale Sodastream syrup is fine. I also need to start experimenting with using more or less syrup for particular flavors. It's possible that a whole cap full of ginger ale syrup might improve the flavor and that a little less than the recommended amount of Cola Free might make it more palatable.

I've just been mixing a few drops of ginger juice into my seltzer, and spooning in a touch of honey.

What I am still trying to find/make is a good cream soda syrup. Does anyone have any recommendations/recipes?

Torani Vanilla syrup works pretty well.

This whole bullshit with me not being able to send back empties is really annoying the shit out of me, particularly because very few retailers allow exchanges, let alone stock the 110L canisters.

We've just been out of CO2 for a long time because of this.

Yeah I lucked out and got new ones, but I still have 3 empties that I can't send back and seemingly no way to send back. Supposedly Staples exchanges the larger ones, so we'll see.

Weird. In my area, more and more retailers have started carrying the Sodastream, and do exchanges. I can take my empties back to Williams and Sonoma, or Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and now Wegmans takes them, too. The last one has made it super-convenient, since I can now do my exchanges when I get groceries.

Which doesn't help you guys at all, I know. Sorry. :(

I got my partner a SodaStream for his birthday last week and he's all but proposed marriage to it.

And they said there was no such thing as a slippery slope!

Slippery and carbonated!

We've been experimenting with various flavors and I actually find the Coke Zero substitute to be perfectly acceptable. It's not the same but it's close enough for my yokel-like palette.

The store I got the Sodastream from takes CO2 returns so fortunately we won't have Athryn and extarbag's issue. We will probably be taking in our first bottle for exchange soonish thanks to the aforementioned problem re: desire to marry a carbonated drink maker.

I'm getting to the point where I need to replace the actual Sodastream. It's gotten a bit leaky--when I carbonate a bottle, you can hear CO2 escaping, and sometimes it takes a bunch of presses to get to pressure. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the CO2 bottles run out more quickly.

Sodastream has a new diet cola flavor out that's actually pretty good. If you ever had the misfortune of trying the previous diet cola flavor, you know how truly awful it was. I can't seem to find a picture of the new one, but the label is blue as opposed to the old one, which was silver. I bought it at Target.

Does anyone have any experience with those modding systems to allow you to use CO2 tanks from paintball guns that you can refill for like $2 at paintball stores?