Soda Club Soda Maker - Edition 1 Home Soda Maker Review

For a long time in my life, I would muse while drinking soda pop, "Wouldn't it be great if I could just buy the syrup and bottle my own!"  It seemed so logical, so natural, so eco-friendly, and it amazed me that I couldn't do it. 

That was before I discovered SodaStream and learned that I could.  Now, I no longer pay for people to put water in bottles and ship it to stores for me to buy it and then send the empty bottles to the landfill. Now, I have my own reusable bottles, and I make my own pop out of syrup I buy from the distributor, purified water I buy at vending machines in front of stores, and CO2 gas I buy from SodaStream.  It's not only eco-friendly, it also costs me less than half of what I used to pay.

It started out smoothly enough, with me buying the package from SodaStream that includes two CO2 bottles, two or three one-liter beverage bottles, and the gizmo that you use for injecting the CO2 into a water-filled bottle.  Next, I went to the local Pepsi distributor and bought a five-gallon box of syrup.  They only sell to businesses, so they asked me, "Are you a business?"  Of course, I am, isn't everyone?  So I answered, "Yes".

I paid them $48 cash (it's since gone up -- the latest box I bought cost me $51) and walked out with my box.  I told them I didn't have the bayonet fitting that goes into the bottom of the box, so they furnished that for free.  In conversation, I learned that the correct ratio is 5:1, 5 parts water to 1 part syrup.

Then I went to the Home Depot and picked up a ball valve to fit the 3/8" hose on the fitting.  These syrup box fittings are designed to work with the vending machines you see in fast-food joints -- the vending machines have a valve built into them, so since you're not using the vending machine you need to supply your own manual valve.

I drilled a 2 1/2" hole in the bottom of a kitchen cabinet so the fitting and valve would have a place to come out, I put the box on top of the hole, and -- with the help of the SodaStream -- I was set up with my own personal Pepsi bottling plant!

The snag came later, when I started ordering refills for the CO2 bottles.

The refill sales and shipping operation of this company is inept, to put it charitably. I have never had a refill order fulfilled in less than two weeks, and my latest order required four attempts before they got it right.  Then, when they finally did get it right, it took about another two weeks to get delivery.

If it weren't for that, I would be willing to overlook that fact that the refill bottles are substantially over-priced.  It's a classic "whatever the market will bear" situation.  Their bottles come with special fittings that don't match other commercial CO2 fittings, the idea obviously being to lock you into their refills so they can charge you whatever they want.

They also give you some legalese about how you don't own the bottles, you're just licensing their use (obviously taking a cue from the software industry), further discouraging you from trying to work around their overpriced refills.

I have now discovered, though, that there is a company that makes adaptors for their bottles so you can go to a local welding shop and refill them for a fraction of the cost.  One caveat in doing this, though, is that you have to be careful not to overfill the bottles. The correct weight of the refill is 2 pounds, and you must not exceed this.  Take a small postal scale with you to be sure.