Soda streams... Any experience?

Somehow over the past six months I've developed an addiction to soda water--this is a good thing, as my beer intake is down because of it. But I'm at the point where I can go through a 2 liter of it in a day or two, which gets pretty expensive at $0.80 to $1.00 per bottle.

Anyone have a Soda Stream? How has your experience gone? Has anyone modded it to use a different Co2 tank?

I have two, one at home and one at work. There's a half-empty bottle of carbonated water sitting beside me - it was full this morning and I'll go through one or two more today.

The tanks last a long time. Ours are the simplest version, they're very easy to use and you really don't need batteries and digital readouts. Get two bottles and just fill up one when you have to swap them out. You can get refills at Bed Bath & Beyond and of course they're constantly mailing out $5 and 20% off coupons.

I've thought about modifying them, but the payback period is fairly long once you start pricing out tanks.

Another in the long line of kitchen gadgets the missus just had to have. In her mind she uses it "all the time" in reality it is still on it's first co2 cartridge after 3 years and I doubt I have seen it in 6 months. 

If you like carbonated water then it is great. Their soda syrups are a nasty concoction of half sugar, half sugar free that is cloying and oversweet but still tastes like a diet product.

She still buys LaCroix even though she has a soda stream.

Oh yeah, stay away from the syrups. Eww.

I carbonate one bottle at a time and keep the others (I have three) full of water in the fridge, then just keep rotating them. It carbonates better when it's cold.

This would be for just straight carbonated water. In general I hate pop, the two exceptions being Dr. Pepper and Verners (with whiskey)

Keith Tanner said:

I have two, one at home and one at work. There's a half-empty bottle of carbonated water sitting beside me - it was full this morning and I'll go through one or two more today.

The tanks last a long time. Ours are the simplest version, they're very easy to use and you really don't need batteries and digital readouts. Get two bottles and just fill up one when you have to swap them out. You can get refills at Bed Bath & Beyond and of course they're constantly mailing out $5 and 20% off coupons.

I've thought about modifying them, but the payback period is fairly long once you start pricing out tanks.

How much water do you go through in a week? How much do the refills cost at BB&B?

He had one that took up counter space fora couple of years. I gave it to my daughter and it collected dust for another 6 months before landing back in the garage. So I gave it to my son. He's used it a couple of dozen times. It's 3-4 years old and still on the first tank of co2.

If you will use it, they work well. 

I've never actually measured how much. Assuming they're 750 ml bottles, I'm probably going through about 1.5-2L per day. The tanks last for weeks if not months.

Refills are $15 basically anywhere. BB&B coupons drop that to $10-13.

Around these parts every paintball shop advertises sodastream co2 cartridge refills for 5 to 7 dollars while you wait. They have some sort of hardware adapter and lots of compressed gasses. 

You can get the adapters for about $50. Then you just need the gas supply. It's never been a high enough priority for me to do.

Careful folks…food grade CO2 may have quality control requirements and/or purity standards that aren’t present in CO2 intended for industrial applications…I have no idea if a difference exists but replacement livers are pricy, hard to source, and a big hassle to install so please be careful.

I disagree with the syrup comments, when I used mine, about 4 years ago, I enjoyed their energy drink syrup (think redbull) and making it with 3-4 times the recommended syrup amount. It held up to vodka very well in that ratio. 

My wife got me one for Christmas 2016. In the last year I've almost completely cut out soft drinks. The downside is that I sometimes don't like drinking uncarbonated water as much as I used to. Bed Bath and Beyond and Walmart have the refills, and they'll honor each other's prices if one has a sale on but not the other. 

I don't drink the stuff myself but the wife got one about a year back. It got some heavy usage for about two months and I haven't seen it since.

I freaking LOVE my soda stream.  The CO2 lasts a long time.  I don't buy the mixers to make sugary sodas, I just flavor it myself if I want.  My current go-to is Grapefruit juice and a bit of agave nectar as a mixer for tequila.

That way the rest of my body can feel healthy while I kill just my liver.  I call it organ isolation therapy.

Is there any difference between the various models if you just want to carbonate a bottle of water? I see the "fizzi" is on sale at Target for $50. Is that as good as any other?

I only ever had the "normal" soda stream.  I think it's called the Jet.  Got it for Christmas three years ago.  Looks like this:

dculberson said:

Is there any difference between the various models if you just want to carbonate a bottle of water? I see the "fizzi" is on sale at Target for $50. Is that as good as any other?

Good question. 

We've got a Penguin and a Genesis. The Penguin looks cool and uses glass bottles with no BPA. The Genesis is less expensive, quicker to use and has larger, plastic bottles with BPA. The quality of the carbonation is the same.

We drink a lot of soda water and the Sodastream has saved us a pile of cash. We make up 6 bottles at a time. 

I have 3 co2 tanks and use dry ice to fill them. I can fill 3 for $5, though if I could get refills for $5ea would probably do that. 

I actually forgot that I had one stuffed away in the basement.  This thread motivated me to pull it out of storage and make a bottle of ginger ale!  I don't particularly care for just fizzy water, but most of their syrups are pretty good -- I like to use about 1.5x what they call for.  It does carbonate water pretty easily and quickly, though.  It is a unitasker that takes up a lot of countertop space and has some loose parts that can fall off when trying to move it in and out of the pantry or a cabinet.

What does one of those throw on a bottle for pressure? I've had a 22oz bomber explode on me at 40psi. It's berkeleying scary. 

I think they'll all be equal in the carbonation.  Its a high pressure canister of gas that feeds into the water and the machine has a blowoff valve for when it reaches the right pressure.  They're ridiculously dumb contraptions.  Just a valve that lets air from one place into another place.

We have the stainless steel Kitchen Aide version because SWMBO didn’t want a “chunk of plastic” sitting on her counter. It sees fairly heavy use since there’s four of us who all drink sparkling water. The only issue we’ve had is the bottles becoming slightly clouded due to the mineral content from our well water. I believe the internals are the same on all of them.

We used ours all the time for about the first year and a half we had it.  My 3 kids will destroy a 12 pack of soda quicker than a velociraptor can destroy a cow.   I didn't have any issues with the syrups and thought the flavor was decent, some are better than others though.  The problem is I'll get 2 tanks filled, we'll go through one in a week, the next one will last about a month, then it sits so long we forget to get the tanks refilled, the syrups go bad, and the cycle repeats itself.  Maybe I'll get the tanks refilled this week........