Presumably, therefore, the commercial makers of such fizzy acidic drinks carbonate the water and then add the flavours. Or maybe the cost of the extra CO2 is insignificant and they can manage the high level of fizziness caused by all the nuclei?
Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this conversation. From it I have learned a great deal about how to get the most carbonated water from SodaStream CO2 cylinders.
I have used most of the contributions to modify my original tips on how to get the best results from CO2 cylinders and the revised tips are:
- Only add gas to plain water , NOT to juices, cordials, flavours, etc. Add these to the water AFTER it has been gassed.
- Use very cold water because the gas dissolves much better in it than in water at tap temperature. So, keep in the fridge a bottle of cold water ready to pour into the gassing bottle or a spare gassing bottle containing plain water. Or use water from the fridge’s cold water dispenser.
- Wait a several seconds between each gas injection to allow more time for the gas to dissolve.
- After each gas injection, shake the bottle while it is still attached to the machine. This will further increase the amount of gas dissolved in the water.
- Wait about a minute after the final gas injection before removing the bottle from the machine and putting the top on the bottle. This allows the gas more time to dissolve in the water.
- Store the gassed liquid in the fridge and make sure the bottle top is screwed on tight.
- To maximise the fizziness of drinks, serve them as close as possible to fridge temperature.:
Also, since starting the conversation, I have become aware that SodaStream is not the only company that sells water carbonating machines. Others include SodaKing, Aarke, and Philips.
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I use my own home made syrups and juices in my soda stream, always have and I’ve owned mine for over 20 years…I love that I can add as many or as few bubbles as I like, I often find commercial soft drink far too bubbly.
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Making your own seems better than the ones they sell. I noticed several versions of the soda stream are available. Must be a basic type and several others. Im curious to know how long thegas lasts for.?
You can see from previous posts that this varies greatly depending on: how often, how long you inject the CO2, and how you carbonate the water.
These tips should help with the HOW YOU CARBONATE. They reflect comments/suggestions made here by me and others:
- Only add gas to plain water , NOT to juices, cordials, flavours, etc. Add these to the water AFTER it has been gassed.
- Use very cold water because the gas dissolves much better in it than in water at tap temperature. So, keep in the fridge a bottle of cold water ready to pour into the gassing bottle or a spare gassing bottle containing plain water. Or use water from the fridge’s cold water dispenser.
- Wait a several seconds between each gas injection to allow more time for the gas to dissolve.
- After each gas injection, shake the bottle while it is still attached to the machine. This will further increase the amount of gas dissolved in the water.
- Wait about a minute after the final gas injection before removing the bottle from the machine and putting the top on the bottle. This allows the gas more time to dissolve in the water.
- Store the gassed liquid in the fridge and make sure the bottle top is screwed on tight.
- To maximise the fizziness of drinks, serve them as close as possible to fridge temperature.:
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Technically, if the storage container is sealed and impervious to CO₂ movement through the container material, for ever.
In reality, it is impossible to get a perfect seal and over time CO₂ will leak from the container. The length of time will be dependent on how quickly the leaks occur. It might take a short time to weeks/months.
Weeks or months are possibly not relevant as one most likely will use a CO₂ injection machine to make carbonated beverages to consume shortly after their priming with CO₂.
This could be another tip…that any primed beverage is consumed shortly after being primed.
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Thanks. I agree. Yet bottles of purchased carbonated drinks seem to keep fizzy for a long time.
Maybe that’s because they contain much more CO2 and the circumference of the bottle top is much smaller than that of the bottles provided with DIY carbonation machines and so there is less leakage?
Wonder whether leakage can be reduced by pouring self carbonated water from the carbonation bottle into one with a smaller bottle top and filling that to the top?
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No, as soon as you crack the seal to transfer, CO₂ will be released to the atmosphere. When decanting into another container, the release of CO₂ will accelerate due to bubble forming seed points on the inside of the new vessel (why carbonated drinks fizz up when added to a glass).
Shouldn’t make a difference. The difference will be a reused seal (like that used for priming a beverage) will wear causing small leaks. A soft drink bottle is a one off use and the seal will have better integrity.
Hope this makes sense.
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You also need to transport it safely if buying in bulk, and a family car is not ideal.
I used to buy bottled CO2 ( for pest euthanasia, not carbonated water ), and the supplier was cautious selling to non-commercial customers. He asked if I had a ute, and when I answered “No”, he indicated that I should not be transporting the cylinder in my car. I drove home with the cylinder strapped into the boot, and all of the windows open.
There is a very small risk that the valve may leak, and you definitely don’t want a build-up of CO2 inside your car whilst you’re driving.
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The review for soda makers covers everything except the reason we want to purchase a new one: our current soda maker seems to leak more gas and the bottle has to be replaced far more often than the one at work.
This was not part of your criteria. I would suggest you missed something significant here, which goes to the heart of economy of scale. Initial cost vs cost after one year right there.
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Welcome to the Community @abstraction,
I’ll flag your comment to @kim or @BrendanMays for a response.
.
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Welcome to the forum.
How old is your ‘leaky’ soda stream? If it is not old, perhaps you could take it back and have it replaced?
I think you might be referring to the article ‘How to buy the best soda maker’, rather than the review of soda makers?
If it is the ‘how to’ article, you are right there is nothing on why people might want to buy one.
What made you want to buy one in the first place?
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Thanks for your comments, @abstraction. This was our first ever soda makers test, so we are interested all in feedback for us to incorportate into our guides. Unfortunately we can’t test reliability on an ongoing basis for all products (and our tester was working on these from home during lockdown using his own water). However, potential leakage of the gas canister is an important point and it’s something we may be able to check now that the soda makers are back in our labs.
As for whether you should buy one in the first place, you can look at Should you buy a SodaStream (being the market leader, but the advice applies to all models).
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Hi Kim.
This is not about reliability on an ongoing basis, it’s about efficient use of CO2. This is a new soda maker (Soda Stream Spirit) that from the outset has used CO2 bottles at a far more rapid rate. There is no leak from the canister. It appears to simply be significantly less efficient than the soda maker my wife uses at work.
You did not appear to test how many litres per bottle they produce. At this current rate very quickly the money we saved on this soda maker will be lost in CO2 replacement bottles.
It is very difficult to take it back and demonstrate this lack of efficiency to Good Guys.
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I am curious about that since this might reflect (as an analogy) the differences between cheap and expensive inkjet printers. Cheap ones use lots more ink because of differences in the technology.
To see if I may be onto something or not, what is the comparative cost of the office model versus your home model? If the office model is a commercial product and/or at a higher price point it would be designed to a higher standard.
The costs of supplies also need to be considered against the comparative costs of the machines.
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Apologies, I thought it was older. Do you have the Spirit or the Spirit OneTouch (the latter being automatic)? We actually did test how much carbonation is used, and found that on highest settings, that the SodaStream Spirit (the manual model) was less than 10g of CO2 per bottle while also achieving high carbonation. However, the automatic model was far less efficient on high settings as our cost analysis shows.
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The calculation of how many litres you get per cylinder in our review is now included for members. The cylinders generally advertise up to 60L but in practice you get far less if you like really fizzy drinks. 
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@kim We have the Spirit - the manual model. Sorry I missed that you tested the weight of CO2 from the bottle. I’ve asked my wife to find out what model they have at work. She did say it gives a sound when it reaches the level. It seems your experience or the spirit is different to ours. It then raises the issue of whether there is something wrong with ours - difficult to prove though - or whether we are over-pressing?
@PhilT The comparative costs was precisely my point and the reason we think it may be more cost-effective to replace it.
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Interesting points. I’d be curious to hear which model is at the office. Being our first test we were only able to test those currently on the market. It would be interesting to see how it compares to the older models. Potentially the seal between the bottle and carbonation head were better sealed on the older models for instance?
Generally, how long the cylinder lasts can be quite variable on the manual machines. For our tests, we attempted to carbonate for the exact same time as the max settings on the automatic machines. We found that for almost all models, the advertised 60L per cylinder was closer to about 30-35L if you were carbonating to a high amount.
It may be worth keeping track how long the cylinder lasts when you purchase a new one for your home machine. If it’s making even less than what we found than potentially the machine could be faulty or the cylinder is installed incorrectly. There was an instance where I installed a cylinder too tightly and it was actually constantly pressing the pin in the cylinder.
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There is a useful discussion on how to get the best out of a bottle of CO2 in a related Choice Community topic.
There is also some information on alternatives for the branded CO2 bottles.
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