I like me some carbonated water personally, and tap water in Germany is super clean and tastes nice almost everywhere. However, I’ve heard of some people before that they dislike Sodastreams for some reason or another. What gives?
I don’t have a soda stream, but I do have a carbonation cap for my 1/8 barrel homebrew kegs, and have used it to make “Italian soda” (carbonated water to which you add flavor syrup/puree in the glass).
Basically the same thing, just a lot bigger. I can’t fathom a reason to not want to use it if you like sparkling drinks, it’s a lot cheaper than buying soda water or whatever. Especially if you aren’t buying single use co2 charges and throwing them away after. I guess that would be my only real concern, personally. I hate those things. Such a small capacity makes them very wasteful, even if they technically/eventually get reused.
I recommend that if you go with a home carbonation system, that you look for one you hack your own CO2 refills for.
Some people buy a CO2 tank and regulator, then hook it straight up to their machine. I have a large CO2 tank in the basement with an adapter to refill the individual proprietary canisters. I got the tank free from a friend, and then paid 30 USD to have it certified (good for 10 years) and 30 USD to have it recharged with beverege-grade CO2. Buying an adapter was 40 USD
My large tank holds ~5kg of CO2, and it costs about 17 USD to officially refill one of the small canisters with 500g of CO2. Thus, even if I didn’t get the tank for free (new ones cost ~120 USD), the large tank would still pay for itself after filling it one time.
I drink a lot of Seltzer, so it seems economical for me to get one, but they’re an Israeli company and I can’t purchase from them in good conscious.
You can get a used ball lock/corny keg, a carbonation cap, a co2 cylinder, and a pressure regulator, and make it 5 gallons at a time if you want. No support for Israel involved :)
Bit pricy, the whole setup you need will probably run about $100-200 depending where you get it, but you can put damn near any liquid in it and make it carbonated if you want. Wine, juice, water, sugar water, flavored sugar water, milk if you feel bold (tho at that point just make kefir, that’s nice and bubbly), beer, liquor probably…
Actually I just looked at the price of a soda stream and this isn’t that pricy by comparison… so there’s that.
Carbonated water is slightly more acidic than still, so just be aware of your teeth and guts if you’re drinking heaps of it. Some people take issue with supporting an Israeli owned company, others don’t. There’s always other brands if that suits you, I know aldi does one called soda king that’s interchangeable with Sodastream.
They’re an Israeli company
But one(afaik) that always advocated a peaceful and equal coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.
Scrap that! Apparently I fell for their advertising propaganda and their “This product is produced by Jews and Arabs working side by side in peace and harmony” crap.
I googled “Sodastream Palestine” and its just pages over pages about how they mistreat their Palestinian employees and built their factories on stolen land. There are many sources, but this one seems to give an objective overview.