soda stream

[bearloch]

anyone have a soda stream machine? do u like it ? does soda taste like coke/pepsi? is it worth the invesment? ay advice would be great!! thanks all

 

[hercamore]

I tried a sample of grapefruit flavor at the grocery store last week. Not very good.

They sure are selling the machines everywhere you look.

 

[disneychrista]

The biggest problem I know of is getting the replacement Co2 cartridges. I know Kohls sells the soda stream but can not sell the Co2 cartridges.

 

[Bonniec]

I love mine but there is a few things you should know....

Their soda flavors are totally vile. Blech! They are also cheaply made. It's basically a way to make seltzer water. I use it all the time and mix it with a juice or with a lemonade syrup I make.

Before buying one, you need to make sure someone near you sells the canisters. I get mine through bath and body works. If you have to get it online, it's totally not worth the expense.

 

[mrudman]

We've had one for about a year now, and really like it,

We buy most of our flavors from Kohl's (using coupon) and Bed, Bath, & Beyond (using coupon)... then buy the CO2 cartridges from BB&B... have only had to buy 3-4 cartridges since we originally bought the machine.

When we first bought the machine, we bought four 1-liter bottles and four 0.5 liter bottles and haven't bought any bottles since... They hold the carbonation really well till it's gone, but that's usually by the next day if not sooner.

The flavors are decent, imo... don't really taste like brand names, but really not bad at all. They are only 35 calories per serving vs. 100 cal/serving for brand name regular drinks... but they definitely don't taste "diet" to me (I can't stand diet drinks).

The only ones we use are cola and pete's choice (my favorite), and then on occasion do the lemon-lime, orange, and rootbeer.

We do still buy Pepsi maybe once every couple months (just cause I have to have real Pepsi at times, lol).. but if I had to go without brand-names and just use the sodastream, I could.

It's really convenient, has saved us a lot of money... get the bottles for about $4, makes 400 oz's, where we normally could get a 6-pk of 20 oz Pepsi's (120 oz's) for approx. $3.67 (three 6-pks for $11).

Eventually I'd like to try the flavor essence flavors, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[chabs]

One of the gourmet stores in the mall was having a tasting event for the Soda Stream and I didn't think the soda was very good at all. The cola tastes like watered down Pepsi. The orange and root beer tasted watered down too. It reminded me of a soda that the ice melted in before you had a chance to drink it. My kids didn't like it either. I'm glad we tried it ahead of time because my kids were bugging me for one too.

 

[ellone]

For us, it was worth the investment, but we only drink plain seltzer. We love having it - we use it all the time. I get the replacement CO2 cartridges at Bed Bath Beyond with a coupon.

 

[snels]

We love our Soda Stream. The flavors that we have tried have been very good.

 

[mjkacmom]

For us, it was worth the investment, but we only drink plain seltzer. We love having it - we use it all the time. I get the replacement CO2 cartridges at Bed Bath Beyond with a coupon.

Same here - just seltzer (which, for whatever reason, has almost doubled in price recently!). We go through a lot of seltzer (my kids love it with a dash of oj or cranberry).

 

[fakereadhed]

My dad goes thru 2 2L bottles of soda per day, so we got him one for Fathers Day. He likes the diet cola because it has Splenda. We are going to get him Coke Zero syrup from Costco for Christmas. Yes, the industrial size!

 

[JoiseyMom]

We love it, and my DH is very particular about his soda. He loves coke. Anyway, they had it at our Costco, so we got to try out bunches of flavors and they were really good. If you want a more pepsi flavor you ad more syrup. You can do more or less CO2.

We love the orange, ginger ale, root beer and cola. Oh, kids also like the lemon line. I have bought the natural flavors, regular and diet. We love it. I buy our sryups and refills at BB&B. Great deals with their coupons.

I haven't bought store bought soda or seltzer since we have purchased the machine!

To those that have tried it and it tasted watered down, then maybe the person mixing it didn't use enough syrup??

Oh, I didn't buy the machine at Costco. I bought it on sale at Kohl's plus used a 30% coupon. It was an awesome deal! Got a 90 - 100.00 machine elsewhere for about 50.00!

 

[Juliee8]

We have had ours for about a year now and we absolutely love it!!! I have never made the seltzer water but we make soda all of the time. I will say that it does take some trial and error with the syrup part to get the flavor just right, at least for our taste. The kids favorites are the organge soda & the Dr Pete.

 

[BlondieQ182]

We love our sodastream. Ginger ale, orange, and root beer are the flavors that taste spot on. Lemon lime says that its comparable to sprite, but I think it tastes like sierra mist. Cola tastes like generic though. We did just buy a bottle of coke natural and that one tasted A LOT better. Sodastream was one of the best purchases we have made!

 

[mnasf]

Thanks everyone!!! I appreciate all of your comments and advice. There seems to be a couple of models and I can't tell the difference. Someone at Bed Bath and Beyond told me the only difference between the two they had is that it tells you when the co2(?) is getting low. Thoughts?

 

[mommy2twingles]

We bought one recently and I'm not sure yet if it is a good investment. I am a pepsi girl and the cola is nothing like it. The only flavor I have liked out of the samples that came with the machine is the root beer. By reading some websites I have found a syrup maker in Pittsburgh who is suppose to have great flavors. All the reviewers enjoyed them. I am going to order a few to try and see if my impression changes.

 

[MyDizneyBoyz]

We've had our Soda Stream for about a year now and use it almost every day.

We bought two CO2 cartridges. One is in use and one is in a kitchen drawer. When the one in use runs out, we replace it with the one from the drawer and sometime over the next few weeks the empty one gets brought back to Bed, Bath and Beyond and swapped for a full one. With a 20% off coupon, it's only $12 to swap. The full one gets put into the kitchen drawer and the cycle continues.

Keep in mind that ALL the machine does is make fizzy water. You can add anything you want to that fizzy water - you don't have to use their syrups (although I do like me some diet Mountain Mist (Mtn Dew clone)).

We add cranberry juice, mojito mix, Crystal Light (very slooooooowly as adding powdered mix to fizzy water can cause a bubble explosion!), pureed fruit, just about anything you think might taste good. Hint - honey flavored fizzy water is not as good as I had hoped...

There are lots of places that sell syrups - some of the more gourmet food stores do and you can find all sorts of variety online. Heck, Walmart even sells those Mio syrups now and some of them taste pretty good.

I keep promising my Mom that I'll make her a "real" New York egg cream soon! (An egg cream is an old-fashioned drink made from chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer for those young'uns in the crowd... ).

As far as the model that lets you know when the CO2 is running low, I think it's completely unnecessary if you keep one backup CO2 cartridge around. When it runs out, it just stops making bubbles. It takes less than a minute to swap out the cartridge and you're good to go again.

 

[2bearsmom]

I finally saw one of these at Kohls but after reading the label on the regular flavors I was surprised to see they contain sugar and sucralose....if they make diet already containing sucralose why put it in the regular? I do know they make the "naturals" syrups but they are more money and the only difference seems to be no sucralose, which the regular shouldn't contain anyway!

 

[tink_n_pooh]

DH bought one about a year ago and I tried to convince him to return it, seemed like a waste of money and something we would never use. I was wrong, it gets used every 2-3 days and is the only soda that we buy (other than for parties when cans are more convenient) most of the time.

I like the orange flavor the best.

 

[bearloch]

can u buy coke syrup from sams ? i thought u had to have a special permit or code or something? what does the diet sodas taste like? thanks

 

[emilymad]

What do you do about washing the bottles? Can they go in the dishwasher?