I am so glad to have the opportunity to bring my review of the SodaStream to you! I’m not personally a huge soda drinker. My husband likes soda once in a while and we don’t feed it to the kids so although I was really intrigued by it, I wasn’t sure we’d get a ton of use out of it. I was so wrong! We use it all the time and just love it! Let me tell you about some of my favorite features:
It’s fun to use. The whole family gathers around every time one of us makes soda. It’s so interactive, fizzing the water yourself, choosing the flavor, pouring in the flavor, giving it a little shake. You know when you announce, “I’m making soda!” everyone will come running.
There are tons of flavors to choose from. More than 50 actually. You won’t find these flavors in any other bottle of soda. Just tonight I made Green Tea Pomegranate Peach and it was delish. We’ve enjoyed the Ginger Ale the most. There are plenty of classic flavors and lots more unique varieties to try. Choose from Regular, Diet, Energy, Sparkling Teas, and MyWater Flavor Essence. Some people even mix them and create all new flavors! I’m definitely going to try the Lemon Ice Tea this summer!
The Naturals Flavors are great for sharing with the kids. SodaStream has a line of SodaMix called Sparking Naturals.They are made from all-natural ingredients, contain no artificial flavors, colors, or artificial sweeteners, and do not contain any preservatives. While I’m not a fan of feeding soda to kids, this is a totally acceptable option for me to share with them. They haven’t developed a taste for the fizziness just yet but if your kids like a splash of soda now and then this is a great alternative to most of what’s currently on the market.
It doesn’t take up much space. At all. First of all, it doesn’t plug in. That makes it totally portable which I love. We’re always in each other’s way in the kitchen in our house. Not when someone is using the SodaStream! It’s lightweight and sleek, very slim and doesn’t take up much counterspace at all. You can easily pick it up and move it to wherever you want to use it.
It’s an eco-friendly alternative to buying soda. When you’re making soda or sparkling water at home, you’re not creating the waste of bottle after bottle, and you’re reducing the pollution caused by the transport of bottled beverages. The 1-liter carbonating bottle that you use with the SodaStream can be reused for up to 2 years, replacing over 2500 bottles and cans from store-bought drinks. Whoa. How awesome is that? Read more about how SodaStream is an ‘Active Green’ product here.
It’s convenient. You just use water to make it, so as long as you have a bottle of SodaMix on hand you can easily throw together a bottle of pop in a flash. No need to run to the store. We just had my son’s birthday party and didn’t need to buy any drinks to serve. We had the SodaStream out and let our guests choose a couple flavors. We had fun making it, saved money on not buying 2-liters at the grocery store, and saved the time and effort involved with buying bottles of soda and lugging them home. Plus we had no empty bottles to recycle at the end of the day!
It’s easy to use. I got this out of the box and put it together without reading the directions (thank you very much!) in a snap. There was *one* thing I wish I had read before making my first batch of soda. Read on to see how this SodaStream works and find out where I made my big mistake.
The SodaStream is so easy to assemble. Just put the carbonator up through the bottom, screw it in, and pop on the back.
Just pop the back on and you’re all set to get makin’ soda! Can you see how slim this machine is? It really doesn’t take up much counter space at all and you can put it anywhere since it doesn’t need to be near an outlet.
The next step is to pour water, yup, right from the tap, into your carbonating bottle. There’s a fill line toward the top so you know just how full to fill it. The push in the top of that black front panel on the SodaStream so it tilts back and you can tuck your bottle in there and screw it in tightly.
Time to carbonate! You just push down on the button on top of the machine to carbonate the water. You have to push pretty hard and do it three times. Release the button each time when you hear the loud noise which, by the way, might scare your kids and dog the first time they hear it! You can add more or less fizz with this handy button. I’ve found that three strong pushes works pretty well for us.
After the water has been carbonated, pour your chosen SodaMix flavor into the cap and get ready to mix it up! The cap doubling as the measuring cup makes life easy. You know exactly how much to pour in each time for the perfect bottle of soda. A tip from me: Rinse out your cap when you get done with this step to avoid any future stickiness.
Alright folks, here’s where I got ahead of myself so listen up! The directions here are to tilt the bottle and slowly pour the SodaMix into your bottle of fizzy water. Simple, right? Now if you get overly excited when your fun new gadget arrives in the mail you just *might* pour that yummy mix right into that carbonated water just as quickly as you can in an effort to hurry up and make your soda. And you just *might* wind up with a soda volcano all over your kitchen counter. So learn from my mistakes: Calm down, read the directions. This isn’t a messy process at all if you can control yourself when your SodaStream arrives.
Once you’ve got your flavor safely in the bottle, just give it a gentle shake. I flip it up and down a few times to mix in the flavor. Remember you are dealing with soda here and if you shake it and open it up, well, break out the cleaning products. A gentle shake does the trick perfectly.
And there you have it! It’s so quick and easy to make your own soda, I can reuse this bottle for years, and yup, it’s frugal. These SodaMixes are as low as $4.99 online (you may find even better deals in stores – Target carries them!) and the cost per 2L at the price is only $.83. $1 is my ‘buy’ price on 2L bottles of soda. So this is clearly a better deal, less waste, way more convenient, and much better flavors. Seriously, we love our SodaStream and it’s really going to get a ton of use this summer.
Check out all the SodaStream products, especially all the awesome SodaMix flavors. Follow SodaStream on Facebook and Twitter, too. I love all the neat ideas the other fans share about how they use their SodaStream. One person said he uses fresh ginger with the sparkling water made by the SodaStream to make his own ginger ale. How cool! You can get so creative with this gadget!
SodaStream is generously giving away a Fountain Jet Soda Lover’s Start Up Kit to one lucky Pandora’s Deals reader! The set is valued at $99.95 and includes all of the following:
- Fountain Jet – winner’s choice of color (black/silver, red/silver or white)
- 1 carbonating bottle, reusable for up to 3 years
- Reusable carbonator to fizz up to 60L of soda
- Variety 6-pack of popular sample-size flavors
- 3 full-sized flavors of the winner’s choice
Pretty amazing, right? This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only and runs from April 5 to midnight EST on April 15, 2012. You can enter to win here!
I was provided with a SodaStream Fountain Jet and accessories to facilitate this review. The opinions in this post are 100% mine. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
Jenny Lozano Strength says
I want one!