DIY Soda

They say that you can tell where you’re from by how you refer to that sweetened fizzy water you buy in cans or bottles. Soda, pop, coke, or whatever you call it, there is a billion-dollar industry out there designed to keep you drinking its products.

In the spirit of freeing oneself from corporate shackles, not to mention learning some cool science, I’ve been obsessing researching how to make soda at home lately. I’m calling it DIY Soda.

My first task was to find out just where the hell the carbonation comes from. It’s CO2, of course, carbon dioxide, but you can’t just exhale into a bottle of water and hope for fizz. There is a process involved.

The initial Google forays revealed the venerable seltzer bottle, seemingly used more often in old movie slapstick routines than for actual drink-making, this old-fashioned device performs a magical injection of CO2 into water and producing what can be referred to as seltzer, soda water, or club soda. Here’s an example company that also produces beverage syrup (which doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it?) — Prairie Moon.

Of course the catch is that you have to keep buying CO2 cartridge refills — like razor companies, they want you to be stuck re-buying their products over and over. And while the prospect of having a seltzer bottle handy in case of a comedic emergency is attractive, the prospect of shedding one shackle for another was not palatable.

Next stop was the beverage aisle of the local market, to find the 89-cent 2-liter bottle of Club Soda, and then to find some recipes. Google next uncovered some non-alcoholic drink recipes, including a virgin Tom Collins as a starting point. Into the kitchen I went, armed with club soda, lemon juice, and sugar.

The results, after some experimentation, were more or less potable.

However, the satisfaction level was not at 100%. There was still that 89-cent 2-liter bottle to buy. And the other factor in all this is trying to save money.

A last trek to Google led me to exactly what I was looking for: Making Homemade Soda. To quote:

It is really very easy and much less expensive than store bought soda. Once you practice a little and get the proportions of sugar, flavoring syrup, yeast, and time to ferment in the bottle set to what your family likes the soda is really VERY good. Is it carbonated like “regular” soda from a store? — Yes indeed! The yeast in the soda consumes some of the sugar and creates natural carbonation or “fizz”. For those of you who are “addicted” to your cola (and you know who you are!) this may fill the need if you just store back some extract because you should have the other ingredients already in storage.

So my next step is to try the homemade method. I’ll let y’all know what happens.