Sodastream: The Inkjet Printer Of Beverage Making

This past holiday season I rewarded myself with a Sodastream. I’d seen them in the stores, tasted samples, and heard and read about them online. A fascinating machine.

The only problem was this: we don’t drink that much soda. Their main claim during the demonstrations were about how much money you’d save. That didn’t make sense to us. We don’t spend much money on sodas.

But I do love bubbly water. And I my hobby, my home theater, also has a bar. It would be very useful to be able to make various beverages on demand.

Plus I really wanted one.

So before the holidays and while on a trip to Costco we saw another demonstration and walked away with the Sodastream Dynamo Deluxe.

It is fun to use. And I love the bubbly, zero-calorie seltzer it makes.

In a very real sense, Sodastream uses the same business model as inkjet printer makers do: virtually give away the device and make money on the consumables. Once you have the device you can make bubbly water. But if you want to make sodas, you’ll need to purchase the syrups. And more CO2. Ad infinitum.

If you don’t drink much soda or if you purchase store brand, not name brand, sodas, your savings will be minimal or non-existant. If you exclusively drink name brands, like Pepsi or Coke, you’ll likely be unhappy because what you can make with a Sodastream is not Pepsi or Coke or your other favorite beverage. It’s close, but if you’re locked in to the specific brand you don’t want “close.”

It is, however, a “greener” solution over buying sodas at the store: you eliminate the bottles you’d need to recycle.

But if you are like me and enjoy an occasional soda, but really like “sparkling” water or specialty beverages, the device suddenly becomes really useful and interesting.

For example, my youngest daughter fell in love with elderflower soda in a recent trip to England. It’s everywhere over there, but not here in the States. But with a Sodastream I can buy elderflower syrup (still hard to come by) and make elderflower sodas on demand.

Or I can make various flavored bubbly waters to taste. Blended whisky with soda water is very nice (but never, ever, put it single malt!).

It’s fun to make and we don’t end up with half-used and flat-tasting bottles of soda. It works for us because our soda consumption is limited. And it’s a great addition to the bar.

Just don’t buy one if you think you’ll save money with it. If you want to save money just by the store brand in the two liter bottles or cut back (or eliminate) drinking sodas altogether.

Sodastream: The Inkjet Printer Of Beverage Making by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.