lt1jane
Gold Member
- 1,343
Last weekend, I broke down and bought a SodaStream machine. My husband drinks A LOT of Mountain Dew and it's close to $8 a case which I think is silly. I hesitated about spending the $100 for the machine. The place I bought it (Bed Bath & Beyond) has a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So, I decided to take the chance.
I had talked to someone who owns one and knew that the SodaStream syrups do not use high fructose corn syrup. So the Mountain Dew/Fountain Mist was going to be more like the Mountain Dew throwback. That's OK as my husband likes that and my son prefers the "white can" Dew anyway. I decided with the satisfaction guarantee, it was worth the risk. The machine came with a 12 pack of various flavors to try and the "Dew" was one of them.
Once we got home, we took it out of the box and carbonated a bottle of water, opened the "Dew" and had my husband try it. He was happy. Upon closer look at the CO2 bottles, they have a proprietary nozzle on them which will make it more challenging to refill the cansiters at home (provided you have a siphon tank, we do) We will be investing a little more in an adaptor to either refill the tank or so we can use an O2 tank we have at home. We're not sure which way we are going to go regarding the tanks.
The bottom line, is that even if you pay the $15-$20 to exchange the tanks that SodaStream makes, you can mix your own soda for about $0.30-$0.50 a liter. If you can refill your own, it goes down to about $0.10 a liter. My son and I have been having fun tasting the other syrups that came with the machine. So far, I was not impressed with the diet cola but liked the diet Dr Pete/Pepper. I don't like grapefruit, but liked the diet grapefruit flavor and the diet Cranberry/Raspberry. The real fun will be in the future when we start to experiment with mixing the syrup flavors to see what we can come up with. This is a toy we will have fun with in our house.
I had talked to someone who owns one and knew that the SodaStream syrups do not use high fructose corn syrup. So the Mountain Dew/Fountain Mist was going to be more like the Mountain Dew throwback. That's OK as my husband likes that and my son prefers the "white can" Dew anyway. I decided with the satisfaction guarantee, it was worth the risk. The machine came with a 12 pack of various flavors to try and the "Dew" was one of them.
Once we got home, we took it out of the box and carbonated a bottle of water, opened the "Dew" and had my husband try it. He was happy. Upon closer look at the CO2 bottles, they have a proprietary nozzle on them which will make it more challenging to refill the cansiters at home (provided you have a siphon tank, we do) We will be investing a little more in an adaptor to either refill the tank or so we can use an O2 tank we have at home. We're not sure which way we are going to go regarding the tanks.
The bottom line, is that even if you pay the $15-$20 to exchange the tanks that SodaStream makes, you can mix your own soda for about $0.30-$0.50 a liter. If you can refill your own, it goes down to about $0.10 a liter. My son and I have been having fun tasting the other syrups that came with the machine. So far, I was not impressed with the diet cola but liked the diet Dr Pete/Pepper. I don't like grapefruit, but liked the diet grapefruit flavor and the diet Cranberry/Raspberry. The real fun will be in the future when we start to experiment with mixing the syrup flavors to see what we can come up with. This is a toy we will have fun with in our house.