Soda

Soda was Originally Posted on February 15, 2014 by lavarock

After much research, I bought a Sodastream unit. It makes carbonated water that you can pour soda syrup into, saving a trip to the store.

For me it would have been a no-brainer but the unit comes with a CO2 cartridge and that is a problem getting it shipped to Hawaii. The cartridge is proprietary and thus is only supposed to be filled by the company on the mainland.

I have seen the units sold here a couple times at Walmart but nobody on our island refills the cartridges and the places on Oahu won’t ship them here because the airlines don’t want filled CO2 cartridges on board.

In the past I tried the syrups by purchasing them separately and pouring them slowly into seltzer water. A quick stir and there you go. You have to use seltzer because club soda has minerals in it. With the syrup, you can make the soda as rich or thin as you want. Sometimes I like more carbonation that other times.

So with the unit I bought, it came with a CO2 cartridge (maybe it came to Hawaii by boat?). There are a few companies that make adapters that fit the Sodastream units AND also fit a paintball CO2 cartridge. Those cartridges are available at the local Sports Authority AND Sports Authority can refill the cartridges because they have a standard fitting.

There is some concern about the difference in paintball CO2 and food grade Co2, but gas is gas and with a simple gas like CO2 I would not expect contaminates in the gas itself. The only other issue might come in the lubricant used to seal the compressor and O rings, etc. Nobody seems too worried about that so time will tell.