Wait, how do you do this?

I've been considering infusing spirits and attempting to make a soda recently.

Stuff like this starts out as a hobby. But don't just do it with the intention of making money. Some people that make and sell craft foods are only breaking even. They sell it to pay for their hobby.

I'm just getting into the hobby, but it's definitely fun.

I started with Make Your Own Soda by Anton Nocito and Making Soda At Home by Jeremy Butler. The first offers a bit of background on soda making, and the second one includes some of the science behind it. They both have a bunch of recipes to get you started, but Butler's book includes three different methods for carbonation.

I've only done the syrup + seltzer method so far, but I've made a watermelon soda and a lime soda, which both turned out pretty good.

Big Jerk Soda in Pensacola, FL is a good follow to check out how they started making sodas and doing farmers markets. They currently make them in a coffee shop and hand bottle. We got to visit them this summer and they make a pineapple upside down cake soda that was amazing.

Just recently started home made soda. Root beer, orange soda (like fanta), and a cola recipe I tweaked with an unusual ingredient ��

Ooh! I used to have a couple of those glasses! :D

I only make soda with sparkling water and squash/juice/ade or whatever you call it.

My wife bought me a Sodastream a few years ago, I now mix my own flavors regularly. Buy the soda syrup in bulk when possible, otherwise I just mix my own flavors with Torani syrup and Cane Sugar syrup.

I have a cotton candy blue lemonade I make. It's real lemons, sugar, club soda, and a quarter of Kool-Aid packet. That's the extent of it though. I tasted it for the first time and moaned because it was so good

We have a whole community!

r/Cordials

I just broke my last Spaghetti Factory cup a couple months ago and I actually cried. The end of an era.

The one in my fridge is by Drinkmate (my soda machine, can carbonate anything) and I have a strawberry mixture in it. Now I def, have to go drink some.

Yes. And strawberries are unique in that if you slice them and toss them with sugar and a little acid (just a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice for 8oz of berries) they will render out a lot of juice in just a few hours. This is great because if you strain out the berries you'll only have to heat the water just enough to melt the sugar. You'll need to experiment to get the balance of flavor you like best, but strawberry soda is a goal that's within reach.

Combined a 16 oz bottle of Fanta Orange soda with 2 oz of Pineapple Juice to make my own version of Cactus Cooler...does that count??

I once made homemade Pepsi for my kid’s school dance. It was a little thick, but the price was right.

I use my soda stream daily and make my own syrups (basil, mint, ginger or rosemary simple syrups paired with a fruit syrup or juice is next level)…

I also made myself a ginger bug (it took some practice lol) and so can now naturally carbonate my own sodas! It’s so much fun - check out r/fermentation and r/cordials if you’re interested in dabbling).

Sorta yes.

You can make somewhat carbonated water using baking soda, lemons, and citric acid.

Here's one recipe

https://www.splendidtable.org/story/2018/02/27/no-fermentation-soda#:~:text=The%20principle%20is%20that%20you,CO2%20make%20the%20drink%20fizzy.

It's not a tablet though and you might be disappointed in the carbonation levels this technique produces...it's fairly weak and doesn't compare to commercial sodas.

There was once a candy called Fizzies in the US that used baking soda and citric acid in tablet form to make a fizzy drink.

https://www.wideopeneats.com/fizzies-candy/

Unfortunately they stopped production in 2016

I have seen Fizzies like candies in Japan though and they probably do exist in other countries as well.

/r/cordials

That fru fru berry one looks good and I do like a good green apple soda.

Mostly see posts about bottled/canned commercial soda on this subreddit but curious to hear how your soda making adventures go!

Get a water carbonating machine, like https://sodastream.ca/.

Then buy one or more syrups to play around with, pretty much anything with flavour and sugar will do: https://www.google.com/search?q=syrup+flavors

Would a Soda Stream have the same effect but faster?

They're going to lose their carbonation after time as you cannot perfectly seal them outside of running with high end industrial equipment.

You could look at the same equipment used for home brewing. A crown seal will keep carbonation in for 6-12 months, maybe a bit longer. You don't need high end industrial equipment, you can get a lever-action capping machine for about $50. But you need glass bottles of course, and do need to be very careful about sterilising the bottles and keeping them clean.

For extra bragging rights, you could look at bottle fermenting to create the carbonation. We used to make ginger beer and cider that way (back when we had more time and less money). Be aware it creates a minor amount of alcohol (normally 0.5% abv, about 1/10th the strength of a beer) as a side effect.

You can't carbonate anything but plain water in a soda stream.
They explode.
(Ask me how I know).

The simplest and cheapest flexible setup is something like this:

https://www.seriouseats.com/pros-cons-diy-carbonation-rig

I would not. Don't bother using the paintball tanks as in that example. They're harder to come by and fill, use non-food safe lube, and tend to be more expensive per unit of CO2 than getting a standard CO2 swap tank from a Home Brew shop or Welding Store.

5-10lb CO2 tanks will do you fine.

A soda siphon like those made by Isi, charged with standard CO2 cartridges is an option for making small batches and serving them right out of the container. And there are some soda stream style carbonators from other companies that can handle it. You can't generally put this stuff into other bottles. You'll burn off too much CO2, and there will be far too much foaming to be practical.

At the larger scale sodas can be force carbonated in a keg, as is done with beer. Then dispensed into standard glass bottles for capping. But you need a tool called a bottle filler to maintain carbonation and combat foam. They're a little over $100 at the low end, Beer Gun is the common brand. Though similar things can be made from cheaper home brew parts. A used 5 gallon corny keg will run ~$80 bucks.

There are smaller kegs like 1.75g cannon balls, and other smaller kegs that can be had cheaper than new 5 gallon kegs. But generally not as cheap as a used one. Though sometimes these come as kits with regulators, hookups and hosing.

A standard hand clamp style bottle cappers is like $35.

After that.

Generally to carbonate you want things to be as cold as practically possible. So it's best to start with cold liquid, and have a fridge large enough to completely chill what you're carbonating. Preferably while it's connected to pressure. There are calculators online to tell you how many PSI you need to throw at it. For how long. To get a given carb level. Soft often sit at the highest levels of commonly used carbonation. 3-4 atmospheres.

It's quite a lot of gas, and it's hard to accomplish at home.

You need to filter the every loving fuck. Out of any syrup or juices used. Any amount particulate will give sites for bubbles to form, and prevent CO2 from dissolving.

And you absolutely want to minimize head space in any container. The more air space there is the more gas it takes and the harder it is for CO2 to dissolve.

There are special lids for commonly used home brew kegs with carbonation diffusers attach them that make carbonation more efficient/reliable. It'd be worth looking into.

All of the home brewing equipment stuff is already well discussed, so I'll just add a few pieces of minutiae.

1. you need to be extremely dedicated to cleanliness and sanitation processes.

2. you can look into a process used by home cider makers called back sweetening. Most people don't like completely dry cider, so cider makers have figured out how to add sugar back to cider after it's done fermenting. The reason we're all concerned about fermentation, even where it's just soda, is because yeast is everywhere and it loves sugar.

The two byproducts of yeast eating sugar are ethanol and carbon dioxide. I find the user forum (not on reddit) called HomebrewTalk to be extremely accessible and thorough for people just getting started and may have folks who have already successfully done what you would like to do.

3. if you aren't dead set on using bottles, I find home kegging to be extremely easy, more predictable, and less dangerous than bottling which is messy and challenging for high-sugar products. If you're planning to carbonate yourself, you're going to need a keg, a CO2 bottle and a regulator anyhow. While I do have one of the specialty carbonation lids discussed, I'm not 100% sure it gives a better outcome than force carbing without it.

My own anecdote is that I once made n/a carbonated lemonade for a sober friend's wedding. The successful route had me carbonate extremely cold, plain water, to which I added a lemonade syrup after the water was fizzy enough for my taste. Getting the sweetened lemonade to take the carbonation just didn't happen.

I know Fanta makes a Pina Colada. A lousy Pina Colada at that. I was thinking about making a Pina Colada flavored soda with natural flavors. And actually have it taste like coconut and not just pineapple which basically what Fanta's version tastes like. It's be a good summer drink for the beach.

Yes! I started r/Cordials to document the ones I’ve made.

Been making my own cel-ray for a few years since it’s become really hard to find. I used Alton Browns recipe and tweaked to taste from there https://altonbrown.com/recipes/celery-soda/

I've been making my own sodas for a while but I only use fresh fruit and that can be limiting. One recipe thats easy, cheap and pretty good is lemon soda.

Ingredients:

- 400 grams of granulated sugar.

- 300 ml of water.

- Cest of 4 lemons.

- A little squeeze of 1 lemon.

​

Put all the ingredients on a pot at slow heat, stir ocasionally and remove from the heat just before it starts to boil. Let it cool at room temperature, filter the syrup to get rid of the cest and pour it on a bottle to store it on a fridge. When its cold, pour a little bit of the syrup on a glass and fill it with club soda. You get more or less 500ml of syrup with this recipe and usually the syrup makes me 5 liters of soda.

Edit: When cesting the lemons, be sure to get only the yellow part because the with part of the skin is pretty bitter.