As mentioned in this post – Long Weekending – we recently bought a new Soda Stream from Harvey Norman.

This week, we’ll take a look at my new SodaStream.

The one we bought is this one. It comes with an 2 flavour bottles – Cola and Lemonade – plus a c02 canister which will make 40 litres of bubbly drink and 1 one litre water bottle. It is an incredibly good value deal.

In fact such good value that if you pick up a 60 litre gas bottle while you are there, you can go home and make 100 litres of soda water for just over $100. That works out to around $1 per litre.

Future gas bottles retail at $51.95 – you bring in the old one and swap it for a new one – and make approximately 60 litres of bubbly water. You will then be making your bubbly water for .86 cents a litre. No more lugging soda water home from the supermarket. YAY!

Here is a look at the gas probe that goes into the bottle and fizzes it up, and the place where you twist your bottle into. The machine is super simple to use, and every 60 bottles or so you’ll have to replace the gas canister, which is also very easy to do. You do get an instruction book as well.

The gas canister lives inside the back part of the unit. You just press that button and pull the top upwards.

And here you see it pulled apart.

You can use tap water, rain water, any kind of water – and you can even bubble up things like white wine or some forms of alcohol, though it does mean you’ll have to find a good way of washing the water bottle afterwards. We have a filter tap installed here which I use.

There is an option to hack it and use larger c02 canisters. We have not done that here yet so all I can say about that is you can search for SodaStream hack in your search engine and you’ll see multiple different options.

I don’t use syrups or cordial with my mineral water very often. I find them to be too sweet and I have grown to love that tangy bite of plain mineral water. When I feel like I am coming down with a cold, I might do half orange juice, half soda water over ice. This makes a fizzy awesomeness and the super coldness of the ice soothes my throat.

From time to time, I put fruit in just to make it a treat. The fruit takes on that tangy bite, and the mineral water takes on the flavour of the fruit. You can use any fruit and even some vegetables like carrots if you are so inclined.

I’ve written one post on the blog about cutting up an orange the fancy way and putting it into my mineral water. I’ve also posted about making sparkling ice tea here, just scroll down past the cinnamon muffins.

For the next few Saturdays, I am going to write a post about the different ways I use the soda water – or Mineral Water, if you’re posh – that I create with my SodaStream. After that, I’ll post one every now and then when I try something new.

Citrus is in season right now, and I’ve been citrus-ing it up just lately. Next week I’ll show you a fruit which people would not normally think of putting in their mineral water.