sodastream Fountain Jet Sparkling Water Maker, Kit w/60l Cylinder, Silver

All I can say is, "Wow, what a great purchase!" The Sodastream is a really good device if you are a soda junkie like me. Let me dispel and affirm a few of the points about this piece of equipment.Will it save you money in the long run? Barely. It costs you roughly $0.50 per liter bottle of soda (the cost of the mix. When you compare that to the fact that, at least where I am in the the Southern US, a 2l bottle of soda usually costs me about $1.20-ish (averaged)it looks like I am saving about $0.10/liter. So, not a huge savings here, but when you compare it to the costs of 16oz bottled and 12oz can drinks, then yes, you end up saving a lot more. It takes about three cans to equal a liter (33.8 oz), which generally averages well over $0.50/12oz can from a machine, or I usually pay about $5.00/12 pack or $0.41/can, so again, depending on how you usually purchase your soft drinks, you could be saving a bit more, but it still averages out to only about 10-20 cents saving per liter. So, strictly monetarily speaking, in terms of saving...meh.However, along with that rather minuscule savings, you also get several other selling points that I do think makes this worth purchasing. First off is the environmental aspects. You are continuously recycling plastic bottles, rather than adding one to the trash or recycle pile every time you buy a soda. As somewhat of a clean-freak, the knowledge that I alone was the one who washed and cleaned the bottle is very reassuring. You use tap water to make the soda with, and low and behold, the bottles also work to carry just plain old water in. I was amazed that they could hold both soda and plain water with no ill side-effects (this is sarcasm folks). They really are good bottles and you can use them to carry other stuff in if you want. You may not think there is a big difference in whether you are drinking water from your tap or from a bottle you purchased at a store, but there is a massive carbon footprint attached to that bottled drink from the store that is not attached to the water from your faucet. If you don't think so, the next time you see a bottled water truck, go and wrap your lips around the tailpipe and take a deep drag and then tell me there is no carbon footprint attached to that bottle of water.The real selling point of the Sodastream is the health factor. Is soda good for you? Absolutely not. Can it be made better for you? Yes it can, and Sodastream seems to have done so. Carbonated water in and of itself is relatively harmless. It does contribute to dehydration, but essentially it is just H2O with a couple extra molecules attached to it now. The real hazard is the chemicals that soda makers use to preserve and cheapen their formulas. Not only has Sodastream removed a lot of those chemicals, but they even managed to cut the sugar content in half for most of their formulas. This is done by substituting Splenda for half of the sugar. I can appreciate there are many of you who will scoff at this and say "That's no better than the aspartame." Actually, it is, and the fact that you are drinking real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup also lowers the starch intake (starch becomes a sugar molecule in your body once it is ingested). Yes, you are essentially trading sugar substitutes, but rest assured, you are trading up in regards to this.I was a person who consumed several 12oz cans of diet soda a day. What I can tell you after just a few weeks with the Sodastream is that I actually feel better everyday. I do not feel bloated, even when I end up drinking an entire liter of soda in just a few hours, which I don't recommend by the way (I have no self-control). And here's something I know you don't want to hear about, but I'm going to tell you anyway because I think there are probably others who have this issue, but my bowel movements became a lot more regular once I stopped drinking commercial sodas. It's not hard to make the soda at all, but you do actually have to make it and that has also deterred my habitual drinking habits somewhat as well. When you actually make all the soda you consume in a day it really starts to put things into perspective.As to flavors, well, most of the knock-off copies of popular soda formulas are generally not that good. With no corn syrup or aspartame, there is no way they can get the recipes that close to the original. I found the Coke-Zero to be the best of the lot, but I didn't drink that before so maybe I just didn't have as much to compare it to. It is unfortunate, but most of the caffeinated stuff is the knock-offs. Personally, I like the energy drink. It doesn't have taurine in it, just a lot of caffeine and it tastes about the same as a Red Bull, if you like that taste like I do. Where Sodastream really shines is the normal, generic flavors. Their regular orange soda is awesome, but wait till you try the "Naturals" they are selling now too. The "Naturals" flavors are a bit more expensive, and they make about half as much, but the first ingredient on them is pure cane sugar, and there usually aren't more than six or seven ingredients in the whole thing. The Naturals Orange-Pineapple is the absolute bomb. Diet Cranberry/Raspberry is another that is just absolutely awesome. If you have kids, these are great soda flavors anyway because you may not want to pump your kids full of caffeine before puberty. A lot of these are certainly no worse, and probably a lot better for you, than soft drinks like Kool-Aid.Recipes for your own mixes are popping up everywhere on the internet now. Imagine making real ginger ale from ginger root you cut up and boiled yourself. My wife wanted a cherry soft drink, not cherry cola, so she went out and bought black cherry concentrate, and now she just carbonates a bottle of water, then adds a spoonful of that into a glass of it whenever she wants. I actually do a half and half mix with the cherry concentrate and the afore mentioned Diet Cranberry/Raspberry. The black cherry concentrate, which is loaded with sugar by the way, helps cut out that super sweet Splenda taste. And on that note, if you find these mixes to be too sweet (Splenda will do that) you just don't put in as much formula as the directions indicate. I make the regular and diet orange soda with about 25% less than what they call for. Carbonated water by itself is pretty bitter, and usually all you need to do to get rid of that Splenda sweetness if you don't like it is to increase the ratio of carbonated water to formula.So, by now you are probably asking yourself "Is this really worth the money?" I would say yes, but probably not for the most obvious reason. No, you're not going to save a ton of money switching to this. Strictly monetarily speaking, you basically break even. You still have to buy flavors, which thankfully are starting to show up in more and more stores so you don't have to order them (good luck trying to find Cream Soda though). The bottles are really expensive, and only come in liter and half liter sizes (and we are all thankful for the 16oz bottle btw, they are much easier to take with you than the liter bottles), so you should probably plan for at least one bottle per person (a liter of soda really isn't that much by today's standards). Carbonation tanks are refillable through an exchange program, and will run you roughly thirty dollars a pop. I'm a hardcore soda drinker and one tank barely made it a month for us. I will say that we did screw up a lot just experimenting though, so you can probably get a little more out of them after the first round. At any rate, you may want to have a second tank on hand which costs around sixty dollars. That "breaking even" margin grows a little tighter when you factor in these costs. But, for essentially the same price or amount of money, you can be drinking something that is much better for you, not healthy but not near as harmful, and soemthing that doesn't leave a massive carbon footprint just getting to the store so you can be overcharged for it. You can control the flavoring, you can create your own combinations (Lemon-Lime mixed with just about anything is pretty awesome, you can tweak the amounts of formula your using till you dial it in to exactly what you like, and, well, it's fun. It really is just plain, good old fashioned fun making the Sodastream fart (yes it lets out a big, flatulent sounding burp when you inject the carbonation). It's safe enough for kids to use, and they will get a real thrill out of creating their own flavors. So, I would argue that it is worth the money, but strictly as a means of substituting soemthing that is better for you than the alternative, and a system in which you get to control several aspects of the process. And this does help the environment by reducing your personal carbon footprint (so often we forget to factor in those small purchases like sodas from the machine, when in fact that is more wasteful than buying the twelve packs). I don't lug cokes in from the car every shopping trip now, which is super fantastic, and the money I save at the store there pretty much pays for my Sodastream products now. And the nice thing is, I have a selection. It's not just Diet Coke in my fridge anymore. Now I can have grape soda in the afternoon, with a root beer chaser at dinner, followed by a mild, but tasty, diet ginger ale by a roaring fire in the evening. At the very least, Sodastream has made me classy, and you can't put a price on that. LOLLastly, I know a few of you are already thinking, "I don't drink tap water." To you I say shame on you. At least here in the US we have some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, and if you are buying bottled water you are most likely still drinking tap water, so go an buy yourself a Britta filter or whatever and stop doing that. This process does require cold water, as cold as you can get it without freezing it, so we just fill all of our bottles out of the Britta pitcher in our fridge. Can you say for sure that the bottling company did the same to the water they made the soda out of?

My wife drinks several liters of seltzer a day. We buy the kind with all natural flavoring. You can imagine how many bottles we buy a week and have to carry out to the car and then into the house. Once they are empty I found myself filling a 40-gallon recycling bin with the bottles, every week! I searched Amazon knowing that there would be a soda maker for sale. The Sodastream brand had the best reviews. I also saw the machine for sale in a high-end shop in Roanoke, VA. When I returned home I immediately ordered a basic kit that included two seltzer bottles and the filling machine. I was not interested in their artificial flavorings. The machine is fairly well built but it is not commercial grade. You have to use common sense and handle it like it is made of plastic...which it is. The kit comes with two plastic bottles and a charged cylinder of CO2 gas. The bottles get filled with water and then screw into the filling machine. The bottles are made of sturdy plastic with a sealed cap to help retain the gas once you charge the bottle. The threads are custom-made for the machine. You can't use your regular soda bottles on the Sodastream. The CO2 cylinder is also fitted with a custom thread pattern exclusive to the Sodastream device. Here is where you should pay careful attention!It works best to chill the bottles of water before you charge them with gas. Sometimes I even put them in the freezer for 30 min before charging. Cold water will hold more gas and you'll get a better seltzer. To charge the bottle just screw it into the machine and hold the charge button down. You'll see the bubbles rise in the bottle. The machine has a pressure system that buzzes when you have put enough in the bottle. Some people jump when the buzz sounds but you get used to it. I usually charge twice to get a full fizz. Once charged remove the bottle and put the cap on. At this point the seltzer is unflavored. Mix it into a glass of juice or whatever you want. I choose to refill the store-bought seltzer bottles. I use a funnel and SLOWLY pour in the seltzer so as NOT to drive off the fizz through agitation. Like pouring beer I guess. I then add natural fruit flavorings that can be found on Amazon. Right now I an using a concentrated raspberry juice and a powdered lemon-lime flavoring. I put these flavored bottles in the fridge and then refill the charging bottles because my wife will chug down the two I just made in no time! The machine works flawlessly. But wait. There is more.Let me teach you about CO2 and refills. Many people ask about self-refilling of the gas cylinder. For most just follow the instructions for getting a refill through the mail or locally through a Sodrastream dealer. I, however, purchased a kit that allows me to refill my own Sodastream cylinders at home. Is this for you? Probably not if you have to ask. To do it I replaced the custom brass threads on the cylinder with a brass adapter that came with the self-fill kit.This removes the Sodrastream "anti-fill" booby trap. The tricky Sodastream booby trap just makes it slow to charge at home. This lit also allows me to screw the Sodastream bottle directly to a 10 or 20 pound bulk CO2 tank. I have these bottles already for paintball refills and also portable tire refilling. Simply attach the Sodastream cylinder to the larger cylinder. Then, turn the larger tank UPSIDE Down so LIQUID CO2 flows into the Sodastream cylinder. When I hear the "hiss" of the flow stop I flip the tank back over, close the vale, unscrew the Sodastream cylinder and I am good to go. If you don't understand what I am describing you probably don't want to get this involved with self-recharging. You can't over-fill the Sodastream cylinder with these little 10 and 20 pound gas cylinders. You don't need to weight them to see how much they are filled. And don't ever believe there is such a thing as human grade carbon dioxide. I work in a lab and have been working with gasses for over 20 years. In the old days people worried about cross-contamination because some gas cylinders were filled with a variety of gasses. Today that just won't happen. If you own the refill tank and always get it refilled it with carbon dioxide at the beer distributor or welding shop, it will always have CO2 in it. Obviously. Plus the valves on CO2 tanks pretty much exclude you from accidentally filling it with Saran gas or something like that. It costs me around $12.00 to get my refill tank charged. I can fill a LOT of Sodastream tanks with my refill tank. And I can do it whenever I want. But again,if you don't know how to handle gas, just go with the Sodastream system of refilling.In conclusion I love the Sodastream system. I have used it for a number of months and have had NO problems. Go for it and you will not be disappointed.