SodaStream: Not (really) a commercial

This blog is a special request (holla, Ronda!).  I do take those, by the way. I just don't ever get any.

Here at 305, we love us some seltzer. Neither of us drink cokes (do I have to reiterate that down here, "coke" covers all the sweetened carbonated beverages? I didn't think so.) but we love the fizzy water. We've been buying canned seltzer forever and would go through two cases a week. That's 24 cans of seltzer weekly, for those of you like me who are math-challenged.

Enter the SodaStream into our lives. Our friends Marc and Sara got one. We'd seen them, but weren't sure they'd make the water fizzy enough, that it wouldn't go flat, blah blah blah. They gave us a test run and we were sold.

Allow my beautiful assistant to demonstrate.

He's enthusiastic about his job.

It's a pretty simple contraption. You get two thick bottles (I think you can choose other bottle options - this is what we got), a CO2 cartridge or two or more (depending on how many you want) and the sprshhhter. (That's a highly technical term.) You will need to provide tap water. I guess you could use bottled water, but that kind of eliminates the lower-waste benefit of this, and you're not getting flouridated water. Don't get me started on that. It's a soapbox issue of mine.

To make seltzer, Pootie fills the bottles to the fill line.

Then he screws the bottle onto the sprshhhter.

Then he pumps CO2 into the bottle until it makes a very rude noise three times (the sprshhhter, not Pootie).

And BOOM! Presto! Fizzy water!

Yes, that's a Berner on that glass.

At this point, you could flavor the water. They have little bottles of stuff like lemon, orange and berry that aren't sweetened and are pretty good, and they also have sweetened mixes. We haven't tried those - as I said, we're not really into cokes.

We keep two bottles in the fridge. They'll hold their fizz for about a day or two, although we usually have emptied them out before the end of the day and replaced them.

When the CO2 cartridge runs out, we take it to Bed, Bath and Beyotch - I mean Beyond - and exchange it for a refilled one. Yes, we've already found where to get them exchanged in Canada. (That's just how we roll around here at 305.)

A hand model, I ain't.

We figure in a year, we're saving roughly 1,248 cans from recycling. And it saves us money, too. And we're getting flouridated fizzy water. Win- win!

So if you're looking for a nice gift for your dad for Father's Day, and he likes fizzy water (or cokes), here's an idea. I'd get one for my dad, but they already have one. (I'm seriously hosed for Father's Day. Accepting any suggestions.)

So check it out at the SodaStream site. Frankly, their video is better produced than mine, but also cheesier. Well, kind of. Thanks for the help, Pootie.