Sodastream

Hubby loves his ginger ale. He's cut down on his consumption of ginger ale, but he's never been able to kick it completely. He's given up on giving it up and consigned himself to a life of occasional indulgence in ginger ale.

In an effort to cut down on costs and to make things healthier, I've made ginger beer, or homemade ginger ale a couple of times. Although the ginger beer came out really great, it took time, effort and it just wasn't as fizzy as hubby likes it. Perhaps it would be fizzier if I had used champagne yeast, but oh well. Because of the effort and time involved in making ginger beer, I rarely made it.

Then one day, we were shopping at a mall and ran into the SodaStream soda maker! The demo lady showed us how it works and we got to try out their lemon-lime sample. Hubby and I discussed buying it and a decision to bring one home was made. We decided to bring one home for the following reasons:

- It will cut down on the amount of waste we generate.
- If we make our own syrups, we get to control the ingredients
- It will cut down on the amount of money we spend on "sugar water"

Once home, we tried it out immediately. It tasted like it has artificial sugar in it. Hubby at first thought it was due to the carbonation, but after reading up on this online, it looks like I was right. SodaStream uses Splenda to sweeten even their non-diet syrups. Since I don't particularly like the taste of artificial sweeteners and since I've resigned myself to the fact that soda is just not a health drink, I think I'll opt for making my own syrups.

It should be easy enough. I'm thinking it's probably nothing more than a flavored simple syrup. For homemade ginger ale using SodaStream, I'm planning to boil a whole lot of ginger in some sugar and water and boil it down until it has a syrupy consistency. Basically making a ginger flavored supersaturated solution. Anyways, I also found a site that lists some old-fashioned soda syrup recipes:
http://www.homemade-dessert-recipes.com/soda-fountain-recipes.html
Should be interesting and fun to go trying out the different flavors one could make!