There are two beverages that I would be hard pressed to live without. Tea and Diet Coke. I love tea, but I’m addicted to Diet Coke. I drink the 20 ounce plastic bottles from vending machines at work and cans at home. Even though I recycle, I often feel guilty at the number of bottles and cans that I go through in a week. For this reason, I happily accepted the offer to review the SodaStream Fountain Jet soda maker. I was eager to see if the machine would offer fountain style taste and if it would help me save money and reduce can usage at home.
SodaStream sent me the Fountain Jet Starter Kit along with a selection of their soda mixes and favored water drops.
Package Contents
Fountain Jet soda maker
110 Liter carbonator gas cylinder
2 1 liter bottles with caps
User manual
The starter kit does not come with any soda mixes, so you’ll need to buy them separately. They are priced at $3.99 – $4.99, with quite a few flavors (20-30) to choose from, including diet and non-diet flavors. Since I am diabetic, I requested samples of the diet mixes and was sent Diet Cola, Diet Root Beer, Diet Creme Soda, Diet Cranberry Rasberry, and others. The diet mixes use Splenda. They also sent me some of their non-diet mixes and I was surprised that they are also made with a mixture of Sucrose and Splenda.
The machine itself is made of plastic and is relatively light weight. It stands 16.7 tall, and just barely fits under my kitchen cabinets.
I was a little worried that the process to make drinks would be more trouble than it would be worth. I’m happy to report that my worries were completely unfounded. I am not sure how much easier this system could be…
To get started, you remove the back cover on the soda machine.
This is where the included carbonator gas cartridge will be installed.
Just unscrew the protective plastic cap from the top and then…
Screw it into the fitting on the back of the Fountain Jet and snap the cover back into place.
Open a soda mix flavor that you want to use and fill the cap full of the syrup.
Then wash one of the included liter bottles. FYI: The bottles can not be washed in a dishwasher… Then fill the bottle to the fill mark with cold water. I always keep a Brita filter pitcher in my refrigerator, so this is what I use to fill the bottle.
The bottle then screws into the threaded fitting on the front of the Fountain Jet.
The top part of the Fountain Jet can swivel out to make it easier to screw in the bottle.
Here we see the filled bottle of water installed in the SodaStream ready to be carbonated.
To release the gas from the carbonator cartridge into the water bottle, you just press the large Grey button on the top of the Fountain Jet in short firm bursts. The first few times you press the button, you’ll hear and see gas release into the bottle, but you have to keep pressing till you hear a loud buzz. Once you press the button and hear a buzz, you press it two more times and you’re done. Swivel the bottle out, unscrew it, pour in the cap full of soda mix syrup, screw on the bottle cap and shake the bottle gently back and forth a couple of times to mix the syrup and that’s it.
The carbonator cartridge that comes with the Fountain Jet starter kit is supposed to create up to 110 liters (bottles) of soda. New cartridges cost $21.99 and require that you return the used cartridge. If you don’t return it, you will be charged an additional $15.00 fee. Thankfully, a return shipping label and box are provided to make the return more convenient.
One bottle of Diet Root Beer ready to drink.
I’m curious if anyone has caught on to the fact that The Fountain Jet does not require any batteries or electricity to work. I know that I was a bit surprised when I unpacked the contents and did not see an AC adapter.
I’ve made five liters of soda with the Fountain Jet so far and I have liked all the flavors except the Diet Cream Soda which was a bit too sweet for me (even though it’s diet). The Diet Cola is surprisingly good and tastes more like Diet Coke than Pepsi. Which is good because I don’t care that much for the flavor of Pepsi. You can also use the MyWater flavors with the Fountain Jet to make sparkling water aka seltzer water. I tried the Berry flavor and it wasn’t something I’d probably try again. I’d rather have the more flavorful flavors.
The one liter bottles have been the perfect size to share with another person during a meal or with a snack. The bottles keep the fizz in the drinks even if you don’t drink them all in one sitting.
We’ve established that the Fountain Jet is easy to use and makes good tasting sodas, but is it economical? Here are the consumables:
$21.99 per 110 liter carbonator = ~ .20 cents a liter
$4.99 per soda mix (makes 12 liters or 50 servings) = ~ .42 cents a liter
That works out to a cost of about .62 cents per liter. Let’s use Diet Coke as a comparison. The prices that I’m going to quote are local for me here in Columbus, Indiana at the time of this review. The 12pk can and 2 liter prices are sale prices for a local grocery store.
$4.00 for a 12pk of 12 ounce cans (works out to ~ .94 cents per liter)
$1.25 for a single 20 oz bottle (works out to about $2.11 per liter)
$1.00 for a 2 liter bottle (.50 cents a liter)
It appears that the SodaStream Fountain Jet does save you money when compared to buying cans or individual bottles. But it does not save you any money when you compare to buying a 2 liter bottle. That said, I don’t normally buy 2 liter bottles because I usually only drink about half of it before it goes flat. That is one of the advantages to using the Fountain Jet to make 1 liter bottles, I find that I don’t waste as much. Another advantage is that I don’t have to lug and store multiple 12 and 24pk boxes of cans. So for me, this product gets two thumbs up. I’ll write an update to the review after my first experience exchanging carbonation cartridge.
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Product Information
| Price: | $89.99 |
| Manufacturer: | SodaStream |
| Pros: |
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
This looks pretty cool – seems like something good for experimenting with flavors, too, since you could try mixing and matching syrups. I wonder if you can use regular soda syrup found at places like Costco and Sam’s Club, or if the soda-to-water ratio is different with those.
How does the carbonation compare to drinks from a regular soda fountain at a fast food restaurant? I generally like fountain soda better than stuff from a can or bottle – it seems crisper and fizzier to me.
$21.99 for 33gm of co2 is the outrageous part here! The threading of the co2 cylinder seems to be different from standard paintball cylinders locking you into their refilling service plus the non-green aspect of shipping cylinders back and forth (If the manufacture reads this I hope they understand that this stuff leads to bad karma). A bit of googling turns up http://www.sodaclubrefill.com which has products to aid in refilling the cylinders either yourself (I have 2 10# co2 cylinders for the beer kegerator anyway) or by a willing local paintball shop via a adapter to the standard WGA-ASA threading. Skipping the math, my 10# co2 cylinder would refill the 33gm cylinder about 130 times making the co2 cost go from $.20/liter to $.0015/liter which would make the system cheaper than even a $1 2-liter bottle.
Oops my bad, the co2 cans from SodaStream are 33 oz not 33 gram, still it gets your co2 cost down to about $.04 per liter. And that is assuming it costs 21.99 to fill a 10# cylinder, in reality it would likely cost half that.
@Chris Thanks for the idea about trying to find an alternative filling option for the cylinders. I’ll give that some thought.
@Claire The fizziness with the Fountain Jet is great I think. And if you want more fizz, you just press the button a couple of extra times.
I have a colleague that has one of these. She has stopped buying pop at all. Now we only ever see the 1 liter bottle on her desk. She likes the diet Dr. Pepper equivalent.
I have tried a couple flavors and just a word of warning to non-diet pop drinkers, you can taste the splenda. I guess you would get used to it.
My wife is a huge fan of fizzy water and we were going through a 12 pack of seltzer/week if not more. I looked into DIY methods e.g. http://www.truetex.com/carbonation.htm and SodaClub. It looks like the DIY methods are a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper in the long run (if you’re just doing seltzer, we don’t do sodas with syrups). However, the DIY methods have a distinct “science project” aesthetic to them, and we decided to go with the SodaClub Penguin. We really like it so far, though it is a bit more expensive than the basic sets.
My favorite fizzy drink now is from QT and is a fizzy green tea with berry flavor. I make it at home with bottled seltzer water and those little single packets of tea mix. I’ve been thinking about a home seltzer maker for this and the diet Dr Pepper my wife drinks.
I’ll have to look into this!
I have to say I thought sodastream had gone bust years ago. This is the first one I have seen in a long time. I am going to go and do a little research into their prices in England now. I drink about 4 litres of soda water a day and it would be very handy to find an alternative to filling up the shopping trolley every time I go to the supermarket.
Wow, Soda Stream – this brings back so many memories. I used to love this as a kid. That smell of the carbonated water as you unscrewed it from the machine, dropping Vimto into it and watching it fizz up …
Hmmm, might well invest in one of these myself!
@Kev – LG What is Vimto?
RO:
If you go to Boots the Chemist they still stock Soda Stream Machines and all the necessaries =)
Julie:
Vimto is a mixed fruits based sparkling beverage, very tasty!
This looks very similar to Soda Club http://www.sodaclub.com. We have one and…
1. It’s very easy to use, but get used to keeping the dedicated liter bottles of water in your fridge.
2. It makes great Club Soda.
3. The taste of the sodas is ehh. We’ve tried them all and some are “ok” others are well…like the really cheap no-brand stuff from the grocery store.
4. The bottles needed to be replaced once a year.
5. You can’t easily use other soda syrups as the mixture ratio isn’t the same (we tried with Coke syrup).
We have the Soda Club as well. Love it.
A couple of tips:
1) you can save on the CO2 by letting the device buzz once and then leaving the bottle screwed in for a minute
2) try soda water + frozen juice concentrates
Regarding the comment on delivery, I think that they have some sort of local delivery person so the canisters are probably transported in bulk. When I order refills, I am instructed to leave the canisters out where they can be seen. Within a few days they are replaced with my order.
I drink a lot of soda water…and where I live, since the tap water is generally blechh, unsweetened soda water is a huge seller by the liter in plastic or 12 packs in cans. My wife bought me the Soda Club Penguin for my birthday this year. I drink an average of 5 liter bottles a day. I don’t have to haul cans from the store and back to the redemption center. UPS will take the ship-back empties and I bike right past a UPS shipping center on my way to work. Simple, easy, great. We use the glass bottles. I’m not a big fan of the flavored sodas (not a big fan of diet or non-diet commercial sodas either)…but find them decent. The big thing for me is not having to haul sacks of cans to the redemption center. One of the nicest and most practical gifts I’ve ever received.
I also am addicted to Diet Coke–however the only reason I drink it is for the caffeine. This may be a stupid question but, is the caffeine content in these DIY drinks similar to standard diet coke? When I worked in an outside office I was able to to easily feed my addiction, however, I work from home now and the DIY systems look very appealing to me.
Finally!
I had a sodastream as a kid in the UK (the bottles were heavy glass then and only held about 12oz, but you CO2 cylinders look about the same size (they were painted steel then, not aluminum…) I grew up drinking straight up soda water, or sometimes we would add some apple juice concentrate. For years I’ve wondered why they didn’t have them here…
Soda Stream is a great party trick. The loud “buzz” really freaked out my co-workers. I take it to work whenever we get a new employee, and everyone else gathers ’round to watch.
Favorite flavor is diet cola mixed with diet cream soda. Tastes similar to vanilla diet Coke from Sonic.
How come you don’t mix the syrup in the water before carbonating?
@Famous Because the instructions tell you to do it afterwards
Also, the nozzle to carbonate the water goes down into the bottle / liquid.
Hello,
I recently purchased an adapter from sodaclubrefill.com and want to share the terrible experience that I had there.
I ordered their valve on May 20 and it was reported as back-ordered several weeks later. I recently received a valve that I thought would allow me to refill my existing Soda Club tanks with a standard co2 station. However, I found that this was not possible and I would need another $50 adapter from sodaclubrefill.com. I checked the website and found that the text describing the product I had ordered had been updated to clarify this since then, but that text was not their when I ordered. Furthermore, the product was incorrectly linked to a different product that is actually $60 more and would allow refill through standard tanks.
I politely pointed this out to the website contact and asked for a refund. He was extremely rude and insulting but said that he would still issue a refund when he received the returned item. Thus, I returned the item. Now, the merchant has suddenly changed his mind and, in a slew of insults, told me that he will not issue the refund because I am an “illiterate idiot” and a “punk” for telling people about my problems with the valve on review sites. Please keep in mind that my tone was always professional and I never insulted anyone. His insults came as a complete surprise.
I would suggest that if anyone considers doing business with this website, please pm me for details and I can send you copies of the incredibly rude emails sent to me.
What “lucrece” neglected to mention was the demanding and extortive tone to her emails. We do NOT succomb to extortion or vile demands, all due to Ms Lucrece Borrego’s inability to comprehend detailed product information.
In spite of her unnecessary threats and toxic demands, we gave her the benefit of the doubt by offering her a refund. Instead of accepting this offer and writing the incident off as a simple consumer misunderstanding, she proceeded to libel our good name in this and many other forums for the sole malicious purpose of harming a good business. It is lamentable that Ms. Borrego’s acts are one of the root causes for most consumer prices to skyrocket and make it impossible for small business people to conduct an honorable business.
Our satisfied customers on our website and user forum are indicative of the quality and care we take in producing a product.
It is unfortunate that Ms. Borrego’s extortive techniques will only fail and serve no other purpose other than to illustrate her immaturity which is commensurate with her young age. Please take the time to stop by our website at sodaclubrefill.com and see for yourself that we have a great product that can save you alot of money on CO2 Refills.
Ms. Borrego should focus on honing her social skills instead of advertising her vile disregard for common courtesy and human interaction.