Can a make mineral water with a soda stream?
Andrew Cooke: I’m saying minerall water contains minerals, fizzy or not,wheras soda water’s only defining characteristic is it’s fizziness. I’m not sure what you mean by “impure”- commercial soda water is filtered and/or distilled. This process removes minerals as well as impurities, and therefore soda water is not mineral water. The implication in labelling a commercial product “mineral water” is that it comes from a naturally pure source and has no need of processing. However, as I pointed out in my previous post, minerals can be added after processing as well. In some cases, natural mineral springs are bubbly (there are places all over the U.S. named “Soda Springs”), but a lot of commercial bottlers carbonate their product. (sorry for any confusion; I actually think we’re pretty much in agreement on mineral water being still or effervescent.) BTW, here’s and old-school Soda Siphon f
Thanks everyone, This is a great wealth of information! We’re looking at grabbing something on eBay to start with, though I like the fire extinguisher option! At the moment we get spring water (still mineral water) delivered in 15litre bottles weekly, so this will be our starting point but as a kid I always preferred the taste of the rain water at my Mum’s place so I might give that a go too. Unfortunately, everyone I know who has a spring/bore has absolutely terrible water due to too many minerals etc in it. I think in Australia soda water is, as duck described, slightly pink, and has a slight bi-carb soda-y taste. We don’t call anything else soda here. The generic name is just soft-drinks or lemondade/fanta/coke etc. I probably should have said con-gas to start with but I though that the S.Pelligrino was a global descriptor.
While I can not answer your question, mule, I can add that “mineral water” has little to nothing to do with actual mineral content versus what comes from your tap. From the persepctive of the US, I found this Kojo Nnamdi Show : The History of Bottled Water interesting.
As far as I understand, a SodaStream machine only adds the “bubbles” into what you put in it. I cannot understand how the machine would add minerals into your water. So you would have to use still mineral water etc. instead of tap water in order to create mineral water. So the difference in cost would be the same.
coca-cola used to sell dasani “mineral water” in the uk that was filtered (like a brita filter) tap water plus “minerals”. for more info, see this guardian report, which describes what they added (although if you read the article you’ll see that they ended up prodcing poison, but never mind….
