Canadian made syrup for carbonated drinks / Sodastream?
Does anyone know of a place that sells their own beverage syrups to flavour carbonated water?
Not looking for brand names, so knock off cola and or root beer is totally fine.
have you tried just fruit juice, like apple and blackberry makes a nice drink with carbonated water?
Yeah, I'm a fan. My wife, however, likes traditional soda flavours. 🤫
Monsieur Cocktail syrups are really good. I’m a big fan of their raspberry and ginger ones.
https://www.monsieur-cocktail.com/en/collections/sirops-et-tonics-a-cocktails-naturels-quebec
Interesting selection of flavours! Thank you for sharing 👍
Tacking on to this, what options are there for SodaStream-like systems that avoid US companies?
I’ve only come across a couple of European ones but they’re prohibitively expensive.
Buy the sodastream used, since the co2 bottles are more compatible that with other brands.
For co2, you can get the Canadian replacements: https://www.indigosoda.ca/en/
But some DIY brewery shops will also offer co2 refills (or you can do it yourself with a larger initial investment).
There's no reason to actually give the sodastream company money 😁
Get and adapter/conversion kit and attach a generic CO2 canister.
I use Crystal Lite packets. But I have a DrinkMate which you can put your flavours in before carbonating.
It's for my wife, who likes soft drink flavours. But I'm personally fine with all kinds of flavours, natural or otherwise 😂
I don't know any that are Canadian, but I use 0 sugar flavoured root beer packets to make homemeade "rootbeer".
Works well enough.
A&W in Canada is Canadian (They split from the American company in the 70s) so A&W Root beer is safe although I don't know about any kind of syrup.
No idea about an alternative to cola although I've found some videos of a guy making home made syrups/soda
Coke: https://youtu.be/KWaNiwcQK2M
1886 coke (for fun): https://youtu.be/IWYuPE8rkeE
A&W in Canada is Canadian (They split from the American company in the 70s) so A&W Root beer is safe although I don’t know about any kind of syrup.
You certainly pointed me in the right direction! As I was looking for A&W syrup, I came across "Fizzy-pop", and their house brand syrup is made in Canada from the look of it.
Even their Cola syrup label says "Made in Canada", so I think I found a source!! Thanks!!
Small disclaimer: their restaurants are, their store products are done by Coke
Glen and Friends is Canadian, too, so if you can't kick YouTube, at least support Canadian content!
Maple syrup I’m kidding, but tbh it could be good
You should meet my wife. LOL
No, it's impossible for me to home cook a receipe that tastes enough like cola, root beer, ginger ale, and whatever else she's in the mood for. I'm looking for a Canadian alternative to something so easily available as it is.
There's a shop in my town that refills the canisters for $6, so I just go there for that. Also, I've found a number of websites that ship large amounts of syrup (2 or 4 liters at a time) from Canada with an easy web search. I couldn't see where the syrup was actually produced, however.
Yes, I found a few places. Strangely enough, they seem to be the "same" place, operating under two different companies. Their website has a similar interface, product descriptions are the same, etc.
But their house brands of syrup are made in Canada, so I'll be going with one of them. And yeah, you have to get larger sized bottles, but I think the price works out to be similar to Sodastream syrup.
I've seen other refill places for the CO2, so that's a non-issue for me. Mostly the syrup that I was worried about.
Just ditch Sodastream if you can. They're an Israeli company that fires Palestinian workers over their religious beliefs and have production facilities on illegal settlements:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SodaStream#Controversies
I'm not ditching a perfectly good device, but I might get an alternative gas source
Sorry for the wall of text but I have this condition where any time a hobby of mine is mentioned, I info dump everything I've learned.
This is just my personal opinion, but I think the best option for gas is to find a way to use a standard tank with CGA320 thread. The reason being that just about any fire extinguisher refill shop will refill it for super cheap. I have a 5Lb tank that costs $20 to refill and lasts over a year. The main downside is that CGA320 tanks go for around $50-100, but if you get 2.5lb instead it can be a little lower. Going the paintball canister route can be a lot cheaper if you want to avoid the soda stream thread tax (even if you find an off brand compatible canister, I've found the refills are still a lot more than paintball or standard CGA320). Another benefit of going with a paintball canister is that you can use an adapter without a pressure regulator which also saves money.
For larger CGA320 tanks, you can either get an adapter with a built in pressure regulator that converts to the soda stream threads or ditch the soda stream for a carbonation cap (carb cap) and a separate pressure regulator. I find the pressure regulator + carb cap method to be better because then I can carbonate 2L at a time (the carb cap fits on any soda bottle), and I have a feeling that the OPV behavior of the normal soda stream vents out an unnecessary amount of CO2, whereas a normal regulator only uses OPV as a failsafe and won't vent unless you turn up the pressure too high. Either way you'll save a ton of money compared to the soda specific gas refills.
For paintball canisters, you just have to make sure the can you get isn't too big to fit and you get a simple brass adapter (which just has a simple blowoff relief instead of a full pressure regulator) to convert to soda stream threads (that's what I did before ditching the whole soda stream), but where I live there aren't many paintball CO2 refill shops and I haven't had any luck finding a fire extinguisher shop that would do paintball canisters. Brewing shops also sometimes do CGA320 canister refills if you have any of those near you.
Where i live, one of the local fire extinguisher companies refills them for cheaper than the "official" refills.
For sure. Get one used (super inexpensive on kijiji) and buy third party co2. No issues there, and no reason to give them money.
Can also, if you're careful about it and weigh things out correctly, open the CO2 cannisters and put dry ice in. There's loads of videos on how to do this "safely"... I.E. - not turning it into a bomb, or giving yourself frostbite