So­das­tream Rev­o­lu­tion: The Best Home Car­bon­a­tor Yet

We’ve been look­ing at a bunch of bar gear late­ly, and to­day’s gad­get might seem like a bit of an odd fit. But it’s a great ad­di­tion to any kitchen, and es­pe­cial­ly to any po­ten­tial bar­tenders, as well as any fam­i­lies who are tired of spend­ing a lot of mon­ey on so­da. Bot­tles add up- en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly, and in terms of space on your shelves, and in weight while you’re car­ry­ing them.

The So­das­tream Rev­o­lu­tion is the lat­est in a line of home car­bon­a­tors- we’ve tried sev­er­al out in the past. Some of them are cute and play­ful, and oth­ers are classy, as we wrote about ear­li­er this year. And we’re ex­cit­ed about some of the up­dates that are yet to come that we pre­viewed at the IHA House­wares show re­cent­ly. The newest mod­el takes the same CO2 car­tridges- ours came with a 60L car­bon­a­tion car­tridge that should make around 60 liters of so­da, de­pend­ing on a few vari­ables like the tem­per­a­ture of the wa­ter and how fizzy you make it.

And that leads us straight to the best part- you’ve al­ways had some lev­el of con­trol over the end prod­uct. But with the Rev­o­lu­tion, you can di­rect­ly se­lect from four dif­fer­ent car­bon­a­tion lev­els, and en­joy con­sis­tent re­sults. As with the some of their oth­er mod­els, you’ll have a few col­or op­tions here- ours was black, but sil­ver, white, cream choic­es are avail­able (or will be short­ly). Un­like any of the pre­vi­ous ver­sions, this one re­quires pow­er- just plug it in- but has a more gad­gety look and feel and even an LCD screen that al­lows you to see how much CO2 is left in the car­tridge. It’s sleek, sexy, and sets up nice­ly next to, say, your Keurig sin­gle-cup cof­fee mak­er.

The bot­tles are the same- you have a choice be­tween plas­tic or more at­trac­tive glass, and we rec­om­mend buy­ing a spare. They come with lids that help keep your so­da fresh- and re­mem­ber that you’ll on­ly be car­bon­at­ing wa­ter (trust us, oth­er liq­uids don’t re­al­ly work well). The build qual­i­ty of this ma­chine is the best yet, and sharp­er, more sta­ble and sol­id than any of the oth­er ma­chines we’ve tried. The on­ly re­al down­side we no­ticed was that the bot­tle con­nec­tion mech­a­nism is a bit more finicky than many of their oth­er ma­chines, most like­ly be­cause of the new elec­tron­ic car­bon­a­tion sys­tem.

We’ve talked in depth about their fla­vors and mix­es be­fore, but a quick note on the syrups. They’re con­tin­u­al­ly im­prov­ing, in fact- the first ones we tried used ar­ti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, but now a com­plete line of nat­u­ral­ly-sweet­ened so­das are avail­able. Many might not quite com­pare to the orig­i­nals- the co­la isn’t quite as good as Pep­si or Coke- but we love the Nat­u­ral Root Beer, Ton­ic, and Gin­ger Ales, and some of the best are unique, like their ex­cel­lent Black Cur­rant Pear and Cran­ber­ry Rasp­ber­ry. Di­et ver­sions (and even ze­ro calo­rie) ver­sions are avail­able as well, and you can ex­pect to get the equiv­a­lent of 33 cans or so per bot­tle of syrup. So­das­tream al­so of­fers a pret­ty good line of “essences”, for those who want some fla­vor but no sug­ar, with mint, or­ange, lemon-lime, and raps­ber­ry avail­able. Ex­pect to spend about $5 to $10 a bot­tle, and keep in mind the car­bon­a­tion costs- you’ll still save mon­ey over time, es­pe­cial­ly if you are pay­ing to buy so­da wa­ter reg­u­lar­ly.

The Rev­o­lu­tion is sim­ple, fast, and a per­fect gift for the per­son who wants their own so­da foun­tain. It doesn’t yet make recipes for you, but that’s part of the fun. Avail­able now, on­line and in stores, for $199.