Okay, after about oh 70 or 80 liters of pop with the Soda Stream machine… we have finally perfect the recipe for make your own syrup and flavoring!!!

First, you have to make a simple syrup. And for pop, it needs to be a little stronger than say for cocktails. 2:1 at least.

We use 4 cups of water and 8 cups of sugar. Use a low to medium heat, not too hot, because you don’t want to boil it and make a heavy thick syrup. Just a little heat to make it dissolve nice without grainy crystals of sugar forming.

Once it’s all nice and dissolved, lots of stirring, just set the pot aside to cool for a while. A good hour or so. Clean up and ready some good glass quart size canning jars. We ladled in 42 ounces of syrup into each jar and it makes 3 quarts. To each quart we add 1.5 ounces of flavoring. Gentle rocking and turning will mix the flavoring and you’re ready to make a LOT of pop.

Make sure your bottle of water is exactly at the level they say on the bottle. No more, no less. And go ahead and make it bubbly.

Once done, pour just enough syrup in to fill up the bottle, just a little below the cap line. It’s about 4 ounces of syrup. A little less. It’s just perfect. Easy, no need to measure out the stuff into another container, just pour until full.

Give it a gentle roll to mix and you’ve got sugar sweetened pop that you made from home, pretty darn easy. We went and got a couple more bottles from a lady on ebay, and that makes it easy to always have cold water ready for pop. With all the goofing around and taste testing and all, we’re almost out of our first canister. But we estimate that we’ve made at least 60 liters of pop! Or about 30 2-liters. It’s about what they said it would make. We have found that two good shots of CO2 is fine if you’re going to drink the pop right away. LIke within the day or so. With 3 people drinking it, a one liter doesn’t last that long. So I suspect that our second canister will last longer.

All in all, we’re super pleased with the thing. And the very best part? No more cans and bottles to recycle. And you don’t run out. And it’s SO bubbly and fun. I ordered three more flavors from the Prairie Moon Company… Lemon-lime, maraschino cherry and strawberry. They have a huge selection, and it’s fun to try some the new ones. We love the root beer and orange, and the grape. Cola is pretty good. The only thing about the cola, is no caffeine. So you kind of miss that little kick to the real stuff. Still, we have just resigned ourselves to getting caffiene pop when the rare occasion of eating out comes along and so far, we’ve been cool with it. I would like to try and find some Pepsi syrup though, somewhere… somehow….