How to make homemade soda

Apr 14, 2009 7:59 PM by Jen Klein

Posted in Food & Recipes / Entertaining / Wine & Drink Recipes

Homemade
Fizzy Fun

Last week I brought home some pomegranate molasses for a recipe. After using it for its intended purpose, I took a little taste of the molasses - and it delivered a very intense flavor sensation. On a whim, I put some ice in a tall glass, poured in a tablespoon or so of the pomegranate molasses, then poured some cold seltzer over it. Instant homemade soda! Not only was it a beautiful color, it was delicious - and healthier than regular pop. Give it a try - here's an easy guide for making your own homemade soda.

Homemade cola

How to make homemade soda

There are a couple of ways to make soda. One method is more involved and takes a fair bit of time and equipment. We're talking about actual brewing. While this makes great sodas, such as root beer and ginger beer, there is an easier method. I'm talking about the super simple way to make soda using intensely flavored and sweetened syrup and seltzer water. While you can find syrups to flavor soda at the grocery store, it's more fun to make your own.

One of the great things about making soda in this way is that you can control the intensity of the flavor and the relative sweetness of the resulting beverage. You can experiment with flavors and even use real fruit to make the syrups. Then once you have made your soda, you can make fabulous soda creations. There's nothing like an ice cream float with homemade fruity soda.

Making syrup for soda is pretty much making a simple syrup (sugar and water) and adding flavoring. It's very easy. To use fresh fruit, choose fruits that are very ripe and juicy and either put them through a juicer or puree them and press through a strainer. If you use canned or bottled juices, look for juices that have very high natural juice content, and a very low sugar content. Now you've gotten the idea, here's the easy way to make homemade soda.

Basic Soda Syrup

Makes about 1/2 cup

Ingredients

1/2 to 3/4 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup fresh fruit juice or concentrated fruit juice (the more concentrated the juice, the more intense the final flavor)

Directions

Combine the ingredients in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and let simmer until the mixture is reduced by half. Taste the syrup to check the relative sweetness (I like it less sweet while my kids like it more sweet).
To intensify the flavor, you can add a dash of an appropriately flavored extract. Store the finished syrup in a squeeze bottle in the refrigerator for instant access. To make homemade soda, simply add syrup to a glass of ice and top off with seltzer water or club soda.

The syrups are also tasty drizzled over ice cream or other desserts.

Suggestions for flavors

Lemon-lime
Mango-papaya
Pomegranate
Blueberry
Currant
Strawberry
Cantaloupe

Have fun experimenting with any fruit flavor that sounds good to you!

More alternatives to soda pop

Four healthy alternatives to diet soda
Reasons to ditch the diet soda
Superdrinks

Comments

Comments on "How to make homemade soda"

I need to try this recipe and It's cool.:D

Okay this is the day after the original post I made. The Sodastream showed up not to long after I made the post. We tried it right off the bat with the diet cola, and it was okay. On the way home from work this morning I stopped and bought some lemons, some limes, and I went to the frozen concentrate juice area and picked 3 different flavors of frozen concentrate to use for syrup to flavor our homemade pop. I want to get away from traditional pop flavors and try new things. I tried the Raspberry/Cranberry mixture first. I used a 2 ounce shot glass, which is exactly 4 tablespoons if you don't have a 2 ounce shot glass. I filled my 8 or 10 ounce glass ?? 3/4 full of homemade soda water and then dumped 2 ounces of the Raspberry/Cranberry syrup into the glass and then finished topping of the glass with soda water. Wow talk about good stuff. My wife and I haven't had the Sodastream for 24 hours yet and absolutely love it. What you can make is up to your imagination and what your taste buds can stand. Enjoy! Mark & Narcissa

We ordered a Sodastream soda maker. I just checked the order status and it is in town now on the back of a U.P.S. truck somewhere. We can hardly wait to start drinking our own creations and saving money in gas, and over priced store bought pop. We have been reading posts such as these to get ideas how to use the Sodastream to it's fullest potential and have gotten some great ideas. Will let you all know if we have created anything worth sharing in the future. Later! Mark

@Michael PS they sell root beer exaction on the Baking section of the supermarket, use ginger and lemon for ginger ail. Cola Cocaine exaction they NOW days remove the Cocaine from but they still sell Coke syrup at some old drug stores for tummy aches (drug free now) Just use these syrup to taste with sugar water your all set. ;).

That not homemade soda ! Mix a juice in a soda bottle with at least 4 tablespoons of sugar add ether yogurt whey or kefir water or whey from milk kefir or Even a 1/4 of a probiotic capsule.(do not use brewers yeast like surgest you will get a upset tummies. Leave at least a inch from the top. 3 days in warm place bottle will get HARD and carbonated. Now re-frigate it. Now drink it. This IS REAL Old Home made soda Healthy probiotic, Sugars mostly gone now its carbonation.

Okay, we know how to make fruit soda, but now what about root beer or some sort of cola?

I've been doing a variation of this. I get my soda flavor from kool-ade. My favorite so far is cherry-lemonade. I make up the mix of sugar and kool-ade packets and keep it in a container, then for soda I measure out how much of the mixture I want(depending on size of glass) fill half-way with regular water and then the rest of the way with club soda.

I just bought one of those "Soda Stream's" for making your own soda at home. It carbonates your water in seconds! And instead of purchasing their flavors, you gave me a wonderful idea! Now I don't have to pay for those expensive flavoring bottles, I just made a wonderful cherry soda using a cherry flavored concentrate that I had in my cupboard. I wanted a sour cherry soda so I then added citric acid. Wow... what a flavor explosion! Thanks to your post I have all sorts of wonderful ideas such as using those syrups you find in the coffee aisle, and those "Kool-Aid" singles to go packets, and those energy/vitamin powder packets, and lemon/lime concentrate! Any concentrate will work! Also I reckon those syrups for snow cone's would make a perfect soda too, when mixed with the carbonated water! Thanks for posting!! :)

My question is, you have the syrup, but how much seltzer do you add to say make a glass of soda? 6 ounces? 12 ounces? And how much? I want to try this, but don't want a a half cup of syrup sitting in my fridge and not knowing how to blend it. Any input would be great. Thanks in advance.

I am a culinary student and I plan on opening a restaurant very soon. In doing this, I have to try out my concept and I am not willing to serve to the public what I will not serve to my family. Today sodas are filled with junk that is just not good for you so in my restaurant as well as my home, I plan on making my own sodas. This is a great recipe and those looking for an alternative to the sugar, stevia is a wonderful zero calorie sweetener that does not affect the glycemic levels of the body.

I just put together the CO2 tank carbonating method, and have of course done seltzer water, and then a 0 calorie lemonade from a powder. I'd like to find syrup recipes that have no sugar, and just use Splenda or some other sugar substitute.

Our son likes this homemade soda much!

homemade soda,I like soda recipe

Homemade soda is easy to make. I like your soda recipe.

Buying seltzer is the easiest way to start making your own sodas at home. There are lots inexpensive ways to make your own seltzer at home too. A nice reference for this can be found at Pittsburgh Soda Pop, where they also have syrup flavors that you can't get elsewhere. I have a CO2 tank hooked up to a Carbonator Cap and use old soda bottles to keep my fridge filled with carbonated beverages. Making home soda creations gives a WOW factor to friends and family too.

There is a local syrup maker here in New York called P&H Soda Co. They make delicious syrups, but unfortunately, economics don't allow them to bottle their seasonal flavors. They have a delicious Concord Grape syrup that I would love to recreate at home since I can only get it at a certain time of year from them - I plan on trying your recipe!

I just got my soda maker delivered this morning. We love it already We also got it from http://makeyoursoda as they have a coupon saving on the site

I make my own soda with a home soda maker I bought on www.makeyoursoda just add a soda syrup flavor and you have any soda pop you would lke at home. Really amazing