Sodastream

I have a soda stream and enjoy just plain old soda water, I get my refills at Bed/bath/beyond, I bring a coupon and the old one, and it is under $10 for a refill. I go through one every few months.

dorri732 wrote: In reply to Zomby Woof: They most likely did it outside because cooling a metal bottle that much (dry ice is negative 109F) and then pressurizing it is extremely dangerous. When you cool metal that much it becomes very brittle and can shatter easily.

I wondered who would be the first one to say it's dangerous.

It's not.

I think one of those refills is $17 here. We drink a lot of soda water, and go through a cylinder pretty quickly. It's still cheaper than buying soda water, but zero to fill 2 cylinders is a lot cheaper than almost $40 it would cost with tax.

Wally wrote: In reply to KatieSuddard: That's why I would be a bad room mate. I would be filling bathtubs with seltzer just to annoy people.

A seltzer bath sounds kindof delightful. Bucket list updated.

Zomby Woof wrote:

dorri732 wrote: In reply to Zomby Woof: They most likely did it outside because cooling a metal bottle that much (dry ice is negative 109F) and then pressurizing it is extremely dangerous. When you cool metal that much it becomes very brittle and can shatter easily.

I wondered who would be the first one to say it's dangerous. It's not.

What makes it not dangerous? How can you be sure you're getting the right amount of CO2 in there and not over pressurizing it?

Curmudgeon wrote: Buncha damn yuppies. Gimmie mine the old fashioned way. If it's good enough for these guys: it's good enough for me.

And, as a bonus, it doubles as a Whippetizer when you need one.

dculberson wrote:

Zomby Woof wrote:

dorri732 wrote: In reply to Zomby Woof: They most likely did it outside because cooling a metal bottle that much (dry ice is negative 109F) and then pressurizing it is extremely dangerous. When you cool metal that much it becomes very brittle and can shatter easily.

I wondered who would be the first one to say it's dangerous. It's not.

What makes it not dangerous? How can you be sure you're getting the right amount of CO2 in there and not over pressurizing it?

And, what makes dry ice free? (Didn't watch the video, if it's explained there, I withdraw the question and apologize.)

You fill the cylinder by weight, and that assures that the pressure is correct.

Neither weld supply shop that I got the dry ice from would take any money for that small amount. If they did, it would cost about a buck to fill a cylinder.

Any gas pressurized cylinder can be dangerous if you try hard enough, but I chose to use a little common sense.

Fill by weight makes sense! Great idea. Still not sure why it's not dangerous other than you saying it isn't, but it's your safety to consider.

I think in the US everything is dangerous. We don't have that many lawyers, so things are much safer up here.

Seriously, it's a pressurized gas cylinder. You can make it dangerous if you try, but you don't have to.

In reply to dculberson:

The cylinder does have a pressure relief valve built in to it, so -- in theory -- if the cylinder is over pressurized, it should trip the valve and vent out any "extra". That's assuming, however, that a chunk of dry ice doesn't get lodged in it and clog the valve.

If you know the weight that the cylinder is supposed to have in it -- which would be well under what the thing is "rated" for, I think we can assume -- then putting in the same amount of weight of dry ice would re-pressurize it to whatever the factory put in it. It doesn't matter if it has liquefied, is frozen, or is gaseous, a pound of CO2 is a pound of CO2.

The two safety concerns I see are if the dry ice were to clog something up and either block the pressure relief or block the nozzle making you think that it was empty or if you don't inspect/lubricate/replace/be careful not to damage the o-ring. And I think those risks should be pretty easy to mitigate and the next time my canister is empty, I'm heading to Meijer to get some dry ice.

Just an update, I'm at 42 liters on the one cylinder I was able to fill completely, and it's still carbonating like new. Apparently 40 is about what people are getting with a new cylinder. I think I went to 16oz instead of 14.5 like it says on the cylinder, but the pressure was not enough to blow past the pressure relief disc, so I'll do it that way again.

In Between this thread being started and resurfacing I now have a Sodastream in the house. The Missus likes her fizzy water, however I feel carbonating it ruins one of my favorite things.

We have found that all the prepackaged flavors taste like artificial sweetener so we don't use them. We buy frozen concentrated limeade and put a small amount in a glass with ice. I think we prefer our drinks a lot dryer than most.

Her Sodastream sits on top of my Kegerator and since I have a 20lb bottle of CO2 in there I want to pipe it straight in. I found the adapters (probably in this very thread) and now have to figure out what to regulate the pressure to.

Update again.

In the end, we got 56 liters of soda water out of the cylinder I filled with dry ice. That's about 30% more than most people are getting out of a standard Sodastream cylinder. I filled it to (roughly) 16 oz instead of 14.5, like it says on the cylinder. This time around, I filled three cylinders to 17 oz for $5 worth of dry ice.

Swank Force One wrote:

Wally wrote: In reply to KatieSuddard: That's why I would be a bad room mate. I would be filling bathtubs with seltzer just to annoy people.

A seltzer bath sounds kindof delightful. Bucket list updated.

How would you know when you farted?

Appleseed wrote:

Swank Force One wrote:

Wally wrote: In reply to KatieSuddard: That's why I would be a bad room mate. I would be filling bathtubs with seltzer just to annoy people.

A seltzer bath sounds kindof delightful. Bucket list updated.

How would you know when you farted?

The effervescence would tickle the nose.

Someone said the glass seltzer bottles would make a good whippetizer in a pinch. Nitro beer is retarded smooth. I can get a full bottle of nitrous 15min from me. I think I need to figure out how to plumb nitrous into a soda stream. I'm thinking a nitrous Jameson and ginger ale (I make my own ginger ale) would be delightful.

And you can get giggley from the bubbles.