This site is all about the re-discovered world of SodaStream. I love my new SodaStream and wanted to share my thoughts on the product range, flavours, tips and ideas with others. Primarily, I review flavours – both the official SodaStream versions and other unofficial creations. Get involved by leaving your comments and let me know what you think about your SodaStream!
Official Apple Flavour
Apple is a refreshing fruit and a staple flavour of the drinks world. Refreshing and admired in drinks from the purest of pure juices through to the fizziest of Tango Apple flavours, only the evil forces of Cider, a truly disgusting beverage sour and sully the apple’s reputation.
Fizzy apple drinks of the non-alcoholic variety generally acquit themselves well. The king of apple drinks, Appletiser lays waste to all in its way, the most premium of pub soft-drinks brand, guaranteed to taste like rain from heaven on a boiling hot day in a part-shaded pub garden. Glistening off the shelf in Sainsbury’s, tempting those of stout wallet with offers of 3 for the price of 2.
Moving down to the pot noodle level, Tango Apple has always been a favourite since it first began refreshing school kids in the North West London area circa 1992. Deadly sweet, but with enough animal fizziness to triumph over lesser concoctions like Oasis every single day. Even Lucozade Apple, though artificial enough to build a block of pre-fabricated flats and containing enough sugar to build a sculpture gets some respect for having the determination to be quite so toxic. Read more »
Official Red Berry Mix Flavour
Red Berry Mix. The title alone intrigued me. What were these red berries they were speaking of and in what proportion had they been mixed?
I’m a big fan of the berry. On cereal, crushed and put in a smoothy, pulped and in juice or au naturale, plucked from a prickly bush and eaten while on a lonely walk, the berry has style. Sweet, sharp, blessed of bulbous protuberances, high liquid content and distinctive taste, berries are beloved of the flavour maker. Read more »
New flavours to try
A big day today at Sodastream HQ with the arrival of a whole load of as yet untried flavours. No doubt some reviews to follow shortly. Prospect of root beer almost too good to be true.
Official Cranberry & Raspberry Flavour
After my experience with another flavour in the SodaStream ‘Clear’ range, Passion and Mango flavour, I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed by Cranberry & Raspberry Flavour. Drinking a flavoured drink that has no flavour is like driving a car that has no wheels. With one you won’t get very far and the neighbours will laugh at you. With the other you will wish you had saved some money and just drunk some water.
Well ok, those two things are not very alike really, but moving onto more relevant matters, is Cranberry & Raspberry flavour similarly pointless to its passion and mango cousin? The answer to that is ‘yes and no’. Read more »
Official Ginger Ale Flavour
Ginger is one of a few naturally occurring phenomenon like liquorice, aniseed and marmite (well ok, that’s not natural) that has a taste totally unique to itself. A miracle of weirdness – spicy, sweet, sharp, sour and crazy all in one freakish root vegetable. Capable of turning the bland into the exciting, the insipid to the downright overpowering, ginger is definitely one of my favourite super foods. Wikipedia explains: “The characteristic odor and flavor of ginger is caused by a mixture of zingerone, shogaols and gingerols, volatile oils that compose one to three percent of the weight of fresh ginger.” This may not mean much, but in my opinion the presence of something called ‘zingerone’ in anything, instantly elevates it to greatness.
Still, tastes like liquorice, aniseed and of course ginger tend to divide the population. You either love them or hate them. One man’s zingerone is another person’s anti-toblerone.
If you hate ginger I would stop reading here. You definitely will not like SodaStream Ginger Ale flavour which even in synthetic form will fill you with fear and loathing. If you do like ginger (like me), lets dose up a bottle and see what we can find! Read more »
Robinsons Orange Flavour
The bunting went up this week and we temporarily donned conical party hats to commemorate the 100th bottle of SodaStream fizzed in SodaStream Review HQ.
Excitement over, it was time for me to roll my sleeves up and get on with the important business of trying another new flavour. I figured that after a recent run of Robinson’s flavours it was sensible to complete the series by trying to create SodaStream out of the most ubiquitous of squash flavours: Orange squash.
As a kid, orange squash could go either way. It was either the flavour you were disappointed to get: commonplace, tepid and diluted to within an inch of its life. Or it could be the best thing in the world: poured from pewter jugs on a makeshift table, ice-cold and joyously sweet after you had flogged your young lungs out dashing round your mate’s garden or competing masterfully in the egg-and-spoon race. Read more »
Robinsons Apple & Pear Flavour
Squash, in general is a good concept. Take a small dash of concentrated fruit essence, add h2o of the common or mineral variety, serve ice-cold for the perfect combination of flavour and refreshment. Juice is good, but a) it’s expensive and b) sometimes it makes you more thirsty than when you started.
However, not all flavours work as a squash or cordial. Orange and lemon yes. Blackcurrant definitely. Apple… well, I’m inclined to say no, but then again, combine Apple with Blackcurrant and you’re back on to a total winner. Whose idea was it to add barley? Who knows which concussed lunatic decided to throw a cereal crop in, but whoever they were, they had genius on the side of madness and get a fruit-based medal. Lemon barley rocks!
So, what about Robinson’s Apple & Pear flavour, which I was forced to pick up from the shops due to a mixture of boredom and foolish risk-taking? We have already established that Apple is a recessive flavour in the world of squash so does Pear – lets face it, a pretty damn tasty fruit, but prone to quick-turning to mush – turn this drink to flavour gold and what is the impact of adding fizz? Read more »
SodaStream Adverts & Living the Dream
My SodaStream drinks maker ran out of fizz 2 weeks ago and I have failed so far to get it reloaded. I managed to get down to the shops with my empty cannister the first weekend, but Robert Dyas had failed to anticipate the massive demand for carbonated water and I spent an unhappy afternoon hefting a depleted cannister round the shops. Oh well… must try again tomorrow.
Given that I can’t try any old or new flavours right now I figured that rather than let this blog run dry (excuse the pun) I’d turn my attention to checking out SodaStream’s promotional efforts and feature a couple of their adverts on their site. So as a first salvo, here is an advert which launched June 2011:
So, here we are with our happy, well-fed and well-heeled city dwelling family. Read more »
Ribena Flavour
Ribena was something I craved as a kid, but was rarely allowed. I think the twin combination of being more pricey than your average juice and also being famed for its epic sugar allowance, put it off my mum’s shopping list. Like anything you’re not allowed as a child, it took on an almost mystical symbolism and I prized those rare occasions when at a pal’s house or at my Gran’s, I got an ice cold glass of the good stuff or when once in a blue moon, Ribena hit buy one get one free territory.
These days I am free to buy cartons or concentrate of Ribena pretty much at will. Still pricey, but not anywhere near as expensive as most of the other much more boring stuff adulthood forces me to buy, it’s a luxury I can choose to afford. I don’t do it that much though. Maybe something about tastes changing as you grow older or the fact that it possesses pretty much zero refreshment value. It doesn’t stand up compared with similarly priced fresh juice and smoothie varieties. Read more »
Robinsons Lemon Flavour
As squash goes, you can’t do much better than lemon squash. Where orange squash is sweet, lemon squash is sweet and sour. Where blackcurrant is artificial, lemon is clean and refreshing. With or without barley, lemon squash has the power to refresh and hydrate. It really is water improved.
So, when I started thinking about trying some new unofficial SodaStream flavours, lemon squash seemed a natural choice. Having decided that, I realised if you’re going to make moves towards the squash world (or cordial or syrup or however you know it) and you want a fair playing field, you can’t do much better than Robinsons. Despite briefly sullying their stock with a short-lived and embarassing alliance with humourless semi-elite tennis player, Tim Henman, generally Robinsons have been a reliable antidote to dehydration on a summers day and also a reliable choice with a dash of honey when you’re bed ridden. Read more »