These days I own some very serious espresso equipment. I am pretty much set with espresso. But one thing is still missing from my kitchen, and that’s a commercial soda fountain.
I do not own a car, which is one of the reasons why I have time and money to purchase the abovementioned espresso equipment. Not having a car, I hate lugging soda bottles from the store , hate running out of soda, hate having to drink warm soda because I forgot to put a few bottles into the fridge. The solution is rather simple – build my own soda fountain.
Indeed there are people crazy enough to put together soda fountains from parts bought on eBay. I might have a better espresso machine, but this guy, for example, has a bar style soda gun right in his kitchen:
This setup is pretty sweet as well :
If you read the explanation from the link above, building your own from eBay parts is a long and messy process, although the price will stay under $1000. There’s a company that sells prereconfigured units, but that costs about 3K. Also all of the soda machines take up a lot of cabinet space, and some require a separate ice cube maker.
I don’t have the time, space or money to attempt a project like this now. But there’s a low rent / low tech alternative called Soda Club. You have to chill bottles with water and then carbonate them in a small tabletop unit. I don’t know looks kind of similar to the iSi syphon and thus lame. Maybe I’ll try it.
