DIY Soda

I can't remember whether I mentioned this or not yet, but for Christmas my parents got Ryan a Soda Stream so he could make his own soda at home.

Basically you just fill a bottle with water and the soda stream carbonates it.  After it's carbonated you add some of the soda stream syrup to flavor it.  Well we've tried a few flavors and they weren't that great...a few were pretty decent but only the lemonade is really tasty.  Well i was looking in the fridge at my produce and I still have quite a few oranges from Hale Groves.  I have been driving past this place every day on my way to work for the last 5 years and I had never been in there until recently.  Much to my surprise they have pretty inexpensive produce and lots of boutique type stuff too.  I had my Publix receipt in my purse (by chance) when I went there the first time so I was able to compare produce prices and I couldn't believe they were so much cheaper. Click the pic below to check out their website.

Anyways...I was looking at all my orange and I thought..."huh, I wonder if I can make my own orange syrup".  Then I would know exactly what's in the syrup, could adjust my own sweetener amount, etc.  So of course I searched on Pinterest and some websites popped up right away.  Here is the one I decided to try:

http://hitchhikingtoheaven.com/2012/05/homemade-orange-soda-syrups.html


It basically says to blanch some orange zest and set it aside.  Then put 2 cups water, 2 cups sugar and 1/2 tsp Citric acid (i happened to have some on hand since I made bath bombs for christmas last year) in a pan and simmer for 15 - 25 mins until it gets thicker.  Then you add about 1 cup of orange juice (preferably juiced straight from the orange) and it's ready to use as a Soda Syrup.  Well I didn't have a juicer but i figured my Blendtec could do the job :)  So I just threw some oranges in the blender and then strained out the pulp.  It worked pretty well except next time I think I will get some cheese cloth or a finer mesh strainer because there was still some fine pulp in my syrup.

Also, I think it would be better to use less water when making the syrup because after I simmered it for over 20 mins it was still too liquid and I ended up bringing it to a gentle boil for another 10mins before it was finally a little thicker.  It will get a lot thicker as it cooled but before I did the boiling it still was as thin as water.

After it was finally done I was so excited to try it but it didn't exactly taste like i expected...it basically tasted like carbonated orange juice.  I'm not sure exactly what I expected but it wasn't that.  Ryan thinks either the zest or the pith (the white stuff you peel off the orange but can never quite get all off) gave it a bit of a bitter after taste.  it could also be from the citric acid - I'm pretty sure that also makes things tart (it's also used as a preservative so your syrup will last a few months).  But I'm not giving up!  I bought some strawberries today at Hale so maybe tomorrow or the next day I will puree them and try again with strawberries (no zest or pith to worry about) and less water.  I also saw someone make "cream soda" by just using vanilla extract and then pouring a splash of half and half in their glass before drinking - I might have to try that too since I L-O-V-E cream soda!  More to come later!   Oh and while I definitely haven't given up soda yet...I haven't had a Coca Cola (my usual addiction) yet in 2013! Yay me!