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I don’t remember when Paul and I developed a taste for fizzy water. Perhaps it was during the couple of weeks we spent in Italy with my parents and sister, the month before we moved to Seattle. I couldn’t count the number of bottles of acqua gassata delivered to restaurant tables and purchased from small shops as we strolled through Umbrian hill towns. (We drank a lot of good local vino on that trip, too, but I already had a taste for wine.)

When we got to Seattle, we added bottled carbonated water — seltzer, sparkling, soda, whatever — to our household beverage stock. We both had Coke habits then (Classic for Paul, diet for me); the fizzy water was a non-caffeinated alternative. When we both gradually cut back on our Coke intake, our consumption of fizzy water increased. We went through 2-4 bottles a week. Oh, the number of 2-liter PET bottles that we recycled in a year! And, at $0.99 - $1.50 a bottle, we were paying a lot for water.

A couple of years ago, Paul got together for dinner with his friend Jacob, a college buddy who was visiting from California. Dinner was at the home of another of Jacob’s Seattle friends. That evening, Paul learned that this friend of a friend made his own fizzy water. No, he’s didn’t have the sort of retro seltzer charger that your parents or grandparents might’ve had in their bar; he used a high-pressure bottle of CO2, some bits and bobs from a homebrewing supply company, and 2-liter plastic bottles. And he had put together a web page detailing his system for carbonating water (along with appropriate cautions). When Paul got home that evening, he showed me the web page. Cool, but nothing came of it.

One afternoon last month, I arrived home from work to find a 5-pound CO2 tank on the coffee table in our living room, next to a box of tubing and other parts. I’d forgotten about that system for making fizzy water, but Paul hadn’t. A couple days later, he took the tank to be charged; that weekend, we went to a local homebrewing shop to pick up the remaining bit of equipment, a cap that connects the CO2 hose to a standard 2-liter soda bottle.

I made Paul fizz up the first bottle in our back yard, just in case there was a problem with the system. (Too much carbon dioxide in an enclosed space can be dangerous, even deadly… and it turns out I got a little of the worrier gene from my mother. And yes, I know you can’t really get “a little” of a gene.) Paul poured us each a glass, and guess what? It tastes just like seltzer water! If you’re fond of sparkling waters with strong mineral flavors, you might be disappointed with this; I was pleased just to have those tickly little bubbles, that bite from the carbonation.

I’m really happy that we’ll be cutting back hugely on our plastic recycling. We’ll have to buy a couple of new 2-liter soda bottles occasionally, as the ones we’re using now won’t stand up to the process indefinitely, but we’ll be using a lot fewer bottles than before. And we’ll be spending less money on bottled water. (We’re in good company.)

And here’s the really fun part (as if saving money and doing something good for the environment weren’t fun enough): we can carbonate other beverages! Make homemade sodas! Fizz up juices! Let’s see, what else do we drink around here? Coffee… milk… tea… well, maybe not. But we could.

Tags:   fizzy water · water7 Comments