Carbonating Bottled Diet Soda

Was going to try making some diet soda this weekend (bit too much beer lately), but I can't think of an easy way to carbonate a bottled soda. Can't really use priming sugar, because there is no yeast for it to interact with and create co2.

Any ideas?

Buy a carbonator cap or build one using stainless steel tire stems in the soda cap. You can find directions by searching DIY carbonator caps. A couple of other options come up as well.

There are a couple of things you can do. One is to bottle carbonate with a co2 tank, if you have it available. That's my preference, because with a carbonator cap it's super easy to do. But if you don't have a c02 tank, then it has to be done an "old fashioned" way.

To make the diet soda (or any soda), all you have to do is add some yeast. I like champagne yeast for this- it's clean and neutral flavored. You can get it from any LHBS and it's like $.49 cents a package. you only need about 1/2 teaspoon. You will need some sugar so the yeast can eat that, but then you can use splenda/stevia/saccharine/ for the majority of the sweetening.

I make a really good ginger ale (recipe posted under my avatar, and in the recipe database under "soda") and you could do that with splenda instead of most of the sugar. I bet that would come out great.

how much sugar gives you appropriate carbonation in a 2 liter? i think ill make a few with artificial sweetener, flavor extract, and champagne yeast to get started.

SnidelyWhiplash said:

how much sugar gives you appropriate carbonation in a 2 liter? i think ill make a few with artificial sweetener, flavor extract, and champagne yeast to get started.

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I'd like an answer to this as well. Can you use a priming calculator for beer and figure it out?

To modify the question... How much sugar would need to be added to 2 litres of water to reach proper carbonation level of soda?

Halbrust said:

I'd like an answer to this as well. Can you use a priming calculator for beer and figure it out?

To modify the question... How much sugar would need to be added to 2 litres of water to reach proper carbonation level of soda?

Click to expand...

I followed the instructions for diet soda that was packaged with the extract and ended up with ALL gushers that tasted like garbage. I've gone back to just buying soda.