Creamish soda

I just made a gallon of soda mix. Here is my recipe:
3.5 cups of sugar (Caramelized)
1 vanilla pod (seeds extracted and tossed in as well)
1/3 cup of maple syrup
Juice of 1.5 lemons
and the rind of 1 lemon

Its kinda amazing tasting. I am very happy with it so I thought I would share.

Since it was my first soda I tried to carbonate it with yeast. While that worked out, I still mixed it with soda water because it was too sweet. Next time I might cut down the sugar by 1/3. Some of the bottles I let ferment for a 36 hours before I chilled them took on a nice flavor from the trace alcohol.

Cheers!

Think I'll give this a shot!

Let me know how it goes.

Question:

1. Are you saying that after you fermented, you added soda water to bring it to five gallons or is that five gallons water plus an additional amount of soda water?
2. Do you prefer a club soda over another?
3. I recently made what was supposed to be a 2L H2O, 1.25 cups sugar, .25 cup brown sugar recipe. After approx 48 hours it seemed to be to sweet and I bump up an additional liter; still sweet. I would try bringing it down to 1 cup next time; just my suggestion.
4. Back to adding soda water: I do believe yeasting adds flavors to the final taste. Based off you results, and making a 1 gallon batch, what H2O to soda ratio would you recommend? I'm thinking about half?
5. Finally, haha, was the lemon there for the purpose of acidity of flavour.. or both? And why juice and rind (for the acidity and flavour, haha)?