Club soda

[Yooper]

I like club soda with lime.

When I take my tap water and carb it up, it doesn't taste like the commercial club sodas.

What can I add to RO water to make it taste like a commercial bottle of club soda?

@AnOldUR especially- I'm no engineer to hook it up with a float valve and the like, but even my non-engineering brain can put water + some additives into a keg and carb it up!

 

[TheHopfather]

Carbonated Water wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonated_water

"Whether homemade or store-bought, soda water may be identical to plain carbonated water or it may contain a small amount of table salt, sodium citrate, sodium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, potassium citrate, potassium sulfate, or disodium phosphate, depending on the bottler. These additives are often included to emulate the slightly salty taste soda water developed years ago from first using them as preservatives. Naturally occurring processes also produce effervescent mineral water similar to carbonated water in artesian wells, such as in Mihalkovo in the Bulgarian Rhodope Mountains, in Medžitlija in Macedonia, or most notably in Selters in the German Taunus mountains."

For a start. Guess the magic is finding the proper amount of salt to add.

Edit: Schweppes uses potassium bicarbonate, potassium sulfate in their club soda. My wife loves this stuff, if someone figures out the proper amount of salts to add please share.

 

[hopbrad]

ive read that potassium bicarbonate and potassium sulfate are very common. But i also thought i remember reading somewhere that the Burton salts mixture will make something like San Pellegrino. i havent made club soda yet but its on my agenda to do so soon. please update if you find something good.

 

[whoaru99]

When I carbonate water for the GF I use 1:1 tap water:distilled. Our tap water is high in bicarbonate and alkalinity.

 

[zwiller]

I think it all depends on what you want to do. If you are trying to build a healthy fizzy water, you want ensure it is not acidic and add salts that raise the pH, such as potassium bicarbonate that will counteract the carbonic acid. Conversely, if you are going for soda jerk fizz for "pop" as we call it in Ohio, I think you need to add acidity. In my research that means a pH of 5 or so. Phosphoric acid being the best tool for a neutral effect but other acids can used that will impart different flavors. IE citric acid. I don't have any data on amounts yet but I am long overdue to post in brew science about it. From memory, the effects of carbonic acid are overstated and are milder than one would suspect.

If you are going for the healthy type I suspect filtered tap water is actually better than RO since it most likely contains alkalinity and will buffer the carbonic acid, while RO will not. Easy enough to test 1G...

 

[Yooper]

I don't know about a "healthy fizz water" vs any other fizzy water. I was just thinking about a good tasting soda water to have on tap. I didn't think that any acidity would be needed, as the carbonic "bite" seems to bring some tartness to it already.

My tap water is hard and high in bicarbonate, and my RO water is, well, RO water. I was looking for a baseline idea to add to the RO to make a good tasting water to have on tap, especially in the summer.

I've done my tap water and it was just ok. Not bad or anything, but not as good as commercial club soda.

 

[LBussy]

Yoop, my wife LOVES her club soda. She found she likes brands that have higher sodium amounts. I did some calculations answering myself in another thread some time back because I got resounding silence:

Original discussion from: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=406276

No-name Club Soda says it has 95 mg of sodium per 12 oz (354.882ml) serving. That works out to 0.2677 mg/ml [(95 / 354.882)] of sodium..

NaCl has a molar mass of 58.44 g/mol. Sodium is 22.9898 g/mol or 39.3392% of the mol [(22.9898 / 58.44) * 100]. That works out to:
2.5420 g of NaCl to net 1 g of sodium [(1 / 39.3392%) * 100], or;
1 gram of NaCl contributes 0.3934 g sodium [(1 * 39.3392%) / 100]

NaHCO3 has a molar mass 84.0066 g/mol. Sodium is 22.9898 g/mol or 27.3667% of the mol [(22.9898 / 84.0066) * 100]. That works out to:
3.6541 g of NaHCO3 to net 1 g of sodium [(1 / 22.9898%) * 100], or;
1 gram of NaHCO3 contributes 0.2737 g sodium [(1 * 27.3667%) / 100]

To get the desired 0.2677 mg/ml of sodium in solution one needs:
0.6805 mg/ml [(0.2677 mg/ml / 39.3392%) * 100] NaCl, or;
0.9782 mg/ml [(0.2677 mg/ml / 27.3667%) * 100] NaHCO3

There are 3785.41 ml in a gallon (3.8 liters). To get the desired 0.2677 mg/ml concentration of sodium in a gallon, one needs:
2575.971505 mg [0.6805 * 3785.41] NaHCO3 per gallon, or;
3702.888062 mg [0.9782 * 3785.41] NaCL per gallon

12.9g Baking Soda per 5 gallons

All that to say, try 13g of baking soda in 5 gallons of good water and see if you like it. It seems like there's no way that little amount makes a difference but it does. I get filtered water from the store as the starter for this as it's RO.

 

[Yooper]

Yoop, my wife LOVES her club soda. She found she likes brands that have higher sodium amounts. I did some calculations answering myself in another thread some time back because I got resounding silence:


All that to say, try 13g of baking soda in 5 gallons of good water and see if you like it. It seems like there's no way that little amount makes a difference but it does. I get filtered water from the store as the starter for this as it's RO.

Great- that's a good place to start for sure. I appreciate it. I'll start with 1/2 gallon, and scale down, and quick carb it in a 2L soda bottle before making 5 gallons of it.

 

[LBussy]

Great- that's a good place to start for sure. I appreciate it. I'll start with 1/2 gallon, and scale down, and quick carb it in a 2L soda bottle before making 5 gallons of it.

... chicken.

I'm still on paper trying to make a Pellegrino clone however ... yum!

 

[LBussy]

By the way ... in case it's not immediately obvious ... this:

0.9782 mg/ml [(0.2677 mg/ml / 27.3667%) * 100] NaHCO3

... is your key. 1mg/ml or 1g/liter. Pretty simple for your test.

 

[zwiller]

Good info. Not sure if anyone saw it but I posted in brew science. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=575486 That said, the math is not clicking yet. However, I follow yours though Lee. The main thing I took away from my thread was that despite carbonic acid being considered "weak" it alters the pH much more than I anticipated and for that reason I will probably try filtered tap (90 ppm Alkalinity) first for my soda jerk thing. Then maybe if I want more bite I'll try neutralizing the alkalinity with phosphoric acid. I am going to try a run some new numbers based on the calcs above for potassium bicarbonate. I'd prefer a low sodium alternative.

 

[Yooper]

I haven't checked the pH of my club soda in the past, but even with a high alkalinity of my tap water, the high carb level made it very bitingly tart, so I don't want to add acidity.

 

[MrFoodScientist]

Good info. Not sure if anyone saw it but I posted in brew science. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=575486 That said, the math is not clicking yet. However, I follow yours though Lee. The main thing I took away from my thread was that despite carbonic acid being considered "weak" it alters the pH much more than I anticipated and for that reason I will probably try filtered tap (90 ppm Alkalinity) first for my soda jerk thing. Then maybe if I want more bite I'll try neutralizing the alkalinity with phosphoric acid. I am going to try a run some new numbers based on the calcs above for potassium bicarbonate. I'd prefer a low sodium alternative.

One thing to remember is that the classification of weak vs. strong acids, doesn't necessarily correlate with pH. Especially if it's just water and there's not much to buffer it, even a weak acid can have a significant effect on pH.