Dispensing Soda

[conpewter]

Well I think I convinced SWMBO that we need to start kegging. I only did so by telling her that it would be possible to have diet coke or something similar on tap plus the beer.

I know corny kegs were used by the soda industry but I don't know if they were for syrup storage of if they had actual soda in them. I just wanted to get a feel on how I could set this system up. My beer room is in an unfinished part of the basement so it would not be hard to plumb a water line to the kegerator I'll be building.

Is there a way for me to have commercial style on tap soda (Get the syrup in a box or something and set that up) Or do I need to just try to make my own soda (there are mixes I've seen that could be force carbed I think)

Any experience with this or ideas? Thanks!

 

[david_42]

My approach is to have a keg of soda water @ 35 psi and purchase concentrates from sodaclubusa.com I draw a pint & add a half cap of whatever flavor I want. It can be tough buying boxes of syrup, if you aren't a business.

I have two kegs, one online and one in standby, because it can take a week for carbonation to occur.

You'll have to have two regulators for the different pressures. I use a primary for the soda and secondaries (which run off of the primary) for beer.

 

[conpewter]

That seems like it would work well. Do you serve the soda water at 35psi or do you just carbonate it at that level?

Also is there anything wrong with just mixing up the whole thing as a keg of diet coke (Yes I'd dedicate 1 or 2 cornies to just that so I don't have soda smell in my beer) If doing regular soda do I run a high risk of infections in the keg? I imagine your method gets around this by adding the sugar and flavoring to soda water which is not nearly as attractive to bacteria as sugar water.

 

[david_42]

Carbonate & serve. Diet soda would be better as there is nothing for the bacteria to eat. [Disclaimer: I am only a sodaclubusa customer] But their diet cola is good and two half liter bottles will make up a keg's worth. If you only want one flavor, you'd be better off pre-mixing.

 

[beala]

I don't really have any experience with this, but there's a few problems I see.

1) The 'sodaclubusa' soda might not taste like Diet Coca-cola. If you promised SWMBO Diet Coca-Cola, and it ends up tasting like RC cola or Pepsi, she might not be very pleased.

2) If you mix the syrup in the keg, won't it all settle to the bottom? The example I'm thinking of is italian sodas. You have to keep mixing those or the syrup all settles at the bottom.

 

[olllllo]

My approach is to have a keg of soda water @ 35 psi and purchase concentrates from sodaclubusa.com I draw a pint & add a half cap of whatever flavor I want. It can be tough buying boxes of syrup, if you aren't a business.

I have two kegs, one online and one in standby, because it can take a week for carbonation to occur.

You'll have to have two regulators for the different pressures. I use a primary for the soda and secondaries (which run off of the primary) for beer.

I think this is good advice.

Being able to control the flavoring in such a granular fashion is key.

Diet soda is not free of nutritional pitfalls. IMO the best possible scenario is to start drinking soda water and marginally flavoring with natural ingredients such as fresh fruits.

 

[malkore]

the biggest issue is soda needs to be a very high CO2 volume (like 30-35psi at normal kegerator temps) to taste right.

so you either have to turn CO2 everything you pour a soda, thus wasting a lot of CO2 when you repressurize at the end fo the day....or you need REALLY long dispensing lines...like 20+ feet.

and the pop keg would have to be regulated at a different psi than your beers (which will be around 10psi).

option 2 is easier but also requires a secondary regulator to dial down the psi after the soda keg, for the beer kegs to be carb'd right.

 

[david_42]

I get by with 12 feet of 3/16ths.

In double-blind taste tests 90% of people cannot identify the "only" soda they drink.

"Coca-Cola® (Coke®) and Pepsi® are nearly identical in chemical composition, yet humans routinely display strong subjective preferences for one or the other. This simple observation raises the important question of how cultural messages combine with content to shape our perceptions; even to the point of modifying behavioral preferences for a primary reward like a sugared drink. We delivered Coke and Pepsi to human subjects in behavioral taste tests and also in passive experiments carried out during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Two conditions were examined: (1) anonymous delivery of Coke and Pepsi and (2) brand-cued delivery of Coke and Pepsi. For the anonymous task, we report a consistent neural response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that correlated with subjects' behavioral preferences for these beverages. In the brand-cued experiment, brand knowledge for one of the drinks had a dramatic influence on expressed behavioral preferences and on the measured brain responses."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=41dec7cdaee89da575ab6a2447e2e3cf

 

[conpewter]

I think I'll get this all set up and have soda water and put in the flavoring afterward. That way I can have such a good variety. SWMBO is cheap like me so doesn't mind drinking off brand diet, so I bet the sodaclubusa stuff will be just fine, plus I can start experimenting with different drinks and get away from some of the artificial sweeteners (at least sodaclubusa uses splenda for it's diets). Now just to get all the stuff for kegging together hmm...

 

[reidoreilly]

I fill mine with just regular coke, and set the psi at around 7 with the temp being about 40F. I use 6feet of line and everything comes out fine, it takes normal and not flat. Just go buy a 1-2 2litters and fill it and set it to what I said if you want to test it out without filling up 5 gallons.

Also you can buy 1gallon of syrup from sams club for under $10, and some places on ebay you can buy the legit, name brand coke cola, sprite, diet coke ect... syrups for around $30.

 

[modenacart]

You can try to make friends with someone in the resturant business and see if they will be willing to buy some concentrate for you.

 

[reidoreilly]

here is some of the syrups i was talking about in my last comment

sams club has 1 and 5 gallon units of generic syrups

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/se...simpleitemtype=0&location=store&dimId=1006948

and this place has 2.5 gallon and 5 gallon name brand syrups

http://www.nationwidecandy.com/candy/items.asp?Mc=Coke&iTpStatus=0&Tp=

 

[thehundt]

My approach is to have a keg of soda water @ 35 psi and purchase concentrates from sodaclubusa.com I draw a pint & add a half cap of whatever flavor I want. It can be tough buying boxes of syrup, if you aren't a business.

I have two kegs, one online and one in standby, because it can take a week for carbonation to occur.

You'll have to have two regulators for the different pressures. I use a primary for the soda and secondaries (which run off of the primary) for beer.

I'm in a very similar boat to the OP. I'm in the process of making a kegerater out of a chest freezer and would like to add soda as well as beer taps. If I understand this correctly, you have 2 corny kegs filled with water with 35 psi going to each, one of them is dispensing soda water while the other slowly carbonates? This seems way cheaper than buying a carbonater. Are there any advantages to having a carbonater other than speed to carbonate? I have plenty of room for extra kegs so having an online corny keg and a backup wouldn't be a problem at all. Do you use different hoses/faucets to dispense the soda or just another beer faucet?

 

[Homercidal]

Same here. I want to build a kegerator, but I am considering putting pop in it if I use my freezer. My wife likes Mt. Dew on tap, and so I would even consider a separate Co2 system for the soda.

 

[conpewter]

I've kept looking into this and so far I've come up with a couple ideas.

First off if you look at how much the syrup will cost us on the small scale, it's still like 50 cents for a 2 liter. So after you factor in the price of the syrup pump and getting a soda wand (the thing bars use) I am wondering if buying 2 or 3 liter bottles and filling up a corny would be cheaper/easier.

On the other hand I plan to do my own cream soda and rootbeer so I'd probably just have a corny of soda water to dispense and add flavorings to (will probably get some of the SodaClubUSA flavors to try as well)

My holdup right now is getting the extra regulator to have two pressures in my kegorator plus splitting all the lines in some way to run more than one keg at each pressure (Working on a very tight budget, so a 4 regulator manifold is out the window)

I'm still not positive on how this will all settle out, what will work best in the end etc. I plan to try both these ways and really have to give props to the people here helping me even find out about the differing ways to approach this problem.

Oh and to answer one question, I plan on using a regular beer tap for dispensing the soda or soda water, but I'll have very long beverage tubing going to them to knock the pressure down from 30-35 psi in the keg.

 

[oxiderush]

I read somewhere on this forum that the BIB syrups were designed for post mix (nowadays regular soda fountains like at McDonalds) rather than pre-mix syrup (soda already mixed in a carboy). anybody else know anything about that?

 

[bad coffee]

I read somewhere on this forum that the BIB syrups were designed for post mix (nowadays regular soda fountains like at McDonalds) rather than pre-mix syrup (soda already mixed in a carboy). anybody else know anything about that?

I know they will settle to the bottom of the glass if you leave them out overnight. I bet if you mixed up a keg from a BIB you'd end up with all the syrup on the bottom and the soda water on the top.

I'm a sodaclub fan as well, but just for the seltzer at work.

B

 

[kornkob]

Bib soda syrup will go into full solution in tap water.


The biggest probl,em you will have in matching the 'taste' your wife wants is this: getting the carbonation JUST RIGHT.


That's the thing that people notice the most.