Carbonated Seltzer Water – What Is It?

Sparkling water is the common designator of bottled carbonated water, a refreshing zero-calorie drink with any meal.

Carbonated Seltzer water is the perfect drink with any meal and can be purchased with or without flavour.  Flavoured sparkling water is usually flavoured with one or more fruits.  Through alternating flavours one never needs to get fed up with any one in particular and can always enjoy a nice sparkling water.

Sparkling water has no calories, no artificial sweeteners, and no synthetic colour additives.  It is simply carbonated water flavoured with fruit aromas.

One can also make one’s own sparkling water in a soda machine, like the renowned Wassermaxx or Sodastream (Soda Club), and even flavour it with aromas.  More and more people even build advanced machines into their kitchens for serving iced carbonated beverages.  This is quite expensive, with professional set-ups going for 1 600 Euros and up; but the carbonic acid is cheap.  With bottles of 3-4 kilograms and only 6-8 grams per litre, this all adds up to a few cents for a litre of sparkling water.

Using a soda machine with carbonic acid bottles of the regular 425 grams usually adds up to 16 cents per litre.  This is still quite cheap compared to buying carbonated beverages, but buying large bottles of acid still costs only a fraction.

There are cheaper machines where one gets the carbonated water through a tap, but these use small canisters of carbonic acid, and they do not cool the beverage.  Before purchasing such a device one should taste the sparkling water produced a number of times, to verify a proper level of carbonic acid.

If the salesperson of such machines speaks only of “lightly carbonated water” one should be careful and test the machine properly.  One really should be able to mix the water so that it suits the entire family, since if anyone thinks the mix is wrong he or she will not be using the machine.