After years of brewing beer and preserving the libation using the traditional and messy method of bottling, anybody with any sense would start looking at kegging as an alternative. I was no exception. One 5 gallon keg can store the equivalent of over 50 – 12 oz beer bottles. Kegs are simple to fill and take a fraction of the time required to fill all those bottles. Carbonating bottled beer is also tricky and carbonating kegs is super easy. I started kegging beer about 5 years ago and haven’t used a bottle since. I hope I never do again.
Coincidentally, we also started drinking carbonated water about the same time I started kegging beer. It didn’t take long for the cost and all the wasteful bottles to take all the fun out of drinking sparkling water. After looking at some of the commercial water carbonating units (Soda Stream, etc.), it dawned on me that I already had all the equipment to make as much sparkling water as we could drink. Besides, the commercial units rely on proprietary CO2 canisters that are very expensive and inconvenient.
Carbonating rig
What to buy
The high pressure gas bottle at left is fitted with a regulator to meter the gas pressure down to a useable level. Here, I’ve connected it to a 5 gallon keg filled with treated tap water. We have one in the refrigerator that we drink from and one in reserve (and charging up with CO2) so it’ll be ready to go when the other one runs out.
It takes a couple of days to charge the keg at 30 psi and I’ve got another gas bottle in my refrigerator set to 12.5 psi for every day water dispensing. The little red cap in the shopping list above allows us to use the CO2 bottle to recharge soda bottles as well. We never have 2 or 3 day old soda going flat anymore. Just hit it with a shot of carbon dioxide and it’s just as fresh as the moment you opened it. If you don’t want to buy kegs, this setup can be used to carbonate water in plastic soda bottles very easily.
The kegs of water hold about $40 worth of sparkling water and we use about 2 kegs per month. That’s almost $1,000 a year! If you add the items from the list above to the cost of a couple of kegs (about $75 each) you could have the ultimate carbonating setup for about $3o0 total. Based on my numbers, you’d save $700 the first year if you drink as much sparkling as we do. You can find everything you need on MoreBeer’s website or any local brewing supply store. I bought my kegs at Cornykeg.com. Spend a little more and get extra kegs and extra gas bottles so you can charge one keg while dispensing and drinking from another. I have 3 gas bottles – one for the beer kegerator, one for sparkling water dispensing and a third (shown here) just for pre-charging kegs. Excessive, I know.
Having plenty of carbonated beverages without the expense and waste of store bought bottles is really a pleasure. Give the guys at your local brew store or MoreBeer.com (Adventures in home brewing – homebrewing.org is another great vendor) a call and they will set you up with everything you need to enjoy your favorite sparkling beverage at home for a fraction of the cost of the wasteful products you find in the store. Cheers!