Sailing the Bakery
Traveling with few plans, baking with few recipes
Sparkling Water on a Boat
2018-12-15

Sparkling Water on a Boat

This post is in conjunction with a YouTube video tutorial. What you need and the directions are below. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Sparkling water, fizzy water, bubbly water, charged water; whatever you call it, it's a necessary thing for us on our boat. For us, having loads of cans or bottles of sparkling water on board just does not make sense. The life cycle of us buying it from the store, hauling it back to the boat, storing it before we drink it, storing the waste it creates, and hauling that waste to shore does nothing for our efficiency. 

Having a SodaStream onboard is another option for many cruisers, but there is limited availability of refill cartridges internationally, and each cartridge only fills about 60 liters of water. In warmer climates, that’s about one month’s worth of fizzy water.

We've been using our 5 pound CO2 canister onboard for a little over a year, and it has finally run low on CO2. We fill an average of 3 liters per day in the warmer months, and one to two liters per day other times of the year. The items below will cost you around $145, which is a little more than the standard SodaStream which currently starts at $125 on the SodaStream website. Each refill of our 5 pound canister costs about $22. A SodaStream refill costs $29.

First, the items you'll need:

CO2 Container (5 lb, Aluminum)

Mixed Gas Regulator

Carbonation Cap

Gas Line

 Directions:

  1. Connect the regulator to the canister, and the gas line to the “gas out” part of the regulator using a hose clamp (make sure it’s stainless).
  2. Adjust the regulator to allow for 54 psi of CO2 to go into the bottle of water you’re carbonating.
  3. Fill plastic soda bottles (I use 1 liter sparkling water bottles) with water, leaving a few inches of air in the top. Chill.
  4. Screw fill cap on bottle while simultaneously squeezing bottle as to remove all air.
  5. Attach bottle to carbonation cap
  6. Open CO2
  7. Shake
  8. Turn off valves
  9. Disconnect cap from hose and replace original bottle cap
  10. Add any flavoring you’d like. I’m a solid lemon water person but I’ve tried fruit juices, hibiscus tea, and other additives.