ComunitàFrizzante
New Member
Hi,
I've been following this forum for quite a while and finding it extremely interesting and full of expertise, impossible to find here in Italy where NOBODY is making artisanal soda at home or even in small companies.
I present myself. I'm part of a group that is working on producing local sodas as a way of building community in the valley where we live. Here more info about us: https://www.comunitafrizzante.it/what-we-do/
I want to show you how we are producing the bottled soda and explaining the difficulties we are facing.
We are hosted by a lab, in which we can work following all the health and safety rules.
We prepare a syroup, using fruits or herbs +sugar +citric acid.
We have built this machine (see picture), that basically is a premix cooler with a Lancer carbonator on top.
Our idea was to have a machine that carbonate water, chill it and mix it with the syroup and then attach the out tube to the counterpressure bottling machine that you can see in the picture (we found it for less than 300$!!).
Here is the problem:
As you see the picture below the carbonated water (coming from the carbonator) and the syroup (in a keg, using CO2 to "push it out") are mixed in the pipe, using a Y connector. Outside of the box there are some screw valves
The problem is that even if we can regulate the amout of syroup and water going in, after a while the ratio is changing, resulting in an unbalanced soda. The provisional solution now is that we mix the syroup and the carb water in a keg and then we bottle attaching directly the keg to the bottling machine. Our production is really small, we don't make more than 200 liters (52g allons) a day (MAX!!) so with this system using the kegs we can survive.. However I really would like to find a way to make the more "automatic" system works.
Any idea?
I hope that my english is good enough and of course make me any question!
Cheers!
I've been following this forum for quite a while and finding it extremely interesting and full of expertise, impossible to find here in Italy where NOBODY is making artisanal soda at home or even in small companies.
I present myself. I'm part of a group that is working on producing local sodas as a way of building community in the valley where we live. Here more info about us: https://www.comunitafrizzante.it/what-we-do/
I want to show you how we are producing the bottled soda and explaining the difficulties we are facing.
We are hosted by a lab, in which we can work following all the health and safety rules.
We prepare a syroup, using fruits or herbs +sugar +citric acid.
We have built this machine (see picture), that basically is a premix cooler with a Lancer carbonator on top.
Our idea was to have a machine that carbonate water, chill it and mix it with the syroup and then attach the out tube to the counterpressure bottling machine that you can see in the picture (we found it for less than 300$!!).
Here is the problem:
As you see the picture below the carbonated water (coming from the carbonator) and the syroup (in a keg, using CO2 to "push it out") are mixed in the pipe, using a Y connector. Outside of the box there are some screw valves
The problem is that even if we can regulate the amout of syroup and water going in, after a while the ratio is changing, resulting in an unbalanced soda. The provisional solution now is that we mix the syroup and the carb water in a keg and then we bottle attaching directly the keg to the bottling machine. Our production is really small, we don't make more than 200 liters (52g allons) a day (MAX!!) so with this system using the kegs we can survive.. However I really would like to find a way to make the more "automatic" system works.
Any idea?
I hope that my english is good enough and of course make me any question!
Cheers!
