It sounds trivial, but the new sodastream caps are worth replacing your old ones even by this frugalphile. The old design was annoying... with no friction ribs you could tighten it up, but maybe not unscrew with it's trace of wetness. I guess they were trying to prevent you from overtightening and crushing the seal, but at that stage you have a powerful dry grip anyways. I had filed in some ribs that didn't work too well.
Better yet, there is reinforcement around the bottom so it doesn't flex so much. Was very annoying if you picked the bottle up by neck (like when you cannot get handhold around body due to crowding) the slightest touch along bottom of cap would flex and weep big drops of yucky water and syrup held in the coarse threads. On your hands, on the floor, and then transferred wherever ants might like to gather.
Why is there syrup around the threads (and you may not have noticed due to bad choice of dark colored caps)? Because as you tighten it may be squirting out carb mist before the seal clamps, and certainly it does so as you unscrew most of the time. It will gel up on the threads when you return a part full bottle to the fridge, and be hard to eventually clean.
My local store stopped carrying caps, and I couldn't spend enough on Amazon to get them postage free. So I got a six pack affordably from ebay, although they were unfortunately black rather than Amazon's light color. Wow, do they make a difference though... easy on, easy off including slooow release of overpressure, no friggen drip drip. I would actually consider getting half liter plastic bottles instead if they include the ribbed caps. They can cost as little as 3 or 4 caps, and give incredibly better soda than the standard one liter. Of course avoid the steep list prices.
It is almost a hopeless job to move a recipe from small to big bottle for reasons I don't entirely understand. Besides the obvious greater loss of carbing towards the end of the big bottle, there also can be a bigger sugar gradient where the top is sparse and bottom is rich with heavy syrup. For a thick syrup this can only be solved by heavy shaking which will lose carbing because you have to open soon before it resettles.
Also the machine will carb a small bottle with less loss in the overflow valve for some reason. Stop carbing the small bottle at first overflow noise, and it is super lively. Do the same for the big bottle, and it is undercarbed. You are supposed to keep adding more until 3 overflow noises, but that wastes gas and is still less carbed.
Better yet, there is reinforcement around the bottom so it doesn't flex so much. Was very annoying if you picked the bottle up by neck (like when you cannot get handhold around body due to crowding) the slightest touch along bottom of cap would flex and weep big drops of yucky water and syrup held in the coarse threads. On your hands, on the floor, and then transferred wherever ants might like to gather.
Why is there syrup around the threads (and you may not have noticed due to bad choice of dark colored caps)? Because as you tighten it may be squirting out carb mist before the seal clamps, and certainly it does so as you unscrew most of the time. It will gel up on the threads when you return a part full bottle to the fridge, and be hard to eventually clean.
My local store stopped carrying caps, and I couldn't spend enough on Amazon to get them postage free. So I got a six pack affordably from ebay, although they were unfortunately black rather than Amazon's light color. Wow, do they make a difference though... easy on, easy off including slooow release of overpressure, no friggen drip drip. I would actually consider getting half liter plastic bottles instead if they include the ribbed caps. They can cost as little as 3 or 4 caps, and give incredibly better soda than the standard one liter. Of course avoid the steep list prices.
It is almost a hopeless job to move a recipe from small to big bottle for reasons I don't entirely understand. Besides the obvious greater loss of carbing towards the end of the big bottle, there also can be a bigger sugar gradient where the top is sparse and bottom is rich with heavy syrup. For a thick syrup this can only be solved by heavy shaking which will lose carbing because you have to open soon before it resettles.
Also the machine will carb a small bottle with less loss in the overflow valve for some reason. Stop carbing the small bottle at first overflow noise, and it is super lively. Do the same for the big bottle, and it is undercarbed. You are supposed to keep adding more until 3 overflow noises, but that wastes gas and is still less carbed.
