ira wrote:Looks like the $249 for the kit is the least expensive part. if it really uses 18 gram cartridges and it takes 1 per batch, it looks like it's over $10 per cartridge. I hope I'm wrong because that seems like a lot of ongoing cost unless it's really really good.

The 18 gram cartridge is 10x the price of the 1.8 gram cartridge, but if it does use up the whole 18 grams in one go that's going to be expensive. Almost worth thinking about getting a tank of nitrogen.

I'm waiting on a 64 oz stainless steel growler and two kegulators from this DrinkTanks Kickstarter to start playing with this. I figured I'd use one kegulator for CO2 and the other for Nitro and use it to store/carb beer, coffee, ginger ale, what have you. With the Kickstarter pricing it came out to $155 for the 64 oz stainless steel growler, kegulator and extra kegulator and a six pack of 16 gram CO2 cartridges. They sell the 64 oz growler on their regular site but the kegulator isn't available there yet, just the keg cap, but I imagine that they'll eventually offer the kegulator on their website if it works well. I like the small size of the growler and hope they come out with even smaller ones that I could use for small soft drink or cold coffee batches.

markmark1 wrote:So sugars increase gas solubility?

My chemistry chops are a bit rusty, but the amount of gas that can be dissolved in water depends on the temperature of the water, the lower the temperature, the more gas that can dissolve in it. A solution (in this case sugar + water) having a lower freezing point than pure water, so it should be able to contain more dissolved gas.

I bought my kegging supplies years ago for beer, and then decided to play around with some sparkling water things for espresso based drinks a few years back based on another discussion here on HB. Somewhere along that road a bit of the homework I dug up explained why it was so much harder to get plain water to hold the same level of carbonation as sugared beverages at the same temp.