How to Choose the Best Sparkling Water
Huge selection of sparkling water – from club soda to La Croix. It’s tempting to brush it off by calling it “just water,” but these fizzy mixes vary greatly in taste and mouthfeel. Soda is the only thing keeping me from embalming with Diet Coke, and I have my own opinion on that.
Choose the clean and crispy Club soda
Good sparkling water should be refreshing and fairly clean, with a light, slightly salty, mineral flavor. It shouldn’t be that hard, but some brands are becoming completely artisanal, with ingredients like Himalayan sea salt instead of the simpler sodium bicarbonate. To see how the most mainstream brands stack up among these quirky newcomers, we tried the classic grocery brands Canada Dry and Schweppes versus the more fashionable Q Club brand.
- Winner: Canada Dry, which is nationally available and costs a couple dollars a liter, won me over (and my other taster) with its slightly sour, very slightly sweet, clean, refreshing taste. She is a real chatty lady with a lot of bubbles that pop and hiss for a significant amount of time.
- Runner-up: Schweppes, which is also nationally available and costs about the same price as Canada Dry, was slightly less aromatic than Canada Dry and had no real salty notes, which could be a plus or a minus, depending on what you plan to mix. it with. It also had a really good amount of carbonation with an incessant sizzle.
- Don’t waste your money: Q Club “Superior Club Soda” was in fact significantly inferior to the other two (much cheaper) offers. Made with only soda and salt, this smug soda read too sweet, too carbonated, and a little funky. The bubbles were large to distract attention. I didn’t like it, but if you really want to try it, you can find it all over the country for about $ 6.50 per pack of four.
You definitely don’t need to spend money on fancy club soda. The super-regular Canada Dry and Schweppes will suit you, but with mineral water, it’s a different matter entirely.
Get the Ultimate Mineral Mineral Water
When I was a child, my sisters and I called mineral water “disgusting water” and drank it in liters. The “fu” we talked about was the bitter, slightly aggressive quality that dissolved minerals impart, and we loved that. (Our favorite afternoon drink was Trader Joe’s discontinued Sir Strawberry, mixed with “nasty water.” I still miss it.) My point is that mineral water is not mineral water without minerals, and I recommend it as much as possible. more mineral qualities. To find the best mineral water, we tried four widely available brands: Gerolsteiner , Topo Chico , San Pellegrino andPerrier . (Due to availability, I was unable to sample regional products like Polar or Vintage, but feel free to share your local favorites in the comments!)
- Most Mineral: Gerolsteiner Sparkling Mineral Water (about twelve dollars for six packs of 16.9 ounce bottles on Amazon ) is arguably the finest mineral water available. It is very effervescent, with invigorating mineral properties that make saliva most pleasant. Its substantial bubbles and light bitterness make it incredibly refreshing and a good soothing remedy.
- Smoothest Operator: Topo Chico (about $ 39 for a twelve 11.5-ounce pack on Amazon ) has nice, little, rain-like little bubbles that hit you on the tip of your tongue and dissipate. It is slightly sour, with a very low mineral flavor and a pleasant mouthfeel, so it is easy to drink.
- Disappointments: Both San Pellegrino and Perrier did not contain true, moderately carbonated mineral flavors. They were drinkable but boring and I just wished there was more fun around. (Both are fairly cheap, though, and in most grocery stores cost two or three dollars per 750 milliliters.)
If you want to expand and find other waters with similar mineral content, just look at the amount of dissolved solids indicated on the label. Gerolsteiner has a mineral content of 2500 mg / l, so look for something nearby if you really enjoy this strengthening tongue strike.
Get the shine
And now we come to the category that blows up supermarket shelves: soda, both regular and flavored. La Croix is incredibly popular and it’s not hard to see why. Not only do the cans look like they were created by a divorced South Beach woman in 1983, but their contents allow you to enjoy a drink that actually looks like something without sugar or artificial sweeteners. (I guess there are drinks sweetened with stevia, but stevia is disgusting.) While La Croix is a media darling in the world of bubbling water, it is not the only option, and in some cases not even the best. Let’s start with simple options and try Crystal Geyser , La Croix, and Mountain Valley unflavored seltzels.
- Purest: Crystal Geyser sparkling water (which can be found across the country for less than $ 2 a liter) tastes exactly like this: It tastes like pure fresh water with bubbles, nothing more and nothing less.
- The Weirdo: This is one of those cases where La Croix (they all cost around $ 3 for a 12-pack) really crashes. I don’t know anyone who drinks plain, probably because it’s disgusting. It has unusual, medicinal, slightly cloying properties that make it virtually undrinkable. I am not exaggerating; I can’t finish the can.
- Polarizer: Mountain Valley Soda (which has some minerals but not many) tastes best described as “earthy.” I liked it, but a friend of mine described it as “bad tap water with bubbles,” so it’s really a matter of personal preference. (You can find it in the US for about two dollars a liter.)
Now that this is not the case, let’s talk about tastes. I was already quite familiar with the La Croix line, but it has been a while since I tried Perrier flavored variants, so I took grapefruit, one of them, along withCascade Ice (also grapefruit) and Cadia citrus fruits .
- Better Choice of Flavors: La Croix is a champion in scent creation and they continue to do more. It is widely accepted (at least here) that pamplemus is the best and coconut is pure trash, but I encourage you to purchase and taste tangerine, passion fruit and peach pear. Although I drink a ton, I actually find the taste of grapefruit a little timid (more like amyrite “pampleMOUSE”?) And prefer the more modern tangerine, which tastes like a peel and smells like perfect tangerine. Coconut tastes like sunscreen, but it’s not the worst, as that distinction belongs to the not-here-and-there cola scent, which sits in an eerie valley between water and soda and only reminds me that I’m not drinking Diet Coke. (La Croix has one job to make me forget about Diet Coke.)
- Best Grapefruit: Unpopular Opinion: The definition of “most grapefruit” belongs not to La Croix, but to Perrier, which has a ton of citrusy, slightly bitter, juicy-sweet, ruby-red flavors that you just want to mix with a drink. … Plus it’s pretty cheap, about two bucks for 750 milliliters. I hardly believe that there is no juice in it. (I’ve also heard Topo Chico’s grapefruit offering is fantastic, but I couldn’t find it.)
- What to avoid: Cascade organic grapefruit sparkling water tasted like a watered-down liquid sprite, and Cadia sparkling citrus mineral water tasted like a fruit flavor. I recommend avoiding both. I have also never enjoyed any of the soda scent of Dasani or Canada dry, both of which taste like the less aromatic La Croix.
Hopefully this has shed some light on the mysterious and bubbling world of sparkling water and directed you towards the right bubble bottle for you, because regular water is boring and shouldn’t be drunk by anyone.