An excellent howto on creating your own home soda fountain. No more will you be held captive by the tyrrany of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Instead you can, with a little wheeling and dealing plus elbow grease, dispense your own cold refreshing sugar water to all your friends.
In the old days, you would mix up a bunch of items into a flavoring solution. Then you'd add sugar and a certain amount of your flavoring to soda water to make a nice drink. But ever since the drug store soda fountain, people have combined these processes into one, making use of syrup.
Syrup, for soda, is mostly sugar with the flavoring already added. It is also kept to a specific consistency, so you can always know to mix X amount of syrup with Y amount of water. Typically, this is something like 4 parts water to 1 parts syrup, or 5 parts water to 1 part syrup.
Indeed, this is the ultimate kitchen accessory. My dear wife may not agree, but I'm sure she'll come around. For now it will remain on my 'todo' list. Perhaps as a winter home improvement project.