Fever-Tree Premium Soda Water
Soda water is not neutral and was never meant to be. This one is spring water from Elmhurst in Staffordshire with bicarbonate of soda added, carbonated hard, and the minerals are doing as much work as the bubbles.
Quick Facts
About Fever-Tree Premium Soda Water
Flavour Profile
Primary Flavours
Tasting Notes
Clean and refreshing with lively carbonation and no sweetness or added flavour. Designed to support other ingredients without interference.
What Is Actually In It
Two ingredients and a process. The water is spring water drawn at Elmhurst in Staffordshire, and the addition is bicarbonate of soda. Some of the range also carries a little sea salt from the Scottish west coast.
The carbonation is the third component and the one people notice first. It is pitched high, and high carbonation in soft spring water gives finer, more persistent bubbles than the same gas would in harder water.
Minerals, Not Just Bubbles
The difference between soda water and plain sparkling water is the mineral content, and it is the reason recipes name one rather than the other. Bicarbonate gives a faint saline bite that reads as crispness and pushes a spirit forward.
Plain carbonated water dilutes and lifts and does nothing else. In a Gin Rickey or a Whiskey Highball, where the mixer is most of the glass, that difference is not subtle: the same gin over the same ice tastes fuller with soda than with sparkling water, and the drink was built expecting the former.
Where It Belongs
Highballs first, where the ratio is unforgiving. A drink that is three parts mixer to one part spirit is largely an argument about the mixer, and a flat or soft soda produces a flat and soft drink no quality of gin can rescue.
It also tops fizzes and spritzes, where it arrives last and its job is to lift the drink rather than to blend into it. In those builds it goes in after everything else and is stirred once, if at all.
Keeping It Lively
Treat carbonation as a perishable, because that is what it is. Small formats exist for exactly this reason: a 200ml bottle opened for one drink loses nothing, where a litre bottle is measurably flatter each time it is reopened.
Cold matters as much as freshness. Gas stays dissolved in cold liquid and escapes from warm, so soda that has been sitting out is already half spent before it reaches the glass. Fridge to hand to glass, without a stop in between.
Using Fever-Tree Premium Soda Water
Usage
Roughly 100 to 150ml over ice in a highball, and to top a spritz or a fizz. It lengthens a drink without diluting its character, which is why it goes into builds where the spirit is meant to stay audible.
Pro Tip
Carbonation is the ingredient. If it’s flat, the drink won’t work.
Top Tips
- Open a fresh small bottle per round. Carbonation is perishable, and a large bottle opened twice is flat by the third drink.
- Chill the soda as hard as the glass. Cold liquid holds gas; warm soda loses most of its fizz on the way down the side of the glass.
- Pour down a barspoon or the wall of the glass. A straight pour onto ice knocks the carbonation out of it before the drink is even built.
Possible Substitutions
- Sparkling mineral water (varies by mineral content)
- Lightly carbonated still water (reduced fizz)
Storage & Handling
Store unopened bottles or cans in a cool place. Refrigerate before use. Once opened, carbonation dissipates quickly. Discard if flat.
Shelf Life
Unopened: Several months. Opened: Use immediately for best carbonation
Production Method
Produced by carbonating purified water to a consistent level of effervescence. No flavourings or sweeteners are added.
History & Context
Soda water became a staple mixer with the rise of carbonated beverages in the 19th century, offering a consistent and neutral alternative to naturally sparkling mineral waters.