A Question About Carbonation

[mgardziella]

I'm working on a book about a local bottling plant, and I have a question about the carbonation process that maybe some of you will know about.

Obviously, most bottlers would take a clean water source, use a machine to carbonate it, and then mix it with syrup. However, this particular bottler used artesian wells to source their water. Before bottling soda, they sold the mineral waters from these wells. In the 1930s advertising for the mineral water, it is implied that it is naturally sparkling - a phenomenon that apparently can happen with mineral water.

My question is this: do you think it is possible that soda could have been bottled with naturally sparkling water? Has anyone ever heard of this happening? Or do you think they would have artificially carbonated the water before mixing with the syrup?

Thanks for any thoughts or theories.

 

[CanadianBottles]

I suppose it's possible, but I would be surprised. Mineral water tends to have a fairly distinctive taste, and it's not really a taste that would go well with most soda flavours. Presumably post-1930s they would have been hooked up to city water and I suspect that they were just carbonating that instead.

 

[mgardziella]

I know for a fact that they were still using the spring water in the soda into the 1940s and early 1950s. I just don't know whether they were carbonating it or if they were able to save a step due to the natural fizz.

 

[mgardziella]

For example, this 1947 ad says it is "bottled as the water flows cool, fresh, and sparkling from a depth of over 400 feet." The bottom says, "No miles of pipe, no storage tanks, but bottled as it flows from wells."

 

[CanadianBottles]

For example, this 1947 ad says it is "bottled as the water flows cool, fresh, and sparkling from a depth of over 400 feet." The bottom says, "No miles of pipe, no storage tanks, but bottled as it flows from wells."

Oh in that case it looks like they were using the natural carbonation. I guess it wasn't a very strong-tasting mineral water, or the flavours were formulated to go well with the taste. I was assuming that they weren't advertising it as naturally sparkling anymore by that point, based on your ad it it was still basically being marketed as mineral water, only flavoured. It's possible they were re-carbonating the water the way that Perrier apparently is, but I don't know if there would ever be any way to confirm that without a firsthand account of the bottling process. I'm not sure why they would have done that since it was presumably a pretty small operation, so I imagine it probably was still naturally sparkling.

 

[mgardziella]

Thanks for your thoughts - that's where I'm at too. The only first-hand accounts I have were a child and a teenager at the time and they don't remember anything about the carbonation process (understandably).