While I once worked a few blocks away in Canarsie, I never made it for a visit. I still hope to do so for the book. Until then I hope to figure out how to watch this short.

Maybe the director, Jessica Edwards, will tell me if and how I can share it here.

Thanks to Dan Friedman, Arts and Culture Editor, The Forward, for letting me know. (More on Dan in the future and his unexpected seltzer connections...)

[Update: 3/11/010]
I just heard from the director! Details below:

Hi Barry!

Thanks so much for getting in touch! I saw your blog when I was researching
the film.

Seltzer Works is playing several film festivals this spring including one in Texas on Saturday at SXSW. Its our world premiere! I was looking for a bottler down there to get some seltzer for our party, but no luck!

Look forward to your book! And keep me posted on how its going!

Jessica

If you want me to see if Jessica can share some of the film with us here, please let me know!

Note both the prominent role played by the seltzer siphon and, equally interesting, how little else but that siphon (and of course the title's Yiddish) codes it as a Jewish story.

Below is their show notes, with more details and context:

Links:
DIY Soda Maker Who needs a machine? You can craft your own!
DIY Soda Guy on YouTube
SodaStream: The machine used in this video
Soda Siphons and Cartridges
Williams Sonoma
Target
Other Handy Seltzer/Soda Links:
Green Your
Carbonate Your Booze

The following is a tale nearly 200 years old, told on pages 134 – 146 of Sir Francis Bond Head’s “Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau.” The text is from Google Books, where each page, scanned from the original, can be viewed or searched through the computerized OCR reading (which explains some of the oddities you’ll encounter below).

Head is a very entertaining writer and brings the scenes of Neider-Selters to life better than any I have read and I am excited to share it with you now.

_________

...Descending, however, into valleys, we occasionally passed through several very large villages, which were generally paved, or rather studded with paving-stones; and as the carriage-wheels hopped from one to another, the sensation ( being still too fresh in my memory) I had rather decline to describe : suffice it to say, that the painful excitation vividly expressed in my countenance must have formed an odd contrast with the dull, heavy, half-asleep faces, which, as if raised from the grave by the rattling of ray springs as well as joints, just showed themselves at the windows, as if to scare me as I passed...

The moment I entered the great gate of the enclosure which, surrounded by a high stone wall, occupies about eight acres of ground, so strange a scene presented itself suddenly to my view, that my first impression was, I had discovered a new world inhabited by brown stone bottles; for in all directions were they to be seen rapidly moving from one part of the establishment to another — standing actually in armies on the ground, or piled in immense layers or strata one above another. Such a profusion and such a confusion of bottles it had never entered human imagination to conceive; and, before I could bring my eyes to stoop to detail, with uplifted hands I stood for several seconds in utter amazement.

On approaching a large circular shed, covered with a slated roof, supported by posts, but open on all sides, I found the single brunnen or well from which this highly celebrated water is forwarded to almost every quarter of the globe—to India, the West Indies, the Mediterranean,'Paris, London, and to almost every city in Germany. The hole, which was about five feet square, was bounded by a framework of four strong beams mortised together ; and the bottom of the shed being boarded, it very much resembled, both in shape and dimensions, one of the hatches in the deck of a ship. A small crane with three arms, to each of which there was suspended a square iron crate or basket, a little smaller than the brunnen, stood about ten feet off; and while peasant girls, with a stone bottle (holding three pints) dangling on every finger of each hand, were rapidly filling two of these crates, which contained seventy bottles, a man turned the third by a winch, until it hung immediately over the brunnen, into which it then rapidly descended. The air in these seventy bottles being, immediately displaced by the water, a great bubbling of course ensued ; but, in about twenty seconds, this having subsided, the crate Wps raised; and, while seventy more bottles descended from another arm of the crane, a fresh set of girls curiously carried off these full bottles, one on each finger of each hand, ranging them in several long rows upon a large table or dresser,—also beneath the shed. No sooner were they there, than two men, with surprising activity, put a cork into each; while two drummers, with a long stick in each of their hands hammering them down, appeared as it they were playing upon musical glasses.

Another set of young women now instantly carried them off, four and five in each hand, to men who, with sharp knives, sliced off the projecting part of the cork; and this operation being over, the poor jaded bottles were delivered over to women, each of whom actually covered 3000 of them a day with white leather, which they firmly bound with packthread round the corks; and then, without placing the bottles on the ground, they delivered them over to a man seated beside them, who, without any apology, dipped each of their noses into boiling hot rosin; and, before they had recovered from this operation, the Duke of Nassau's seal was stamped upon them by another man, when off they were hurried, sixteen and twenty at a time, by girls to magazines, where they peacefully remained ready for exportation.

Although this series of operations, when related one after another, may sound simple enough, yet it must be kept in mind that all were performed at once; and when it is considered that a three, armed crane was drawing up bottles seventy at a time, from three o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock at night (meal hours excepted), it is evident that, without very excellent arrangement, some of the squads either would be glutted with more work than they could perform, or would stand idle with nothing to do :—no one, therefore, dares to hurry or stop; the machinery, in full motion,..

Having followed a set of bottles from the brunnen to the store, where I left them resting from their labours, I strolled to another part of the establishment, where were empty bottles calmly waiting for their turn to be filled. I here counted twenty-five bins of bottles, each four yards broad, six yards deep, and eight feet high. A number of young girls were carrying thirty-four of them at a time on their heads to an immense trough, which was kept constantly full by a large fountain pipe of beautiful clear fresh water. The bottles on arriving here were filled brimful (as I conceived for the purpose of being washed), and were then ranged in ranks, or rather solid columns, of seven hundred each, there being ten rows of seventy bottles.

It being now seven o'clock, a bell rung as a signal for giving over work, and the whole process came suddenly to an end: for a few seconds, the busy labourers (as in a disturbed ant-heap) were seen irregularly hurrying in every direction : but in a very short time, all had vanished. For a few minutes I ruminated in solitude about the premises, and then set out to take up my abode for the night at the village, or rather town, of Nieder-Selters: however, I had no sooner, as I vainly thought, bidden adieu to bottles, than I saw, like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane, bottles approaching me in every possible variety of attitude. It appears that all the inhabitants of Nieder-Selters are in the habit of drinking in their houses this refreshing water ; but as the brunnen is in requisition by the Duke all day long, it is only before or after work that a private supply can be obtained : no sooner, therefore, does the evening bell ring, than every child in the village is driven out of its house to take empty bottles to the brunnen ; and it was this singular-looking legion which was now approaching me. The children really looked as if they were made of bottles ; some wore a pyramid of them in baskets on their heads—some were laden with them hanging over their shoulders before and behind—some carried them strapped round their middle—all had their hands full; and little urchins that could scarcely walk were advancing, each hugging in its arms one single bottle.

In fact, at Nieder-Selters, " an infant" means a being totally unable to carry a bottle, puberty and manhood are proved by bottles; a strong man brags of the number he can carry ; and a superannuation means a being no longer able in this world to bear .... bottles. . ' The road to the brunnen is actually strewed with fragments, and so are the ditches ; and when the reader is informed that, besides all he has so patiently heard, bottles are not only expended and exported, but actually are made at Neider-Selters, he must admit that no writer can possibly do justice to that place unless every line of his description contains, at least once, the word .... bottle. The moralists of Nieder-Selters preach on bottles. Life, they say, is a sound bottle, and death a cracked one—thoughtless men are empty bottles—drunken men are leaky ones; and a man highly educated, fit to appear in any country and in any society, is, of course, a bottle corked, rosined, and stamped with the seal of the Duke of Nassau.

As soon as I reached the village inn, I found there all the slight accommodation I required: a tolerable dinner soon smoked on the table before me ; and, feeling that I had seen quite enough for one day of brown stone bottles, I ventured to order (merely for a change) a long-necked glass one of a vegetable fluid superior to all the mineral water in the world. The following morning, previous to returning to the brunnen, I strolled for some time about the village ; and the best analysis I can offer of the Selters water is the plain fact, that the inhabitants of the village, who have drunk it all their lives, are certainly, by many degrees, the healthiest and ruddiest looking peasants I have anywhere met with in the dominions of the Duke of Nassau.

This day being a festival, on reaching the brunnen at eleven o'clock I found it entirely deserted—no human being was to be seen : all had been working from three o'clock in the morning till nine, but they were now at church, and were not to return to their labour till twelve. I had, therefore, the whole establishment to myself; and going to the famous brunnen, my first object was to taste its water. On drinking it fresh from the source, I observed that it possessed a strong chalybeate taste, which I had never perceived in receiving it from the bottle. The three iron crates suspended to the arms of the crane were empty, and there was nothing at all upon the wooden dressers which, the evening before, I had seen so busily crowded and surrounded : in the middle of the great square were the stools on which the several cork-covering watnen had sat; while, at some distance to the left, were the solid columns or regiments of uncorked bottles, which I had seen filled brimful with pure crystal water the evening before.

On approaching this brown looking army, I was exceedingly surprised at observing from a distance that several of the bottles were noseless, and I was wondering why such should ever have been filled, when, on getting close to these troops, I perceived, to my utter astonishment, that not only about one-third of them were in the same mutilated State, but that their noses were calmly lying by their sides, supported by the adjoining bottles! What could possibly have been the cause of the fatal disaster which in one single night had so dreadfully disfigured them, I was totally at a loss to imagine: the devastation which had taken place resembled the riddling of an infantry regiment under a heavy fire ; yet few of our troops, even at Waterloo, lost so great a proportion of their men as had fallen in twelve hours among these immovable phalanxes of bottles.

Had they been corked, one might have supposed that they had exploded, but why nothing but their noses had suffered I really felt quite incompetent to explain.As it is always better honestly to confess one's ignorance, rather than exist under its torture, with a firm step I walked to the door of the governor of the brunnen; and sending up to him a card, bearing the name under which I travelled, he instantly appeared, politely assuring me that he should have much pleasure in affording any information I desired. Instantly pointing to the noseless soldiers, my instructor was good enough to inform me, that bottles in vast numbers being supplied to the Duke from various manufactories, in order to prove them, they are filled brimful (as I had seen them) with water, and being left in that state for the night, they are the next morning \\sited by an officer of the Duke, whose wand of office is a thin, longhandled, little hammer, which at the moment happened to be lying before us on the ground. It appears that the two prevailing sins to which stone bottles are prone, are having cracks, and being porous, in either of which cases they, of course, in twelve hours, leak a little.

The Duke's officer, who is judge and jury in his own court-yard, carries his own sentences into execution with a rapidity which evenour Lord Chancellor himself can only hope eventually to imitate. Glancing his hawk-like eye along each line, the instant he sees a bottle not brimful, without listening to long-winded arguments, te at once decides "that there can be no mistake—that there shall be no mistake;" and thus at one blow or tap of the hammer, off goes the culprit's nose. " So much for Buckingham!

On coming out of the office, the establishment was all alive again, and the peasants being in their Sunday clothes, the picture was highly coloured. Young women in groups of four and five, with little white or red caps perched on the tops of their heads, from which streamed three or four broad ribands, of different colours, denoting the villages they proceeded from, in various directions, singing as they went, were walking together, heavily laden with bottles. They were dressed in blue petticoats, clean white shifts tucked up above the elbows, with coloured stays laced, or rather half unlaced, in front. Old women, covering the corks with leather, in similar costume, but in colours less gaudy, were displaying an activity much more vigorous than their period of life. Across this party-coloured, well-arranged system, which was as regular in its movements as the planets in their orbits, an officer of the Duke, like a comet, occasionally darted from the office to the brunnen, or from the tiers of empty bottles which had not yet been proved, to the magazine of full ones ready to embark on their travels. In quitting the premises, as I passed the regiments of bottles, an operation was proceeding which I had not before witnessed.

Women in wooden shoes were reversing the full bottles; in fact, without driving these brown soldiers from their position, they were making them stand upon their heads instead of upon their heels— the object of this military somerset being to empty them; however, every noseless bottle, water and all, was hurled over a wall, into a bin prepared on purpose to receive them; and the smashing sound of devastation which proceeded from this odd-looking operation it would be very difficult to describe.

Having now witnessed about as much as I desired of the lively brunnen of Nieder-Selters, I bade adieu to this well-regulated estailishment, testing certaia that its portrait would, in futore, te•appear before my mind, in all its vivid colours whensoever and wheresoever I might drink the refreshing, wholesome beverage obtained from its bright, sparkling source. My carriage had long been waiting at the gate: however, having aroused my lumbering and slumbering driver, I retraced my steps, was slowly re-jolted homewards, and it was late before I reached my peaceful abode in 4he gay, green little valley of Schlangenbad.

Now, with Google Books, they've given me a new problem. Serving as a magnet pulling the needles all together, I have TOO MUCH information. Thus, feeding my info porn addiction, it's hard to know when to say "I have enough."

I imagined at the time that in the future people who write books and papers will be expected to link to their collection of resources on Google Books. I didn't realize it would come to pass in just a few weeks!

So, with little further adieu, here is the start of my public bibliography of primary and secondary sources on seltzer. Enjoy. And then, if you write fast than I, write your own book on seltzer (and thank me in the credits for the groundwork).

One of the interviews, yet to be aired, was with an Orthodox woman speaking of the role seltzer played in her very religious home as a child. In it she mentioned an album all the Orthodox boys and girls loved to listen to, called When Zaidy Was Young, which is all about life on the Lower East Side.

I am still tracking it down - as one of the tunes is about the seltzer delivery man - but in the process I found this outrageous video with the same name - a sort of Yiddish Muppets. It's about a grandfather telling his grandson about how "it once was" on the Lower East Side.

But starting at around 14:30 it's all about their love of seltzer! And then jumping to about 25:00 until the end it focuses on the use of seltzer to put out a fire and how, as a result, it helps the dad to maintain his Jewish identity in the face of assimilationist pressures while supporting his family - once again, seltzer both celebrated and saddled with so much responsibility. Check it out!

Here is what happens when you tell Jewish children: No seltzer for shabbat!

Click To Play

And here's how to put out a burning building with seltzer bottles... and a song!

Click To Play

And here's the full 30 minute video:

Part of what I love about this video is that seltzer is associated with so many different things: being Jewish; refreshing; humorous; seltzer business; and putting out fires. If it only had health and cleaning carpets it would have summed up nearly all popular associations with the drink. I wonder if in my research I will come across something else with containing all of the associations. What have you seen?

This is about some street urchins trying to have one over on the man selling seltzer. "The English drink Seltzer water like fish in the dog-days." :-)

I can download as PDF or to text search online for this important study from 1804: A treatise on the internal use of the natural and factitious waters of Carlsbad, Marienbad, Ems, &c. &c
Author Friedrich Ludwig Kreysig

I am specifically interested in this work as it documents the medicinal uses of spas. That is, to what extend doctors, the write included, used spas as a form of medicinal treatment, and for what exactly.

One of the amazing things about Google Books is that it will create a word cloud for you of the entire book, using only the most common phrases, making those most used larger. I was fascinated by the book's cloud below given all the numerous health conditions referenced. How many can you find?

Or click here to see a larger version.

As if that wasn't strange enough, it turns out there's a 30-second PSA for it as well! Check it out below.

Still haven't had enough? Check out their facebook group.

I was going to make a video to show it off but it looks like the guys at The Soda Jerks beat me to the punch. Here's their video:

Lots of fun! In case you are wondering, 2010 is the Year of the Schmear: "This year, don't spread yourself too thin."

You can buy the Egg Cream t-shirt here. It states that those born in the Year of the Egg Cream are as follows: "You've got a devious personality since you're made with neither eggs nor cream. Friends find your pranks refreshing; others think you’re too frothy. Compatible with Blintz, who also has something to hide." And of course the shirt comes in one color: Chocolate (my wife, who prefers vanilla egg creams, might have something to say about that).

Personally, I am the Year of the Chopped Liver. You can check out the whole Jewish Zodiac at www.jewzo.com.

And thank you Soda Stream for the kind words! As the book will reveal, this project of mine would NEVER have gotten off the ground without you!

I mentioned in a recent post that my recent ability to refocus on this project was seeing seltzer everywhere. Specifically, I've seen it in three unexpected places that suggest that, damn, if only I'd had the book done by now I'd be moving them like latkes during a Chanukah bash!

First, there was a recent article in the journal Science, of which I am NOT a reader, documenting a study analyzing the "taste of carbonated water." Absolutely fascinating. I only learned of it through hearing it on my NPR Podcast.

The best image from the study, as it is so bizarre: what a rat's tongue looks like tasting seltzer! Specifically, sour-sensing cells and the enzyme lighting up a mouse tongue:

You can almost see the ads now - "This is rat's tongue. This is a rat's tongue on seltzer."

The second November appearance, which surprised me the most, was in Entertainment Weekly magazine, my source for all things movie, television and music. It lets me know what I need to consume to be cool. Well, according to their latest What's In and What's our report, I can now add seltzer to the list!

Believe me when I tell you, I can't imagine a more unexpected place to see seltzer come up and I sure wish I could find out why now, of all times, they choose to give their nod to the fizzy fun.

Finally, and this one is only a little more gross than a rat's tongue:

"Are you pouring on the pounds?" this NYC Subway ad asks, in both English here, and, elsewhere in Spanish. "Don't drink yourself fat." Instead, drink water, seltzer or low-fat milk.

It's hardly a surprise to see the health benefits of seltzer touted - that's one of it's most common cultural narratives. But it was still a surprise to see drinking it encouraged in a public health campaign, picture underneath a photo realistic image of... what IS that, anyway? I'm sticking with seltzer.

All of this lead me to add what I think has been the final ingredient missing in the structure of the book. And after months of preperations, I have started writing the book, from scratch. (more on that later as well).

As a result I have missed my subway stop not once but twice this week, as I was so engrossed writing away on my Pre. And have I been DEEP into it. For a taste, pun intended, take a look at the response I received from a noted scientist on his recent research study on the taste of carbonation.

Hi Barry,
The CO2 that is in the seltzer is a substrate for carbonic anhydrase: the enzyme takes the CO2 plus a water molecule and converts them into bicarbonate plus a proton (H+). This proton is the acid signal that activates the acid (sour) taste receptor. So, as you correctly pointed out, no need to invoke any free oxygen, radicals, etc. , just the CO2 and the action of carbonic anhydrase

cheers

Eep! I am having fun figuring this all out and turning it into a readable, engaging page turned. Wish me luck!

Full article below the fold:

"I've loved carbonation ever since I realized how much it helped my stomach on car rides."

"As I have mentioned before I am very prone to motion sickness."

Jeannie's in good company. A lot of seltzer drinkers are diehard for the beverage, which is literally nothing more than water and carbon dioxide. And it's showing up in more and more places - Perrier comes in little plastic bottles you can get at some gas stations (Perrier! In gas stations!); local restaurants are installing seltzer/mineral-water-filtration systems; the lead singer of the indie-rock band Grizzly Bear, in a New York Times profile last spring, spoke to the interviewer while sipping some "homemade seltzer"; also, there's a Burger King I'm not going to tell you the location of that'll give you seltzer for free, because they don't know (yet) that they can charge you for it. They think it's like regular water. But boy are they wrong.

Over in Queens, N.Y., Barry Joseph's been working on a book about seltzer for a few years, "on and off," he told me in a phone interview. His blog, givemeseltzer.com, is a way for Joseph to promote himself and solicit ideas and input from other seltzer fans. On his site there are SeltzerCast podcasts, reader-submitted seltzer stories, seltzer history, a seltzer song sung by a guitar-playing chick, and updates on the progress of Joseph's seltzer book, which he says is the "first definitive history of seltzer."

What Joseph is researching for his book is the cultural history of soda water and how it's changed and evolved since it was first bottled and sold in 1728. This was in the Teunus region, northeast of Frankfurt, in a town called Niederselters ("selters" is a derivation of "seltrisa," which means "salty water" - yadda yadda, now it's "seltzer"). The water beneath Niederselters, according to Joseph, was famous throughout Europe for its natural carbonation. The town industrialized around the spring, making the bottling and selling of the water a massively profitable business. It was believed that seltzer was a medicinal aid that could help to cure anything from the flu to tuberculosis. But springs don't last forever.

So in 1772, Joseph Priestley, who's most widely known for discovering oxygen, published a pamphlet titled Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air. Dude thought seltzer cured scurvy (nope.) and distributed his pregnant-water pamphlet to sailors so they could make their own soda water while at sea.

Around the turn of the 20th century, seltzer water was brought to America and popularized in the cities, particularly in the Northeast. It was especially prevalent in the Jewish community, many of whom had settled in the Lower East Side. Here you could find a seltzer bottle on every dinner table.

"[Seltzer]'s elemental," said Joseph. "That's the story. That's what's interesting: its cultural history and how people gave it meaning."

Joseph, who is Jewish, is studying this particular aspect of seltzer culture - its role in the Jewish community. Seltzer is kosher. It helps to break many kosher foods down. Matzo, for instance, can often be dense or chewy, and seltzer is a prescribed remedy for this Passover problem. It's used in lots of Jewish recipes, in fact — maybe most famously in egg creams, which are made with chocolate milk and seltzer. And many Jews also worked in seltzer factories.

The Jewish Daily Forward newspaper has a "100 Years Ago" feature, where they take excerpts from their archives and translate them from Yiddish to English. In July 2009's "100 Years Ago," the July 1909 Forward excerpt reads:

"Seltzer is far and away the most popular drink on Manhattan's Lower East Side. ... But most seltzer drinkers are not familiar with the dangerous realities of working in a seltzer factory. Accidents are daily occurrences, and workers come home with bandaged heads, sliced-up hands and missing eyeballs. The pace in these factories is so fast that the workers don't have time to check the quality of the bottles. This means that if there is even a hairline crack in the glass, it could easily explode, leaving workers with gashes on their hands and heads, or shards of glass in their eyes. It is known that in the uptown shops, where most of the workers are Christian, the employees are provided with protective masks and gloves. But here, downtown, where the workers are Jews, no protection is available and there are injuries every day." The Yiddish Soda Bottlers Association had a slogan, Joseph said. "Don't drink the bloody seltzer."

Seltzer injuries definitely still happen - practically every DIY seltzer-making Web site strongly cautions against the use of glass bottles - and Joseph said, "I get e-mail from people all the time saying, ‘I lost my eye in the '60s.' These people who are delivering bottles, they lose hands and everything." And the CO2 tanks people get to make seltzer (and, more often the case, beer) explode. Kind of a lot. I saw videos of it on YouTube.

Thankfully, there are far fewer dangers in seltzer manufacturing these days. You can find mini-seltzer-making machines that sit on your counter and won't hurt you any more than your toaster might. And restaurants like West Hartford's Max Burger and Glastonbury's Max Fish, both owned by the Max Restaurant Group, are installing bad-ass filtration/carbonation systems that are easy to use and, one more seltzer-water bonus, "green." There's no plastic waste.

"We made an effort to be as green as possible," said Rich Rosenthal, who's a co-owner of Max Restaurant Group. "We're trying to eliminate the use of bottled waters, figuring there's a frivolous use of a carbon footprint."

The system at the Max restaurants is made by a Massachusetts company called AquaHealth, which installs the systems in hotels, restaurants, casinos and universities. Craig Hundertmark, a controller for the company, told me AquaHealth's doing very well this year. And they're working on a new system that'll add carbonation to Gatorade or to green tea or to vitamin water.

"It's all about hydration," Hundertmark said.

The argument can certainly be made that seltzer's on the rise, that it's trendy. It's been suggested a few times already, and Joseph admitted it is seeming to get a little more attention.

Joseph has his own seltzer maker at home, of course. And he said if he had to invest in one brand of the canned stuff, it'd probably be Vintage.(He's right. Vintage is awesomely supercarbonated.) But nothing, he said, beats a homemade seltzer.

It sounds like it's well worth the investment. Jeannie knows what I'm talking about. She writes in her blog: "I think one day I would like to invest in a Seltzer Maker so that I will never have to drink regular water ever again!"

A Bubble By Any Other Name

Seltzer Controversy: This one time I ordered a club soda from a restaurant and the waitress said "Where you from?" She said that people "around here" don't call seltzer water "club soda." Many would disagree, but not exactly about regional vernacular. More likely they'd debate the differences between club soda, seltzer, soda water, sparkling water and, if you can believe it, tonic. Here's a breakdown of the different ingredients in all of the above:

Club soda: water and carbon dioxide
Seltzer: water and carbon dioxide
Soda water: water and carbon dioxide
Sparkling water: water and carbon dioxide
Tonic: water, quinine and carbon dioxide

Now, while, fundamentally, all of that is true, there are some makers of seltzer that add sodium or minerals to their water. There are also brands that sell flavored seltzer water. But, across the board, all those terms for fizzy water (or CO2+H2O) are synonymous — except for tonic, which, if you've never drunk plain, burns and tastes like aspirin. And it's true that different brands of soda water vary in bubbly-ness. Some have higher concentrations of carbonation (like Vintage) and some have lower (like Perrier). And sparkling water is also commonly confused with mineral water by people reasonably assuming the two are the same. The "finer" brands of sparkling water, San Pellegrino and Perrier and the AquaHealth filtration machines at Max's, add minerals and carbonation to their water. Something about minerals really seems to make seltzer all hoity-toity. But despite all these differences in the way that soda water is made and marketed, the language remains kind of broad and ambiguous, which is nice. We love choices.

Wanna get some seltzer delivered to your house?! You can do it! Avery's Beverages in New Britain does seltzer home-delivery (they also deliver other sodas, too) and it comes in the siphon bottles and everything! Super fizzed-out, fresh, local and vintage. Avery's Beverages, 520 Corbin Ave., New Britain, (860) 224-0830. Also, Hosmer Mountain Soda, located in a few places in the area, has a big seltzer following too, according to Kacee Potter, who works in the Manchester store. They've got a big list of flavors and -- get this -- they have regular seltzers and tonics and sodas and then they also have something they call 'round the shop "Kicked-Up Seltzer," which is soda water with three times the carbonation of regular soda. If you're really into CO2, go to Hosmer and ask for the seltzer in the long-neck bottles. Potter said the water's so fizzy they have to use thicker-than-usual glass bottles. Regular glass can't contain the power of the Kicked-Up carbonation. O.M.G.