Just about everyone knows about carbonated drinks, especially considering how popular various types of sodas are. The carbonation in these drinks can add a bit more spark to your typical sip, which is something that most people can appreciate.
Some people might be surprised about how many different kinds of carbonated products there really are.
From carbonated waters, often referred to as sparkling water, to juices, alcohol, and other types of drinks, there’s just about nothing that people haven’t tried carbonating when it comes to drinks.
In fact, there are consumer-friendly carbonating products that you can purchase so that you can have all of the carbonated drinks that you could ever want in the comfort of your own home.
With as popular as carbonated drinks are, you might begin to wonder if there is more of a use for them beyond simply being a twist on what you would normally drink.
For instance, carbonated water and standard water aren’t really that different physically, so could it possibly be used for cooking? What about other things, such as boiling the carbonated water?
The truth is that the idea of using carbonated water in other foods is not a new one and people have been experimenting with using carbonated water in foods for quite some time.
People have even found that using carbonated water in doughs tends to give the dough a much lighter taste and texture than standard tap water would. This is just one example of how people have begun to bring carbonated water into the culinary world.
If you are interested in trying to work with carbonated water yourself, you will want to start small so that you know what to expect and what you should do.
For instance, you should try boiling the carbonated water. Some people might even want to add that boiled carbonated water to tea or coffee for even more of a pick-me-up in the mornings.
The question then becomes a matter of whether or not you can boil the carbonated water and after that, should you?
Boiling Carbonated Water
If the question is a matter of whether or not you can physically boil carbonated water, then the answer is yes, you can. Boiling carbonated water is a simple process, exactly the same as you would go about boiling your standard tap water.
You may have to set the temperature of the burner to “high” to get the effects that you are looking for but aside from this, carbonated water functions exactly like tap water would even on a chemical basis.
In fact, you may be surprised to learn that carbonated water isn’t that unique of a substance when you are considering naturally occurring substances and liquids in the world. There are even a handful of places in the world that will produce naturally carbonated mineral water.
What this means is that the carbonation of the water doesn’t leave enough of an impact on the water itself to affect its ability to boil or even the boiling point of the water.
The effects of carbonation in water will start to appear when you are adding more ingredients to the mix as this means that there will be more chances for a different kind of chemical reaction, even if it means that the chemical reaction is milder than it normally would be.
This is why most of the focus on working with carbonated water in a culinary setting is more pointed toward cooking foods with the water, rather than getting past the boiling point with it.
In short, carbonated water can be boiled safely and easily, using the exact same process that you would use to boil your own standard tap or mineral water.
Using Carbonated Water in Coffees and Teas
So now that you know that you can boil carbonated water, the question of the matter then becomes what you can use boiled carbonated water in. The most natural progression of this experiment would then be to try and use it in coffees or teas.
Both of these involve the use of boiling water but neither introduce so many elements and chemicals that it would end up changing everything around and leaving you completely unprepared.
The thing is that by boiling the water, you also “boil out” the carbonation of the water. This leaves you with the equivalent of distilled water as you have now boiled everything out of it.
In this sense, you can absolutely make coffees and teas with the boiled water as it will no longer be carbonated and will be of the same properties as the water you would normally use for these tasks.
Of course, this would be an extremely convoluted way of trying to get water for your tea or coffee but if you are in a situation where you only have carbonated water and you wanted one of these drinks, then you could make it work.
But that isn’t very interesting for most people, so what if you didn’t boil the carbonated water before using it to make coffee or tea? With coffees, you can resort to a cold-brewing method and you would have to brew it in a sealed container to try and preserve what carbonation you could.
It is somewhat unlikely that the drink would still be carbonated after that as the process of making coffee will more or less remove the carbonated effect of the water.
If you are looking specifically for a carbonated version of coffee, your best bet would be to make the coffee as you normally would and then carbonate the finished drink with a specialized carbonator.
This would be a somewhat inconvenient process but there is probably a good reason why carbonated coffee isn’t really a thing.
With tea, the process and methods are quite the same. Any method you would use to typically brew tea would leave you with un-carbonated water, meaning that your tea is going to be the same as it would otherwise be.
In fact, there really won’t even be much of a difference in flavor either, as you will more or less be using your typical water by the end of the tea brewing process.
Depending on your point of view on the situation, this either means that you can use carbonated water to make tea in a pinch, or that you will not really be able to carbonate tea.
If you are looking for carbonated tea specifically, there are two routes you can take. You can opt to carbonate the tea afterwards with the equipment that you would typically use for carbonating water.
This will have the same effect as it would on water since tea is almost entirely water in the first place. You can also consider a drink known as kombucha.
In short, kombucha can be thought of as fermented tea. During the fermentation process, the tea will carbonate naturally, leaving you with the results that you would want.
In short, you can use carbonated water in both tea and coffee without an issue, as the process for making coffee and tea will neutralize the carbonation. There are other ways to add carbonation to these drinks if that is what you are looking for specifically.
You can boil carbonated water the same way you would boil water normally and this process will neutralize the carbonation (which is why it won’t affect coffee or tea to use carbonated water).
I have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems and over 10 years of experience working in IT. As a homeowner, I love working on projects around the house, and as a father, I love investigating various ways to keep my family safe (whether or not this involves tech). I’ve also played guitar for almost 20 years and love writing music, although it’s hard to find the time these days.