Homemade Orange Soda

If you love orange soda, you'll love this 3-ingredient homemade version even more! It's super refreshing, bubbly, delicious and easy to make. When it's this easy to make your own soda at home with fresh, seasonal ingredients, why even make a trip to the store?

Homemade fruit-flavored soda is SO easy to make. It's essentially a concentrated fruit simple syrup combined with sparkling water, and it's easy to customize the sweetness level to your taste.

Plus, you're using actual fruit instead of artificial flavors, so it tastes 10x better than store-bought, and it's a fun way to use up extra seasonal produce you might have on hand!

We like to keep a batch of this orange syrup in the fridge when citrus is at its peak (currently February here!). Whenever the craving strikes, we add a few pumps to some ice and top it off with sparkling water for a refreshing, lower sugar soda. Brent (my husband) especially loves having a glass after a hard workout.

The fun part about homemade soda is that you can change it up every season. Last spring, we made this strawberry rhubarb soda and it was absolutely delicious! Our blackberry simple syrup would be perfect for summer, and our pomegranate syrup is a fun one for fall. It's so easy to experiment with your favorite fruits to make your own soda!

This recipe is part of our Better Than Store-Bought series, where we share homemade versions of our favorite store-bought snacks and meals. If you want a snack to pair with your orange soda, try our homemade cheez-its or goldfish!

Jump to:

• What You'll Need to Make this Recipe
• How to Make this Recipe
• Storage
• Lexi and Beth's Best Tips and Tricks
• More flavored syrups to try
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Reviews

What You'll Need to Make this Recipe

• Oranges: You can use whatever oranges you prefer or what you have on hand. Navel and Cara Cara are widely available and work well, but we've found that tangelos have the most vibrantly orange juice and zest, and are incredibly easy to juice and zest. To change the flavor up a bit, you can even try tangerines, blood oranges or a mix of orange and grapefruit. Whatever kind of citrus you choose, make sure not to skip the zest! That's what makes this homemade soda super flavorful.
• Granulated sugar: This is the main ingredient for the simple syrup. The orange syrup itself is quite sweet, but to make the soda, you only use a small amount. If it's still to sweet, feel free to decrease the amount of sugar, or use a sugar substitute like monk fruit. If you don't use regular sugar, just keep in mind that the syrup probably won't last quite as long in the refrigerator.
• Sparkling water: Any brand will work! Topo Chico is super carbonated, so it's our top choice for homemade soda.

How to Make this Recipe

We use a microplane to zest 2 large or 3-4 smaller oranges. It's such a handy tool for grating hard cheeses, like parmesan, too! Once you zest the citrus, slice in half and juice them.

To a medium-sized shallow plate or bowl, add the granulated sugar and orange zest. Use your fingers to massage the sugar into the zest, until the sugar is uniformly orange in color.

To a small saucepan over medium low heat, add the zest and sugar mixture and the juice. Heat to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally until all of the sugar has dissolved, then turn off the heat and let the zest steep in the syrup for at least 20 minutes, ideally until fully cooled.

Once cooled, strain the zest from the syrup and transfer the syrup to a mason jar or other storage container.

To make your orange soda, add anywhere from 2-4 tablespoons of syrup to an ice-filled glass and then top off with sparkling water and enjoy!

Storage

Once the syrup is fully cooled, keep it stored in an airtight jar like a mason jar. We like to use this pump top bottle for easy dispensing. It should keep for about 1 month in the refrigerator. If you use a sugar substitute, it will not last this long.

Lexi and Beth's Best Tips and Tricks

• Massage the zest and sugar together thoroughly. This will help extract the oils that are inside of the zest, thus adding a lot of flavor to your syrup.
• If you have the time, let the syrup cool completely with the zest in it before straining. This is essentially like brewing a tea, and over time the liquid will become infused with the flavor of the zest. If you don't have the time, strain it right away and add an ice cube or two to cool down the syrup.
• Ratio of syrup to sparkling water: You can vary this up according to how intense you want your flavor to be, but a ratio of about ¼ cup of syrup to 1 cup of sparkling water should work well. For less sweet soda, try just 2 tablespoons.

More flavored syrups to try

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📖 Recipe