Salem soda pops up for history in Niles
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NILES - Kast Iron Soda Works came to Niles on Thursday to give a "History of Soda Fountains" presentation at the McKinley Birthplace Home that was open to the public.
Located in Salem, Kast Iron is an old-school style soda bar partnered with America250-Ohio as an official non-alcoholic beverage provider. Lesley Kline, who co-owns Kast Iron alongside her husband Wil, said that they try to embrace the history of soda.
"We are a soda shop, and we also function as an old-timey soda fountain which has been a really fun history [thing] for us to lean into. Not just with the drinks, but just understanding the history of the soda fountain itself, and knowing where it came from," Kline said. "We make sodas, we serve them on draft like beer would be on draft and we mix up all those sort of fountain things that are just really fun, and nostalgic."
As part of this, Kast Iron has given presentations like the "History of Soda Fountains" before, usually in schools, to teach people about the history of soda, and the chemistry that goes into it.
"We do a lot of talks like this at schools," Kline said. "We have kids come in, classrooms come in, we do a little bit of history, they tend to like the science more where we talk about states of matter and solids, liquids, gases, carbonation and things like that."
According to Kline's presentation, soda was originally created in 1767 by the English chemist Joseph Priestley. Ironically, it was originally created to be a healthy medical treatment for several ailments.
"He figured out ... how to carbonate water, and it evolved into hanging bags over beer to pick up their fermentation, and it was causing bubbles and all these crazy things," Kline said. "This was being touted as a health cure, a remedy of sorts, for all kinds of ailments; for fatigue, for achy joints, for upset stomach [and] all of these things. So all the way back in 1767, carbonated water was already starting to become something that people were drinking, but with health benefits in mind."
This continued in 1783 when Johann Jacob Schweppe first began mass producing carbonated water, founding the Schweppes company in Geneva, Switzerland, in the process. Again, this was originally done to be a medical remedy, a far cry from modern soda and its associated health issues from tooth decay to heart disease.