Hello, readers. A bottle of cherry soda from the store is mostly sugar water with a red tint.

Make it at home and you get something else entirely: real fruit, a tart edge, and a fizz you control. Do not just swap one sweet syrup for another, because the homemade version leans on actual cherries and a little acid to keep it lively.

What you actually need

You need 1 pound of fresh or frozen sweet cherries, pitted. Frozen works fine and saves you the pitting hassle, especially in the off season. Add 1 cup of granulated sugar, 1 cup of water, 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. The salt does not make it salty, it just sharpens the cherry flavor. For serving, you need chilled seltzer or club soda, roughly 4 to 6 ounces per glass, plus ice.

Cook the syrup down

Combine the cherries, sugar, water, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring it to a simmer, then drop the heat to low and let it cook for about 15 minutes, stirring now and then. The cherries will soften and release their juice, and the liquid will turn a deep red. Press the fruit gently with the back of a spoon against the pan to coax out more flavor. Pull it off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. That acid is what keeps the syrup from tasting flat.

Strain it and chill

Pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl or jar. Press the solids to get every last bit of syrup out, then discard the pulp. You should end up with roughly 1 1/2 cups of syrup. Let it cool to room temperature, then refrigerate. It keeps in a sealed jar for about two weeks, and longer if you freeze part of it in ice cube trays.

Build the glass

Fill a tall glass with ice. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of the cherry syrup, depending on how sweet you want it. Pour in 4 to 6 ounces of chilled seltzer and stir once, gently, so you do not knock out all the bubbles. Taste it. If it needs more punch, add another half tablespoon of syrup.

One mistake to skip

Do not boil the syrup hard. A rolling boil for 15 minutes drives off water and pushes the sugar toward candy territory, and you end up with something too thick to mix into a drink. Keep it at a gentle simmer. If you overshoot and it thickens too much, thin it with a tablespoon of warm water.

Easy swaps and serving ideas

No fresh lemon? Use 1 tablespoon of lime juice instead, which gives a slightly sharper finish. Frozen dark sweet cherries like Bing work best, though tart cherries will give you a more sour soda, so bump the sugar to 1 1/4 cups if you go that route. The syrup also works over crushed ice with a little lime zest, or stirred into plain yogurt.

Storing what is left

Keep the syrup in a covered jar in the fridge, and it holds up for a couple of weeks. For longer storage, freeze it in cubes and drop one straight into a glass before adding seltzer. That cube melts into the drink and keeps it cold without diluting the flavor much.

Cherry soda at home comes down to one thing: cook the fruit gently, strain it well, and mix it to your own taste. Grab a pound of cherries and a bottle of seltzer and see how much better the homemade glass tastes.