This is a project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I made my own ginger ale several years ago and vowed to do it again, but never have. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of ginger ale, so the need wasn’t that pressing. Root beer on the other hand, is probably my favorite soda. I don’t drink much soda at all, maybe 1 can a month, but when I do, I want it to be good.
Ginger ale can be made with stuff you probably already have in your house. Fresh ginger, bakers yeast, sugar and water, and a few days to ferment. The yeast turns the sugar into alcohol and gas. A two liter bottle will have about 0.4% alcohol content, so unless you are allergic or have strict religious restrictions, it shouldn’t be a problem. I’d give it to my kids.. but I don’t have kids, and cats don’t like ginger ale (but my boy cat LOVES regular beer, and white wine.. but not red wine, he’s a girl like that).
Root beer, on the other hand, requires at least 1 special ingredient, root beer extract. You can buy it online for $5 a bottle or so, but then you spend $10 shipping. Each bottle will make 4 gallons of root beer, so $15 isn’t a lot of money, but there’s just something about spending double on the shipping that kept me from ordering all these years. I could buy a case of the stuff for about $20 or so.. but do I really need 48 gallons of root beer.. unlikely.
As luck would have it, we have a brewing and wine supply store pretty close by. I stopped off there after work yesterday and sure enough, they have all sorts of home soda making supplies, including root beer extract. They also had a ‘Birch Root Beer’ extract, but the owner didn’t know what the difference was. If I like the regular root beer enough to use it all I might have to try the Birch next time.
I was talking to the owner about making the root beer and he confessed he hadn’t made it himself, but had done some research on it and found that using Champagne yeast was supposed to work better than regular bakers yeast. It was only $2 for a package so I decided to try it. I’ll make a batch with it, and a batch with regular baker’s yeast and see if I can tell the difference.
The process is very simple and straightforward. A recipe is included in the box of the extract and for the first time around I stuck right with the recipe. The only change was to cut it in half, which made 1 2-Liter batch instead of 2 2-liter batches.
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Here are my special ingredients. The extract is just a little bottle of very very black liquid goo. It’s hard to explain. It’s as dark as tar but as fluid as water.
The yeast is just like a package of bakers yeast. Even looks the same on the inside. |
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The recipe is included in the package, but here it is again for reference:
Mix 1/8th teaspoon of yeast into a cup of warm water. My water was 104 degrees. Make sure it is well dissolved. The yeast does smell different than bakers yeast smells when you bloom it like this in water. The champagne yeast smells more pure somehow, fresher and lighter. |
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Next pour 1 cup of regular old sugar into your plastic two liter bottle. When the yeast starts to eat the sugar it will expel large amounts of gas. This is what will carbonate our root beer. It is also what will explode your glass jar if you use it. So don’t. Go dig that empty plastic soda bottle out of the recycling bin outside and wash it well. Don’t worry, we won’t tell.
Next pour in your water/yeast mixture you made previously. Add 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of root beer extract. Fill to the neck of the bottle with cool clean water. If your water is really chlorinated, you should use filtered water. You don’t want to hamper the yeastie beasties from working at an optimal level. |
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That’s it! You’ve just made root beer. Wellllll, almost. Your beasties need some time to party. It takes 4-6 days on average. I taped a little sheet of paper on mine that had day’s date and 4 days from now. I’ll check it each day after that to make sure its ready.
How do you know if its ready? The bottle will be firm to the touch. The pressure building up inside the bottle will be pretty high when its ready. We’ll move it immediately into the fridge to chill overnight once it is ready. Cold drastically slows down the fermentation, so the pressure should not build any more once we chill it. Having said that, if you just leave it sitting on the countertop for two weeks, it will continue to build until you find yourself with a large sticky mess (the bottle will explode). I’ll let you know how it turns out! |
UPDATE: 8/1/2009: Well, it did not turn out at all. I waited for two weeks and got ZERO carbonation. I did some more research online to see what was up. My only guess was my yeast got too hot. I made a second batch on 7/18 and started with water at 90F. I waited another two weeks.. NOTHING AGAIN. Very frustrating. No carbonation again. Not only that, but it tastes like cough medicine. The flavor is not good, and carbonation doesn’t have much to do with flavor.I think it might be that there is too much extract (even though I followed the recipe).
I might try it one more time with regular old bakers yeast, instead of the champagne yeast, but if that doesn’t work, I’m throwing in the towel. I don’t drink soda enough to warrant ‘fixing’ it.