Homemade Root Beer Soda

Submitted by Ctraugh

"This is a good recipe for rootbeer soda. No need for dry ice or store soda."

 

• Ready In: 72hrs 30mins
• Ingredients: 6
• Yields: 1 Gallon

ingredients

• 1 gallon water
• 2 cups water (for making extract)
• 2 ounces fresh gingerroot
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1⁄8 teaspoon yeast

directions

1. Slice the ginger into thin sections and add them to two cups of boiling water.
2. Simmer this on very low heat for 20 minutes.
3. While this is simmering, boil the gallon of water and two cups of sugar for one minute and set aside.
4. Pour the ginger and liquid into a blender and blend on high for about one minute.
5. Pour this blend into the sugar water, through a strainer.
6. With a soup ladle, pour a few cups of the hot brew through the remaining pulp to extract a bit more of the ginger flavor.
7. Cool to room temperature. When cool, add vanilla, yeast and stir until dissolved.
8. Let sit for about 30 minutes.
9. Then bottle and age.
10. The simplest, safest and least expensive method of bottling is to use one-liter plastic soft drink bottles with screw caps.
11. These can be sterilized by rinsing in a mixture of household bleach and water and then rinsed with clean water.
12. After filling, the bottles should be set aside at room temperature for about 48 hours, or until hard (check by squeezing).
13. Then refrigerate to finish the aging process.
14. Leaving the bottles at room temperature too long will cause over carbonation.
15. Using glass rather than plastic bottles can cause shattered bottles.
16. Another nice feature of the plastic bottles is that they can be re-carbonated if only partially consumed.
17. Just let it sit out over night with the cap on and refrigerate it when hard.

Reviews

[Barb in PA 2]

This is not root beer, although it should be good! This recipe should be renamed to ginger beer instead. For root beer, substitute root beer extract for the ginger and go for it.

 

[SaraStar]

I was excited to find a method for actually brewing root beer, as opposed to carbonating it using pre-carbonated water or dry ice. That part worked wonderfully, but... The taste is just a little bit off. It's not *quite* root beer. It's definitely on the way there, but the ginger is too strong. (Also, it smells really sour and gingery, even though it doesn't taste like it smells.) I will probably try this again with less ginger or more vanilla and see if that helps. If nothing else, I'll surely use the method to brew other sodas!