Made Some Root Beer

[MadBrewer]

Something I have always wanted to try and figured why not. I have a pinlock keg I don't use much so I can dedicate that to Sodas. I picked some extract at the LHBS and my youngest son helped me get it together. Didnt' really know what to go with first time around but I think it will be good. I thought it would be cool to have around for Thanksgiving for the kids and maybe some Root Beer floats as well. The extract I had was good for 4 gals and was the Rainbow Flavors Old Fashioned Root Beer extract.

4 gals filtered tap water
2 lbs Brown Sugar
1 lb Cane Sugar
2 oz of Root Beer extract
1 tbs of Vanilla extract

I heated up 1 gal of water on the stove to mix in all the sugar and extract. I poured that into a keg and topped off with 3 more gals of cold tap water. Set the co2 regulator to 30 psi and gave it a few shakes to mix it up. I'll check carbonation in a few days and probably shake it here and there. I'm going to overcarb it at first and then serve it at my usual 12 psi like everything else from a picnic tap.

[RickBeer]

If you run it through your taps, anything plastic cannot be used for beer again, taste won't go away.

[MadBrewer]

Yeah I have heard that about the lingering flavor. But no, I will dedicate my pinlock keg to making soda and I have extra beer line and picnic taps.

[BigPapaG]

Seems like such a simple recipe... Not sure why I'm surprised...

Let us know how it turns out please.

[MadBrewer]

Will do. Being the first time doing it I wasn't sure what to go on but after looking around the internet I got some ideas to start. Being extract, this was a piece of cake. Root Beer from scratch would be quite involved and probably hard to find everything you would need and be quite expensive. I brought everything together (the sugar, extract and vanilla) in the 1 gal of warm water on the stove so I could taste that, at first I only had half that amount of brown sugar. After tasting I decided I would go another pound. Put it all together in the keg where I topped it off and tasted again before sealing it up and hooking up the gas. I was satisfied with that I tasted in the keg so I went with it. At this point it might be slightly sweet, but once fully carbonated, maybe not overly so.

That Root Beer extract is potent. You can smell it through the package it comes in. What I don't understand is why they didn't give a recipe with the extract. If I would have just added the extract to 4 gals of water, it would have been horrible. Where would the sweetness and body come from. It would have been watered down nasty stuff. Kind of like making cool aid, without the sugar...what do you have. Flavored water. They should at least indicate that the recipe is up to you, but give suggestions to the amounts to use. What I put together tasted good, once ready to drink I think it will be great.

[MadBrewer]

This stuff has come together well. I can taste the brown sugar which makes it a bit rich. I think next time around I would use less brown sugar and use more white sugar in place of it. Other than that it's slightly sweet but flavor is good. This particular extract has a bit of a wintergreen flavor. I might want to try some of the other extracts out there with batches to come. But I would call it an absolute success.

[LagerPMP]

I've been wanting to do a Sarsaparilla, but just didn't have a keg or tap that I wanted to dedicate to sodas. Congrats on your root beer, this is really wanting me to brew a batch of cream soda, root beer, or sarsaparilla. Maybe I will ask the wifey for a keg and some extract for Christmas...

[LagerPMP]

Kegconnection.com has 5-gallon pin lock kegs on sale for 29.99 so maybe I will pull the trigger on one so I can have a keg for sodas.

[patron_v]

If you run it through your taps, anything plastic cannot be used for beer again, taste won't go away.

Is this a quality of one of the ingredients, or soda brewing in general

[John Sand]

Hi Patron, welcome a-Borg. I haven't made soda, but my reading tells me that root beer is especially persistent.

[MrBandGuy]

I'm going to resurrect his thread because I have a question. Does cream soda leave the same lasting effects as root beer? I was thinking about maybe doing a small batch, but want to plan for soda only things if I need to. I found a recipe to bottle carb, which got me thinking.

[MadBrewer]

Did his again last night. Differences being I tried out the Sarasparilla extract instead of the Root Beer. I swapped the sugar additions around and went with 2 lbs of cane sugar and 1 lb of Light Brown sugar. Last time it was a little sweet and rich so I thought this would mellow it out a litttle. Cranked it up to 50 psi and shook it up a bit in the keg let it sit over night then bled the pressure and set it to 20 psi this morning. Thats where I had it before for serving if I remember correctly. Might be able to enjoy some this weekend when we have company over on Sat.