eagle83

Recipes 

Been brewing beer about a year, and decided to make some soda for the kiddos. I made me a carb cap last night and I'm waiting for my extract to come in. What kind of sugar should I be using. I assumed table sugar, but it seems there should be some better stuff out there to use. Cane sugar maybe? can you get that at the grocery store? anyone tried it?
Also we have a pizza place here in MS that has Dr. Browns cream soda. Any of you guys ever heard of it? I'd love to make something similar to that someday if anyone can point me in the right direction.

david_42

Recipes 

Most table sugar is cane or beet sugar. It's all refined sucrose.

Technobob

Recipes 

I like to mix in a little light brown sugar in for a hint of mollasses flavour usually a quarter to a third of the sugar.

eagle83

Recipes 

Thanks for the info. Got my stuff in today and made a batch with just table sugar, and a batch with 1/4 brown sugar. The brown sugar batch was a hit.

tsturzl

Recipes 

I like to use honey, cane sugar, and brown sugar. I carmalize the brown and cane sugar, then add the honey and mollasses until it thickens. Then I heat up 1 litters of water to 115 F, then add 4 tbsp of the syrup to the water, retemp it and add cold water till its 115 F again, add yeast and start the fermentation while the syrup cools to a yeast safe temp, add the vanilla bean or extract to the syrup while it cools. Then I add the syrup and shack the hell out of it till its all mixed.

Since you fermented the yeast in a 115 F environment it will ferment 4-5 times faster, it will pressurize in about 10 hours rather than 24 or even 48. I see alot of recipes that don't seem to be very friendly with the yeast. Main things when dealing with yeast is to provide a sterile, warm(115 F ideally), with some kind of carbohydrate(sugar is a simple carb that breaks down quick). After that refrigerate it till you need a cold one.

In my recipe I get a sort of thick syrupy beverage, however not too thick, with a brown tint and a deep rich flavor. This isn't the modern day clear cream soda, but the old fashion kind.