Super Awesome Lemongrass Soda

**PintOfBitter** · 07-19-2010, 03:24 AM

Have you guys ever heard of Dry Soda Company? They have 4 packs of glass bottled sodas that I've seen in Rhubarb, Kumquat, Lavender, and Lemongrass flavors. A 4-pack of 12 ounce bottles is more than 6 bucks, but I had to try them. Rhubarb had almost no flavor to me, but the others were really nice. They're mildly flavored and sweetened - a refreshing break from commercial sodas in general.

Tonight I was feeling like cooking something nice for the wife and kiddos and went out grocery shopping. While I paced the aisles, I thought "I could SO make those sodas for cheap!" and so I picked up some fresh lemongrass. I freestyled a recipe, which came out SUPERBLY, and thought I'd share.

This recipe is for ONE LITER of soda, carbed with a carbonater cap.

1 liter H2O (actually a bit less to allow for shaking room to carb)
3 tbsp evaporated cane juice (or just sugar if you're not as much of a food snob)
1/4 tsp citric acid
.5 oz FRESH lemongrass, finely chopped

Combine in saucepan, simmer or hot-steep about 5 minutes. I quick cooled by setting the saucepan on ice.

Carb and drink.

I love the stuff and will be making it again. If you brew this, let me know what you think!

Nateo · 07-23-2010, 04:16 AM

.5 oz of lemongrass doesn't seem like much to me, but I guess for just a liter that's a lot. Which part of the grass did you use? The Asian superstore by my work has giant bundles of lemongrass. They're pretty woody near the roots. I generally just use the top half of the stalks and discard the bases.

**PintOfBitter** · 07-24-2010, 10:23 PM

The stuff I found was just the ends of the stalks, looks like right near the root end. No 'grass' involved in this package. It looked a lot like the white parts of scallions, if you know what I mean. .5 ounce was one of the thicker pieces from the package, or two of the thinner ones. the flavor was just right for what I was looking for.

CrankyOldLibrarian · 09-08-2010, 10:35 PM

I gave this recipe a shot using two lemongrass stalks. It was really nice and light. More like a slightly sweet and flavored seltzer. I'm about to fill up one of my 3 gallon corny kegs with this.

Thanks for posting the recipe!

**PintOfBitter** · 09-08-2010, 10:56 PM

My pleasure. I love the understated-ness of it as well. Glad to know someone has enjoyed it too.

RexPDX · 10-02-2010, 01:15 AM

I'm just starting to get interested in soda making- and these are exactly the kind of sodas I want to make. The thing is- I don't have any equipment to force carbonate. Would this recipe work with a yeast carbonation? I would assume I would have to add more sugar to get it going. Anybody have experience making Dry type sodas with yeast?

**PintOfBitter** · 10-03-2010, 12:36 PM

The main problem I forsee is the flavors created by the yeast. There's not much else here to cover up that slight funkiness, which might ruin an otherwise very clean soda. I guess I would recommend creating a concentrate and adding that to some commercial soda water.

**cappy** · 11-05-2010, 03:21 PM

Thats the way I've done ginger ale in the past. Make a syrup and then add soda water. A side benefit is that it makes it easy to control how strong you want the taste to be. I've used this recipe in the past. Great with bourbon!

Iowacity · 02-21-2011, 02:02 AM

I like Dry sodas. They're really the reason I started making soda -- I wanted to make something similar to theirs but kind of got hooked on ginger ale instead. Might be time to try it again.

**dinnerstick** · 02-21-2011, 08:19 AM

maybe consider getting a ginger beer plant, you can make it as dry as you like, and a version with lemongrass is likely to be delicious
especially for those who want natural carbonation, quickly, with none of the problems associated with yeast