My family has been experimenting with brewing various sodas for a couple months. At this point, we've decided strongly that we prefer home brewed recipes versus extract and have had some really great success.
Success, that is, until this past week. (Dun, dun, dun...)
I put together our first batch of Cream Soda. The recipe basically included a ton of brown sugar, vanilla beans, golden raisins, and cinnamon sticks. I also added 2 cups of clover honey and a small bag of lactose for a creamier mouth feel.
The tea was great; full flavored, layered, deep with dark sugar. It made about 5 gallons. We were really jazzed about the potential. We live in a really warm climate. Generally, soda for us carbonates in a bit under 12 hours - the house is generally 80-85 degrees at the coolest this time of year.
For this cream soda batch, 12 hours right on time. I put the whole batch in the fridge and waited for 2 days for everything to quiet and the sediments to settle. When I opened the test bottle later in the week, the carbonation was intense and had a beautiful white head on very dark soda.
But the smell, oh, the smell. My 12 year old son described it as vanilla mixed with the smell of gasoline. The taste was high in vanilla, but even higher in yeast.
The only difference between this batch and all our others was that at the brewery store we frequent, one of the gents that works there strongly recommended the Pasteur yeast over the Montrachet I had used previously in like recipes.
Is this was happened to this batch of cream soda? Has anyone had any similar results?
Thanks for the input!
Success, that is, until this past week. (Dun, dun, dun...)
I put together our first batch of Cream Soda. The recipe basically included a ton of brown sugar, vanilla beans, golden raisins, and cinnamon sticks. I also added 2 cups of clover honey and a small bag of lactose for a creamier mouth feel.
The tea was great; full flavored, layered, deep with dark sugar. It made about 5 gallons. We were really jazzed about the potential. We live in a really warm climate. Generally, soda for us carbonates in a bit under 12 hours - the house is generally 80-85 degrees at the coolest this time of year.
For this cream soda batch, 12 hours right on time. I put the whole batch in the fridge and waited for 2 days for everything to quiet and the sediments to settle. When I opened the test bottle later in the week, the carbonation was intense and had a beautiful white head on very dark soda.
But the smell, oh, the smell. My 12 year old son described it as vanilla mixed with the smell of gasoline. The taste was high in vanilla, but even higher in yeast.
The only difference between this batch and all our others was that at the brewery store we frequent, one of the gents that works there strongly recommended the Pasteur yeast over the Montrachet I had used previously in like recipes.
Is this was happened to this batch of cream soda? Has anyone had any similar results?
Thanks for the input!
