Malt Beer

A buddy of mine doesn't drink alcohol, but is interested in brewing, so he made a root beer. He really likes the idea of making something from scratch and the root beer extract and sugar wasn't doing it for him. We got to talking about making a soda from barley malt and adding natural flavoring ingredients to make a sweet soda like root beer. In my 30 seconds of research before creating this thread, I found there was a German drink called Vitamalz that sounds similar to what we are doing.


I was hoping to get all the sweetness from the barley malt, but it looks like they add glucose to theirs which is understandable. I've never tasted sweet wort that was sweet enough to make a soda.

Anyway, does anyone here have any experience with this? Any tips on what base malt to use, how much malt, mash temperature, etc.? Things to avoid so that I don't make 5 gallons of gnarliness?

I'll try to document this here if we go for it.

Just happened accross this site in a google search for just this thing! I may be out of line posting and i don't know darn about brewing but I am interested. Let me get everyone to hate me right now but I don't like alchohol; just can't stand the taste never have. Doesn't matter what it's in. That said I found a soda called "Julmust christmas soda" at "world market" that I bought on a whim. It was awsome. It sounds like what klyph was talking about except it was cola not rootbeer. That got me thinking that rootbeer with that malty flavor would be incredible. So I went searching and found this thread.

That said I'm terribly interested in how to make a malt rootbeer or whatever it should be called. I'll probably get addicted to it like I did Water Kefir gingerale.

Step by step would be great I guess; really as I don't know what's involved I don't know what to ask for. Klyph thanks for starting this.

Danneauxs

No problem, I may make a small test batch in the next few weeks. Hope someone else chimes in on this.

Too much going on to figure out how to do home brewing right now. I've ordered some barley malt syrup, rootbeer extract (really really no time to order roots and herbs to experiment with the perfect recipe). Not sure if I need yeast (thinking ale yeast) or if there's any fermenting power in the malt syrup?

Looking forward to hearing you progress. It'd be great to have rootbeer added to my homemade gingerale.

Danneauxs

You'll need brewers yeast or ale yeast.

I like Maltex Malta (made in Denmark) and would love to brew a clone of it. It has a super malty molasses flavor and a creamy head, (and probably a lot of added sugar).

Hey folks - has anybody had luck with this? I make several kegs o' brew for an annual camping weekend, and a friend suggested we could make a keg of root beer for the kids. I got to thinking that a mash might be a tasty base for a force-carbonated soda, so that let me to a little research and this thread. For my first experiment, I'm going to do a small 6-lb mash, split it into two batches and boil one down a bit with some first wort hops and the other with hops and a few root beer ingredients, including wintergreen and vanilla. I'm hoping to come up with something that kids will actually enjoy but that's more fun to make than soda extract, sugar, and water. I'm thinking straight carbonated wort (MaltzBier) may be more of an acquired taste for U.S. kids, but it's popular enough elsewhere that it might just work... if I can make something that I find tasty then I'll try to get some expert (kid) opinions.

Not to bump the old thread, but I happened on this from google search also. I brewed my third batch of root beer this weekend. The first two I used a ginger bug and cane sugar. Wanting to get away from sugar I did some research on malting. So this time I used malt I found at a Korean grocery store, and bread yeast as well as a bunch of herbs and bark from rose mountain herbs, pretty tasty. I want to try a better yeast. I am looking to keep the alcohol to a minimum, maybe champagne yeast?