No carbonation in root beer! Help!

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KC10Chief

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I tried my hand at making some Saspirilla last week. I used an extract that I bought at the place I buy my beer brewing supplies. I also used some champagne yeast that the store recommended. I mixed it all up and filled two, two liter bottles with it. 6 days later, there is very little carbonation. I'm guessing that I might have killed the yeast somehow?
 
What kind of sugar did you use? I used plain old bottling sugar (corn sugar) from my LHBS and had the same problem with root beer and orange soda!!! I'm going nuts. My nephews got a soda making setup from good ol' Uncle Jeff (me) for Christmas and I have felt crappy we have had such bad luck! FTR I have NEVER had a fermentation/carb problem with beer or mead.
 
A couple of things you can check. One, check the ingredient list on the extract to make sure there isn't any sodium benzoate or sorbate.

Secondly, make sure the bottles are at least kept at 70 degrees, or higher.

Third, check the lids! I had some soda bottles that leaked out my carbonation around the cap.
 
I used regular, granulated sugar in mine. Also, I checked my extract and it has sodium benzoate in it. How could that affect it and why? My caps are nice and tight.
 
Right- sodium benzoate is a preservative. It stops it from fermenting. I think you got extract designed for force carbers.

That's odd. The instructions that came with the extract, say to add yeast and let it sit at room temperature for 4 to 6 days. Definitely not for forced carbonation. I'm making another batch. We'll see what happens.
 
That's odd. The instructions that came with the extract, say to add yeast and let it sit at room temperature for 4 to 6 days. Definitely not for forced carbonation. I'm making another batch. We'll see what happens.

Maybe it's a small amount of benzoate, so that you can "overwhelm" the soda with yeast and it'll still carb up. My Sprecher soda says right on it to "carbonate" but doesn't say to use yeast since it has dsoium benzoate on it. The catalogues say that it's only for force carbing.

Maybe it would work if you added the ingredients, and the yeast and let it go for an hour or so, then added the root beer extract. If the yeast had a chance to reproduce without the benzoate, maybe it'd have a better chance. I don't know- that's pure speculation on my part.
 
Stick with it and you'll get carbonation. It took me several tries with soda, and I honestly don't know why. And I certainly never opened one and had it come spewing out like I'd read about. Even now that I'm force carbing @40psi I don't seem to be getting tons of pop, even though I'm happy with the carbonation now at least. Unforetunately for me, once I got natural carbonation it always took 1-2 weeks, and the yeasty flavor and smell was always way too strong for me once it was finished. I literally just couldn't drink it even after I'd got a batch I considered to taste pretty decent. If all else fails get a carbonator cap and a handheld injector - As a kid I would have appreciated the science/fun behind that more than doing it natural anyway ;)
 
Well, I don't know what I did last time, but it seems to be working this time. The bottles ave very firm. I plan to stick them in the fridge tomorrow before I go to work. They weren't firm at all last time.
 
weird...
yeah sprechners are force carb only. The only 2 natural carbonation ones are gnomes and some retro looking brand.

For yeast, honestly I've been using red star cooking yeast. The root beer after about 4 days carbed and was actually really good (I drank all relatively early so it was like the last 5 bottles). (gnome root beer, redstar yeast and brown sugar)
The last one was ginger beer and its pretty rancid, the only difference was I substituted the brown sugar for cane. I don't know if the yeast had eaten some taco bell or what, but when I pulled out my first test bottle from the fridge.... it smelled like someone had managed to fart in my soda.
Kind of turns me off of soda since I have about 2.5 gallons of spicy fart soda LOL
Got more root beer to make atleast.
 
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