Cream Soda Recipe with vanilla extract

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GreenMan

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Had a hard time finding a cream soda recipe on here other then the packet ones sold at the LHBS so i found one online that I tried tonight. Tasted it after it cooled down and it tasted like pretty good cream soda for being flat. In keg now at 35 psi.

Recipe is from here. Only had 2 cups of corn syrup so I changed the recipe to this:

2 cups Corn Syrup
16 2/3 cups Sugar
6 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 teaspoon Unsweetened Lemonade Kool-aid Mix
Water

Mixed everything in about 8 quarts of hot water to dissolve sugars and then poured into a keg and topped off to 5 gallons with cold water.

Looked up sugar content of A&W compared to ours and ours is about 40% more sugar so could probably be done with less sugar.
 
That sounds interesting, but I'd love to see a recipe that does not utilize magic. Unsweetened Lemonade Kool-Aid Mix is "magic", in that it can't be duplicated exactly from common base ingredients.
 
I just did a recipe I'm basing off of Sprecher cream soda. I watched a special on how they made their soda (didn't give a whole lot of details) and going off the ingredients on the bottle. I did not add the yucca extract or sodium benzoate but I did have all the other ingredients (that are listed...) So I'll post back on here once I've tried it. I'm doing this as a syrup recipe that you mix with soda water. For the acid part I used 10% phosphoric acid solution, lemonade mix is interesting though.
 
That sounds interesting, but I'd love to see a recipe that does not utilize magic. Unsweetened Lemonade Kool-Aid Mix is "magic", in that it can't be duplicated exactly from common base ingredients.

I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing that the Kool-Aid is being used for the acid content. You should be able to use something like acid blend in place of it.
 
Anyone have good links to resources on making home made soda from scratch? Extracts are good but I'm looking to experiment. What is the function

Costco has vanilla beans for $12 for 10. I want to make cream soda from scratch with real beans.
 
Hi guys! I've been making soda the past few months, and here's a couple of websites I've used:

Do it yourself: Brew Better Soda at Home

Brewing Root Beer

They don't provide a lot of useful recipes, but still, it's a decent starting point. I think Creswell's book is also a great reference.

Amazon.com: Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop: Stephen Cresswell: Books


I haven't made cream soda, but I hope to very soon. Here's a source I found for inexpensive vanilla beans. Good quality, and fast shipping too.

25 MADAGASCAR VANILLA BEANS PREMIUM TOP QUALITY BEST - eBay (item 320312629110 end time Jan-19-09 08:04:11 PST)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Go to their website, top vanilla beans - the price is about the same, but there are minor discounts for ordering in bulk. Still uses paypal.

I ordered a bundle, so I'll post a review once I get them.
 
Jeebs or mysteryberto, did you ever get around to make some cream soda? I just listened to a podcast that talked about vanilla beans and how vanilla extract is basically as good if not better then vanilla beans since they use a different bean that has more "vanilla" flavor too it. If you still wanted to do it with vanilla beans you would have to make an extract from the bean before adding it to the soda or let the bean soak in the soda for a long time to pull out the vanilla flavor.

I am going to try and make another batch of this again now that I have more kegs to use up. This will be the recipe I'm going to try:

9 cups Sugar
6 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Some amount of lemon zest/juice to make up for the Kool-aid Mix
Water
 
Jeebs or mysteryberto, did you ever get around to make some cream soda? I just listened to a podcast that talked about vanilla beans and how vanilla extract is basically as good if not better then vanilla beans since they use a different bean that has more "vanilla" flavor too it. If you still wanted to do it with vanilla beans you would have to make an extract from the bean before adding it to the soda or let the bean soak in the soda for a long time to pull out the vanilla flavor.

I am going to try and make another batch of this again now that I have more kegs to use up. This will be the recipe I'm going to try:

9 cups Sugar
6 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Some amount of lemon zest/juice to make up for the Kool-aid Mix
Water

It's still on my things to do list. A lot of vanilla extract I've used is sub par to vanilla beans. The expensive extract is pretty good. I think I might experiment with making vanilla extract with some Everclear I have.

Let me know how your recipe goes
 
I just listened to a podcast that talked about vanilla beans and how vanilla extract is basically as good if not better then vanilla beans since they use a different bean that has more "vanilla" flavor too it.

This might be true under ideal circumstances - i.e. highest quality extract from a place like Penzeys' spices but in my experience you get much better vanilla flavor from beans than standard supermarket extract. This is not to say that I don't use extract for almost all of my cooking but when the food product is vanilla-based, such as cream soda or vanilla ice cream or a vanilla custard I use beans.

Meh, I don't know. Not all beans are created equal either so I'm kinda talking out of my butt here.

Still I bought 50 beans for $25! You can't beat that with a stick.
 
Well, I made up my own recipe, so who knows how it's going to work out - I used what I had in my stock of stuff.

18 cups of brown sugar
6 tablespoons of costco pure vanilla extract (I realized I did this afterwards)
1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice
Water! Lots of it.


We shall see how it turns out, but it smells amazing. It might not be classic or correct, but hopefully it's good, lol!
 
For vanilla extract you want an alcohol of 35%-45% ABV. Everclear is way too high for it. Or rather too high to be efficient. You get the same amount of flavor extracted from the 35%-45% ABV. Making Vanilla Extract is easy. Cheap Vodka or white Rum is the most recomended. All you do is slit and scrape 6 vanilla beans into 1 cup of alchohol. Shake each day for 2 weeks and then let sit for about 1 1/2 months. Strain through a screen and then you have your vanilla extract of higer quality than you would get from the store. You can also use the screening beans again with one more batch. But I would let it sit for 3 monts following the same process. So you should end up with about 1 1/2 cups of vanilla extract as some volume is lost in the beans. Time to make about 4 months but hey, 1 1/2 cups is a lot.

My best price online that I found for Vanilla beans is off of organicvanillabean.com and there I found that I got 3/4 a pound of vanilla beans (7 inch long quality A) for about $34 and that included the shipping. I found that this was 98 beans. I ordered 1/2 of Bourbon and 1/4 of Valenca(?) beans. That turns out to be 35 cents a bean.

Hope that this helps.
 
For smaller amounts i found an OK deal at Costco, 10 beans for $15. I still haven't perfected my cream soda recipe, too many other things going on.
 
I just did a recipe I'm basing off of Sprecher cream soda. I watched a special on how they made their soda (didn't give a whole lot of details) and going off the ingredients on the bottle. I did not add the yucca extract or sodium benzoate but I did have all the other ingredients (that are listed...) So I'll post back on here once I've tried it. I'm doing this as a syrup recipe that you mix with soda water. For the acid part I used 10% phosphoric acid solution, lemonade mix is interesting though.

How'd this turn out? I buy my honey from the same place that supplies Sprechers, so it would be cool to try and replicate their recipies.
 
Well, I made up my own recipe, so who knows how it's going to work out - I used what I had in my stock of stuff.

18 cups of brown sugar
6 tablespoons of costco pure vanilla extract (I realized I did this afterwards)
1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice
Water! Lots of it.

We shall see how it turns out, but it smells amazing. It might not be classic or correct, but hopefully it's good, lol!

Joe, how big is your batch 1 gal, 5 gal...?
 
Crappy picture, I snapped it quick:

Picture5456.jpg


This one is out of focus, but you get it.
Picture5457.jpg
 
I make a 3 gallon batch of cream soda with:

1/3 cup chopped raisins
7 vanilla beans
1 cinnamon stick
5 cups dark brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
3/4 tsp cream of tartar

I serve it with a dollop of cream or as the absolute bestest Ice Cream Soda I have ever had.
 
Had a hard time finding a cream soda recipe on here other then the packet ones sold at the LHBS so i found one online that I tried tonight. Tasted it after it cooled down and it tasted like pretty good cream soda for being flat. In keg now at 35 psi.

Recipe is from here. Only had 2 cups of corn syrup so I changed the recipe to this:

2 cups Corn Syrup
16 2/3 cups Sugar
6 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 teaspoon Unsweetened Lemonade Kool-aid Mix
Water

Mixed everything in about 8 quarts of hot water to dissolve sugars and then poured into a keg and topped off to 5 gallons with cold water.

Looked up sugar content of A&W compared to ours and ours is about 40% more sugar so could probably be done with less sugar.


is this one pretty good cold and carbd??
 
just a tid bit. the creme part came from the smooth mouth feel you get from lactose, a milk sugar. i think if you looked up a milk stout, used the sugar ratios, you would get a better flavour. i tried a dozen single batches of rootbeer. using all kinds of sugars. the best that i found was a mix of brown sugar and lactose. it gave the right taste and feel. very similar to good creme soda.
 
We just the yeast method recipe from http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Cream-Soda

Easy instructions and we scaled it up to 2 Liters and used our beer brewing bottles:

4 Tablespoons of Penzys Spices Pure Vinalla Extract Single-Strength Alcohol 35%
1/4 teaspoon yeast
2 Quarts of water

Mix everything together and bottle (we used our beer brewing kit to secure the caps).
Wait 48 hours (they say until the their plastic bottle is hard, but using bottles will be impossible to tell)
Then put in back of refrigerator undisturbed for 24-48 hours

Sounds good and I'll let you know how it turned out.
 
Not sure why I waited so long before attempting to make soda. Gave it a shot today using the following recipe (based on prior posts and what I had on hand and wanted to get rid of):

2 cups corn syrup
4 1/2 - 5 cups light brown sugar
4 1/2 - 5 cups sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
6 teaspoons vanilla

Create the syrup, add to a keg, top off with cold water and put on the gas. I think this took all of 15 minutes.

I also put 2 mixer nozzle inserts (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/cure-your-short-hose-troubles-100151/) in the pickup so I can carb it fairly high and still serve.

Tastes good, but defnitely a bit sweet for me. If that doesn't change when it's carbed up, I'll cut back on the sugars next time.

And, even though I hate better living through chemicals I also hate the thought of drinking that much sugar. So I think I'll be picking up some Splenda next time I'm at Costco.
 
pdbreen can't wait to hear how it turns out.

The recipe I did above wasn't good at all. I bought cola and cream soda extracts and so far the recipes turn out pretty good.
 
i made a 2 liter batch of cream soda today using partially my own recipe from what i've gathered off of here. i used

about 10-12oz of light brown sugar
6 teaspoons of pure vanilla concentrate i got in mexico
i mixed this together in water i heated up in a pan on the stove, no particular measurement but about 1/4-1/3 of a 2 liter bottles worth of water.
cooled it, poured it in the 2l bottle and added 1.5 tablespoon of lemon juice, fresh squeezed.
topped it off with water and pitched about 1/8 teaspoon of yeast(just regular very high active bread yeast i made some ginger ale with, it works lol)
it tasted really good before i closed her up, but i plan on letting it sit at room temp for 2 days or until it gets about rock hard, and then storing it in the fridge for about 2 days, or until i can't stand waiting any longer lol.

when i made my ginger ale, i opened it up after letting it sit for approx 2 days, and it kept becoming flat after opening the bottle a couple times, im hoping letting it sit in the fridge will correct that problem a little.
 
I heard that it takes about 24 hours in the fridge to get the CO2 to lock into the liquid. They have also suggested rolling it a bit, to agitate, to give it more surface area i guess, when you force carbonate with a special cap and CO2.
 
well ill see how much it makes a difference. ill also pick up some brewers yeast soon to see how much better it works than my bread yeast. lol
 
well its tasty! im drinking some now and its not bad at all, the only suggestion i am going to try for my self is that i need brewers yeast, it leaves a bready malty flavor thats nasty in pop, and less lemon! only 1 tbsp next time
 
I made a version of this the other night. Here is the recipe I used

1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tbsp Corn Syrup
1tsp vanilla extract
squirt of lemon juice from a bottle

I put 2 cups water on stove and heated, added ingredients, stirred until sugar was desolved. Poured into a 1L bottle and topped with cold water.

Put in fridge until nice and cold and hit with 30psi through a home made carbonator cap.

It was good, I will definitely make a few changes for the next one - less brown sugar and probably add table sugar or splenda and use real vanila bean instead of the extract. A little tweaking and this could be amazing.
It was good, but needed a
 
Just kegged another batch. Didn't have any brown sugar or corn syrup, so the recipe this time around was:

~1/3 cup molasses (what I had left in a jar)
~9 cups Splenda
1 1/2 tablespoons Real Lemon
8 teaspoons Costco vanilla extract

Initial taste suggest it might need even a bit more vanilla - but I'll wait until it fully carbs before making any adjustments.
 
Bump Bump.

Just wanted to add my noob input, might help some people out. I just brewed this recipe tonight, I'll post in a few days how it turned out

Ingredients:

2 Cups Sugar in the Raw

2 1/4 Cups brown sugar (lightly packed)

3 Cups white table sugar

1 Cinnamon stick

15 Teaspoons homemade vanilla extract (200mL absolute 80 proof and 5 Madagascar vanilla beans. Split beans, stripped seeds, added seeds and bean skin to vodka. Sat for a few days shaking everyday)

1/2 Teaspoon lime zest

White labs cream ale liquid yeast

Directions:

Dissolve sugar in 2-3 gallons water at 180 degrees. Turn off heat and add cinnamon stick. Let stand for 10 minutes stirring frequently. Add to ice bath (ice in fermenting bucket to quickly bring down temp). Top off with cool water to 5 gallons. Cool to 70-90 degrees. Add vanilla and lime zest. Pitch yeast at 80 degrees.


By combining different recipes online that I've came across, this recipe seems like it should work out good for a first timer.

Any input, let me know
 
in a 16 oz glass combine 1/2 tsp vanilla, 3 tbsp simple syrup,and carefully fill with club soda.....if it's not sweet enough, play with the amount of simple syrup.

simple syrup = 1 cup sugar + 1 cup water
 
Mixing-and-matching from this topic I tried a basic recipe of sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla extract. I added maltodextrin for more body. But I forgot the lemon! :cross:
It's pretty tasty except it has a rather yeasty flavor, more so than any other soda I've made so far. (I'm using champagne yeast). Maybe the lemon would cover that up.

 
Been brewing beer for a couple years now and really was looking for a good Creme Soda recipe. Here is the one I designed this morning after reading this forum and several others.
This recipe Yields 5 gallons force carbonated.

Ingredients:

Sugars:
8 lb Cane Sugar - EDIT: Adjusted from 12 - the lactose and Malt added a lot more sweetness than expected.
8 oz Maltodextrin - for a good full mouth feel
1 lb Lactose - For a creamy flavor. (This is used in milk stouts)
Flavoring:
2 tsp Citric Acid - EDIT Adjusted from 4, too much of an acidic aftertaste.
12 oz Clear Imitation Vanilla (working on making a Jones style look) - EDIT I Adjusted from 4 to 12, imitation vanilla just doesn't have the potency.
Liquid:
5 Gallons of your favorite purified water.



Dump all sugars into 3 gallon pot with 1 gallon water. Bring to a low boil and wait for liquid to turn clear. KEEP BELOW 180 DEGREES. My syrup ended up a little golden, I plan on fixing this in the next batch, I think the malt or lactose ended up burning quicker than the cane. So I will try a lower temp.

Chill with wort chiller, Add citric acid when reasonably cool, maybe in the 100 degree range. Then add Vanilla to taste after this. There is a lot of sugar in here so I am going to be liberal my first time around with the vanilla. So I am planning on 4 oz. (calculated by how I make frosting 1 tsp per lb of sugar, there are 12 lbs here with no extra butter, 6 tsp to an oz, double that to make up for the lack of 6 cups o butter :)


I will try to put feedback here on how people like it this evening. I will rock force carbonate at 50 psi and my water is pre-chilled so I am hoping for drinkable carbonation in 4 hours.
 
Now THAT is a recipe that sounds worth trying. Would love to hear how it turned out with the Malto and the Lactose. I'd like to do similar but syrup style for seltzer style drinks. Let us know the feedback!
 
dontman said:
This might be true under ideal circumstances - i.e. highest quality extract from a place like Penzeys' spices but in my experience you get much better vanilla flavor from beans than standard supermarket extract. This is not to say that I don't use extract for almost all of my cooking but when the food product is vanilla-based, such as cream soda or vanilla ice cream or a vanilla custard I use beans.

Meh, I don't know. Not all beans are created equal either so I'm kinda talking out of my butt here.

Still I bought 50 beans for $25! You can't beat that with a stick.

I get my vanilla from penzys. The best ice cream I ever made was with beans. I don't know how to explain the difference but it is. Well for one thing there is no alc in the beans. Last time I was there I saw they had different strengths of vanilla extract. That makes it confusing but at the same time I want to try the strongest. Going to have to try my hand. I want to bottle condition tho.
 
hooliocoolio14 said:
Bump Bump.

Just wanted to add my noob input, might help some people out. I just brewed this recipe tonight, I'll post in a few days how it turned out

Ingredients:

2 Cups Sugar in the Raw

2 1/4 Cups brown sugar (lightly packed)

3 Cups white table sugar

1 Cinnamon stick

15 Teaspoons homemade vanilla extract (200mL absolute 80 proof and 5 Madagascar vanilla beans. Split beans, stripped seeds, added seeds and bean skin to vodka. Sat for a few days shaking everyday)

1/2 Teaspoon lime zest

White labs cream ale liquid yeast

Directions:

Dissolve sugar in 2-3 gallons water at 180 degrees. Turn off heat and add cinnamon stick. Let stand for 10 minutes stirring frequently. Add to ice bath (ice in fermenting bucket to quickly bring down temp). Top off with cool water to 5 gallons. Cool to 70-90 degrees. Add vanilla and lime zest. Pitch yeast at 80 degrees.

By combining different recipes online that I've came across, this recipe seems like it should work out good for a first timer.

Any input, let me know

Would you just pitch and then bottle immediately?
 
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