Scratch Root Beer Recipe

Hey Guys! I'm new to the forum and wanted to get an opinion on my root based Root Beer Recipe.

2.5 Gal Batch - Force Carbonated

1.25 Cups Sassafras Root
1.25 Cups Wintergreen
10 tbsp Sasparilla
5 tbsp licorice root
5 tbsp ginger root
5 tbsp dandelion root
5 tbsp hops flowers
5 tbsp birch bark
5 tbsp wild cherry bark
5 tsp juniper berries
5 cinnamon sticks
2 lbs organic cane sugar

This is an experiment. I will be brewing as soon as the roots get here from Mountain Rose and Monterrey.

Tell me what you think!!!

Doug

New here too. Sounds delicious. Let me know how well it works, as I am also looking for a good from-scratch root beer recipe. Also, if you have a way of making it into a brewed (as in has alcohol from yeast) version, I would be super interested.

It should be a simple matter of adding a bit of yeast (I'm guessing about 1/4 tsp for this size recipe) and a couple tablespoons of extra sugar to keep the sweetness the same. How much you add depends on how fermented you want it to be.

I also read something about gently pastuerizing the bottles to stop fermentation. Although that was more for the exploding bottle problem, I imagine it could also come in handy to kill the yeast after the desired alcohol content is reached.

Thanks. I was thinking about making it a real beer, in that it would have about the same alcohol percentage as beer. I hope it works well.

Yea I'm not exactly sure on the amounts of sugar and yeast that concentration of ABV would require. I just have experience with over fermented root beer while trying to get it to carbonate. I never tested it with a hydrometer (primarily because I don't have one) but it certainly tasted more alcoholic than I would let the kids drink.

Since beers are made from grain sugars I don't know what the conversion would be for cane sugar. I'm not a beer brewer as of yet, but I wonder what would happen if you added malted barley to the above recipe and let it ferment like a normal beer.




InkyDoug, have you brewed your first batch yet? How'd it turn out? How did you come up with your recipe? I would like to start experimenting with some brews but am not very good at determining what flavors would compliment the root beer and which would be bad...

Yeast is very resourceful and will attempt to eat anything that even looks like sugar.

Some sugars, they just don't quite have the tools for, like lactose, but they still try.

For sucrose they just have to manufacture one more enzyme. To get an idea of the potential you can visit one of the priming sugar calculators on the web.