Root Beer - How to force carb?

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Philip1993

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I decided to make some root beer for the kids. A little extract, some sugar, a keg, and some gas. Easy, right? Apparently not as easy as I thought....

After a week at 12psi, it had no carbonation. Didn't expect much this early, but I did expect something. So I decided to use the 24 hour method. 30psi and 18 hours later, only trivial carbonation. Having made a valiant effort without reading, I can can now ask w/o jeopardizing my man card. He goes;

If 30 psi is the recommended serving pressure (wish I knew that first), what psi and for how long should one carbonate root beer? Can it be done in 24-48 hours? Is it possible to serve rootbeer and have it taste decent at <30psi? I don't mind dedicating a keg and a picnic tap, but I really don't want to commit 40ft of hose and another regulator to it. Is it the same for other homebrew soft drinks?




reading,
 
Last time I did rootbeer I cranked it up to 34-40psi and shook the living hell out of the keg for about 5 minutes until I could hear no more CO2 seeping into it. After it sat for about 48 hours it was fairly fizzy. I tried this with my last two batches of beer and it completely was overkill though. Took me weeks to get the stuff down so I wasn't getting all foam. But with the Rootbeer it seemed to do the trick.
 
For rootbeer (and other sodas), you need to carb it really well or it seems flat. I carbed mine at around 40 psi, and served it around 35 psi. Now, you need like 25-30 feet of line for this. Otherwise, if the line is short it's all foam. If it's less psi, it seems flat. Trust me on this- you need about 30 feet of line, but you'll get a nice pour! I got the beer line from McMaster Carr for around .20 cents/foot. I keep that line just for soda, since it's way too long for beer!
 
Listen to Yoop on this. It's the only way to do it if you even remotely want what you have come to expect from commercially available root beer, or any other soda. I have a primary regulator with two outlets. It's set to 30 psi and one outlet goes to the dedicated root beet keg. The other outlet goes to the inlet of a dual secondary regulator that allows for two different pressures for my other two kegs. I serve the root beer through 35' of 3/16" ID beverage tubing coiled up neatly with zip ties in the back of my kegerator.

The more sugar there is in a liquid the longer it takes for CO2 to dissolve into solution. I've found that it is much easier, and quicker, to chill and carbonate the plain water first and then add the soda extract and sugar and put it back on the gas.
 
What type of tubing should I be looking for at McMaster? I did a search for beverage tubing and I was seeing prices $2-3 per foot. There are many to choose from however and I did not look at them all.
 
Thanks for the info. Wish I had read before. I certainly wouldn't have dedicated a keg. I'm cool with burning one keg, but I didn't want to invest a whole second setup for a single flavor..
 
Thanks for the info. Wish I had read before. I certainly wouldn't have dedicated a keg. I'm cool with burning one keg, but I didn't want to invest a whole second setup for a single flavor..

I can't find the thread that gave the tubing info (I found it on here) but it was cheap, and I don't have a dedicated set up, except for that one super long beer line. I just use a cobra tap, and it has a QD on it of course. I only have one regulator, so when I'm doing the soda, I end up closing the gas off to the beer.
 
AH... I got abotu 10 ft. of hose, so that is why my cream soda is foamy... I charged tat 30 lbs, and then dropped down to 5 lbs for serving. Guess I'll have to get more hose...
 
The other thing you can do is transfer to 2 liter bottles and carb those as you go. You either need to buy a carbonator cap or fashion your own using bike tire valves.
 
I've a keg of Gnome extract sitting at 30 PSI for close to two weeks now and it is just as flat as the day it was mixed.

15 feet of 3/16 beer line and it obviously flows out at a decent clip, but it's flat.

Should I be shaking the keg? It's not leaking gas at the fittings, I already tested for that.

I'm at a loss. Tastes excellent, but there is not fizz.
 
With only 15' of serving line trying to balance out 30 psi, the CO2 is more than likely being knocked out of solution as it foams up in the glass. It is foaming up as you're serving it, and when the foam clears it's flat, right?
 
The other thing you can do is transfer to 2 liter bottles and carb those as you go. You either need to buy a carbonator cap or fashion your own using bike tire valves.

Wouldn't I need to get it fully carb'd, transfer, re-pressurize with a carb cap, and use promptly like retail sodas? Even then I'd need a 30psi secondary to keep a 2liter in reserve for when the one in the fridge kicks.

It sounds like for and kid-friendly product I'm going to need another regulator to hold the product stable at 30psi 24x7.
 
I'm suggesting that you mix your soda in whatever fashion you do now and in what ever size format you do now and pour off some of the syrup into a 2 liter bottle with a carboy cap.

Get it cold and gas it up (30-40 psi.) and shake it up. You can serve that pretty quickly because you're working with less volume. Making the kids do all the shaking and so on can make it a mini-project.

The beauty of it is that the kids have to make more when they run out and you're not running through all of you soda in a week.

The nice thing about carbonation caps is that you can keep the bottle pressureized between servings.

The downside for the kids is that they can't pull it from the tap like Dad, but that might also be a good thing. YMMV.

IIRC David_42 talked about mixing it up on demand in small batches.
 
With only 15' of serving line trying to balance out 30 psi, the CO2 is more than likely being knocked out of solution as it foams up in the glass. It is foaming up as you're serving it, and when the foam clears it's flat, right?

No foam at all. Has me stumped because it is at 30 psi and it's flatter than flat.
 
Wouldn't I need to get it fully carb'd, transfer, re-pressurize with a carb cap, and use promptly like retail sodas? Even then I'd need a 30psi secondary to keep a 2liter in reserve for when the one in the fridge kicks.

It sounds like for and kid-friendly product I'm going to need another regulator to hold the product stable at 30psi 24x7.

Oh, that's right- I forgot about the carbonator cap! Duh! I used it on a 2 liter bottle of ginger ale, and it was great!

You just mix it up, chill it, and then put the co2 on at like 30 psi until it doesn't flow in any more. Shake it up, and do it a few more times. I did this over a couple of days. It carbonated quite well, and then I put on a different (regular cap) for it when I took it to a party. I was afraid that my carbonator cap would get lost. You can do that easily, especially if you don't want to make a dedicated keg to the soda! It works with root beer, too, of course.
 
Is there any alternative besides having 30 ft of tubing inside your kegerator? I thought I'd seen flow resistance devices or something?

I'm assuming for carbonated water it wouldn't be a problem since there's nothing in water to make it foam up? Then you could just mix syrup or whatever you want in the glass?
 
I'm just playing around with this, and I was wondering if it might be possible to use the "bottling from your keg" method, where you hook a bottling wand into the nozzle of the tap? Or would the pressure be too great and risk damaging something?
 
I just kegged a Root Beer. My method is to force carb at 30PSI for a day, shake it up, release the pressure and then do again twice over the next two days. I then serve it a about 12 PSI. I have 6' of 3/16. I have done this for 3 batches and it has worked well for me.
 
Nearly Instant Soda (about 10 minutes)

Put in keg
6-7 pounds of ice
soda & sugar
water to fill
CO2 35 psi
shake until the ice cubes have melted and/or the regulator has stopped squealing.

If you have smaller kids, lay the keg across a 2x4 and let them rock it until done.
 
My Force Carbonation suggestion is a simple two step process.

1. Put the solution in the corney put in the refrigerator for 24 hrs.
2. Place the CO2 line on the Out post and pump with 30 PSI for 10 mins.

Return to refrigerator and set your PSI to desire pressure. It works for me and it's a very quick process.
 
I have had rootbeer force carbonating at 30 psi for two weeks and it still taste flat.

I ended up shaking the hell outa the keg to get it carbed up. Every time I remembered I would go shake it.

It finally carbed up and was very tasty. Dedicated faucet and keg for root beer now.
 
For rootbeer (and other sodas), you need to carb it really well or it seems flat. I carbed mine at around 40 psi, and served it around 35 psi. Now, you need like 25-30 feet of line for this. Otherwise, if the line is short it's all foam. If it's less psi, it seems flat. Trust me on this- you need about 30 feet of line, but you'll get a nice pour! I got the beer line from McMaster Carr for around .20 cents/foot. I keep that line just for soda, since it's way too long for beer!

Hello, with 40' of beverage tubing; doesn't that fill up with root beer that ends up just hanging in the lines? How do you get all that root beer back into the keg after you're finished pouring?

Thanks!
 
I've taken to running a carb stone off of the gas dip tube to help get the CO2 into the root beer with little bubbles.

Cuts carb time down a lot. Shaking still works quicker but the carb stone helps as well.
 
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