How much Torani Syrup?

My daughter (age 10), loves brewing beer with me, but not being able to consume it is a big let down. So, I got her into soda making. She loves it so much that she wants to do some of her own recipes. She really wants to make a yeast carbonated, blue raspberry soda (2.5 gallons). I noticed that there is a brand of syrup (Torani) that has that flavor.My question is, how much syrup and sugar to make 2.5 gallons?

I don't know, as I've never done that- but check and make sure that the syrup doesn't have potassium sorbate or sodium benzoate in it. It seems to me that it had benzoate in it when I last saw that syrup. If so, it won't carbonate.

Hmm, maybe get her a gift card to http://pittsburghsodapop.com/flavors.html, they have a blue raspberry and oodles of others that kids, and adults, tend to love.

SD-Slim has a blood orange hef recipe that he adds 8-9 oz of torani blood orange to 5 gal. So I might suggest 4-4.5 oz.

Disclaimer: I have personally never tried it.

Torrani site said:

Pure cane sugar, water,vanilla extract with other natural flavors, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (to preserve freshness), citric acid

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that is for the vanilla, but i'm sure all others are that way as well (with the sorbate).

few ideas for ya though (i want to do this as well)

1) make your own syrup! if you go to the baking aisle in your grocery store, they have multiple types of natural flavorings and make a simple syrup and add the flavoring.

2) home brew shops have the "extracts" for beer flavoring (apricot, blueberry, cherry, strawberry, etc) - one vial of it is enough to flavor 5 gallons of beer, so you may get away with just one in 2.5 for heavily flavored sodas.

hopefully that helps you on your way!

If you use the yeast to carbonate, won't it have alcohol? Do you plan to keg it? If not you'll have to pasteurize it in the bottles, I've found ciders in the cold fridge still keep going in my plastic test bottle, dropped from .027 to .020 after 3 weeks in the fridge.

fizgig said:

If you use the yeast to carbonate, won't it have alcohol? Do you plan to keg it? If not you'll have to pasteurize it in the bottles, I've found ciders in the cold fridge still keep going in my plastic test bottle, dropped from .027 to .020 after 3 weeks in the fridge.

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Yes, when you make soda and bottle carbonate it with yeast, it does have a bit of alcohol. It's considered a negligible amount, but there is a minute amount present.

Typically, you carb it up for a day or two (or longer, depending on kind of soda), and then stick it in the fridge when the plastic bottles get hard. It's not normally pasteurized.

Thank you all for your help. And, Yooper, congratulations on your administrator position.

That pittsburgh site looks like what you'd need or something like this http://www.naturesflavors.com/raspberry-flavored-italian-soda-syrup-kosher-vegan-gluten-free. It doesn't knock down the sugar much, so I'd make a test glass with a cup of club soda and syrup and figure out what tastes good, and scale it up from their to a full recipe. Torani recommends 1.5oz in 8oz sparkling water, scaled up that'd be 120oz or around 1 gallon in 640oz water (5 gallons), or 90oz in 4 gallons to get around 5 gallons in the end.

Thanks to this thread, I'm going to make some cream soda and root beer with my three year old. He's really into the whole beer making process, especially the grain mill and bottling washing, I think he'll really enjoy drinking some root beer he brewed up. I got the gnome brand off morebeer and some DYW05 champagne yeast.

I might end up having to mill a little crystal malt, steep it, boil up the sugar in the big pot and use the chiller to make him think it's really beer...

I'd go with the pittsburgh link mentioned above or prarie moon. They have the RIO flavor concentrates used to make snow cone syrup.

Yooper said:

Yes, when you make soda and bottle carbonate it with yeast, it does have a bit of alcohol. It's considered a negligible amount, but there is a minute amount present.

Typically, you carb it up for a day or two (or longer, depending on kind of soda), and then stick it in the fridge when the plastic bottles get hard. It's not normally pasteurized.

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I actually checked this today, I saw a root beer recipe that had only one cup of sugar but only 2.5 qts, and when I plugged it in to iBrewmaster, it calculated out to be 2.36% abv. Of course that is if you let it attenuate fully, that would be pretty dry I suppose. For grins, drop some numbers into a formula, and see where it comes out.

Cold crashing it at just the right time seems like a bit of a guess. This will significantly reduce the abv though.
Pasteurizing on the stovetop seems like a gamble.
I don't know that I would bottle condition, but that's me.

Doongie said:

I actually checked this today, I saw a root beer recipe that had only one cup of sugar but only 2.5 qts, and when I plugged it in to iBrewmaster, it calculated out to be 2.36% abv. Of course that is if you let it attenuate fully, that would be pretty dry I suppose. For grins, drop some numbers into a formula, and see where it comes out.

Cold crashing it at just the right time seems like a bit of a guess. This will significantly reduce the abv though.
Pasteurizing on the stovetop seems like a gamble.
I don't know that I would bottle condition, but that's me.

Click to expand...

But if you had children, and wanted to make root beer, you would absolutely cold crash it as soon as it was carbed up. You don't want the sugar to ferment out (as it would taste bad) and it would have more than a negligible amount of alcohol in it.

We made the gnome, two 2 liters and a 12 pack of bottles I pasteurized. It's good, the yeast remains just active enough in the 2 liters so they don't taste flat left half full.