Adding oak to Root Beer

Has anyone ever added oak to their own Root Beer recipe before? I'm interested in trying this out, I'm a little bit befuttled on how much to add though and when to add it as well as what kind of oak to add. So is anyone else interested in pooling their knowledge together on this?

Never heard of anyone trying it with root beer. Couple problems I see. Usually with oak it takes a couple weeks to extract the flavor. I'm assuming you want this to be a soft drink, but if you mix it up with sugar and age it for a couple weeks with yeast, it's going to result in a hard root beer. If you age it without yeast a couple weeks, you're likely to get some other critters (bacteria) growing in there. Best thing I can think of is boiling your water then adding oak cubes to it. Keep it in a sealed sanitized container and taste it every couple days until you think the flavor is about where you want it. Then use it to mix up a batch as you normally would.

P.S. As for amount, I'd do anywhere from 1-3 oz per 5 gallons, American or French medium toast.

Thanks man for your advice! I was thinking at first this can be soft drink material, but after more thinking I thought "Maybe this would be good in a hard root beer too?" Anyhow thank you for your advice on the subject.

I think a root beer with oak flavors would be great!
I know Gent's (a ginger ale out of Lexington, KY) makes a toasted oak ginger ale, and I make an oak aged cherry soda! It really doesn't take too long to age the whole product really. If you just test out the flavors little by little it works out pretty easily.
Are you using yeast to carbonate the root beer, or force carbonation?

164Brewing said:

I think a root beer with oak flavors would be great!
I know Gent's (a ginger ale out of Lexington, KY) makes a toasted oak ginger ale, and I make an oak aged cherry soda! It really doesn't take too long to age the whole product really. If you just test out the flavors little by little it works out pretty easily.
Are you using yeast to carbonate the root beer, or force carbonation?

Click to expand...

It's funny that you mention the Gent's ginger ale, because that's what got my mind going on this idea, I haven't managed to try it out yet though. an Oak aged cherry soda sounds super good too, and I use muntons brewing yeast for all my soda, it just seems the cleanest tasting to me!