Cherry soda request

I just recently made some homemade cherry syrup. Turned out awesome, great over ice cream.

Now I want to try making some home brewed cherry soda out of it, problem is all the "home brew" recipes I can find for cherry soda are for syrup and seltzer water, not naturally carbonated.

Does anyone know where I can find a recipe for an old fashioned fruit syrup soda?

I believe Alton brown had a recipe for ginger ale that was naturally carbonated. Might look into that and see if you can adapt his method. Bottle carbing with yeast for soda can be tricky so be sure anyone you shar it with knows the rules of keeping it cold and occasionally venting. I recalled those two parts from ABs soda.

Well, I tried AB's recipe adapted to cherry, at 1/4 scale. So I used 1.5 oz cherry syrup (instead of sugar and ginger) mixed with 1 3/4 cups water and 1/32 tsp yeast... Okay I eyed it on that part. Anyway, into a plastic bottle, shake shake shake, forget about it for 48 hours.

It got all fizzy, that was nice... Tasted like seltzer water, maybe a hint of cherry, kindof. Not sweet either.

I guess the yeast ate all the sugar, and flavor. I'd think maybe more syrup next time... But I'd be more worried that the yeast would just eat twice as much and blow the cap off my bottle.

Any thoughts anyone?

Yeast won't eat much of the sugar at all. Bear in mind that AB's recipe is pretty light on sugar and a little ginger goes a long way. Try it again with much more syrup or less water.

Add more syrup and check on it after 24 hours. Check every 12 or so after that and I can almost guarantee no bombs.

In reality the 48 hours should be fine and moving it to the fridge after that should slow down the yeast enough that just drinking the soda will eliminate the threat of bombs. If you felt so inclined you could splurge on a tap-a-draft setup and force carb with it. I have just done so with skeeter per and it worked like a champ.

Alton brown’s recipe for ginger ale is wonderful.

Reading this post made me try some cherry soda.. I took about 10 or so maraschino cherries , blended them and 3 or 4 tablespoons of its syrup and added to 20oz cold iced water and carbonated (forced). Cherry soda is now in a close running with my all time favorite, birch beer..

Marachino cherries may taste good, but are a ghastly unnatural product... They are severely bleached to remove virtually all of their color and flavor, then re-infused with fake color and bitter almond extract flavoring. http://cocktails.about.com/gi/o.htm.../CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074535.htm

I am not exaggerating or overly concerned about "what's natural". I don't like the organic or natural foods movement. It's just a case of being logical... consider going directly to the source of almost all cherry flavor that you buy... bitter almond extract. Cherry flesh doesn't even taste much like "cherry"... they get their weak flavor from infusion from the pit, which is chemically identical but less concentrated than bitter almond pits. Natural cherry flesh is just a tease of what is really in the pit, as you can tell from the disappointment of natural cherry cider.

Kayvon said:

Yeast won't eat much of the sugar at all. Bear in mind that AB's recipe is pretty light on sugar and a little ginger goes a long way. Try it again with much more syrup or less water.

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Can you explain why you believe yeast will not eat much of the sugar when making soda? When I look at AB's recipe, http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/ginger-ale-recipe/index.html uses active dry yeast and from experience it will take a soda to dry-as-bone if you allow it to ferment long enough. Do you have a technique for preventing yeast from using all the available sugar?

daft said:

I am not exaggerating or overly concerned about "what's natural". I don't like the organic or natural foods movement. It's just a case of being logical... consider going directly to the source of almost all cherry flavor that you buy... bitter almond extract. Cherry flesh doesn't even taste much like "cherry"... they get their weak flavor from infusion from the pit, which is chemically identical but less concentrated than bitter almond pits. Natural cherry flesh is just a tease of what is really in the pit, as you can tell from the disappointment of natural cherry cider.

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That explains a bit. I saw a cherry jelly recipe once that called for saving the cherry pits, breaking them open with a hammer, and then infusing the "cherry kernels" into the juice while it cooked. Never knew why it would ask to do that.

saramc said:

Can you explain why you believe yeast will not eat much of the sugar when making soda?

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It's been discussed elsewhere on this forum, though I can't find it off hand. Basically, the yeast doesn't need all that much sugar to create the CO2 needed for carbonation. If you'll notice, recipes for forced carbonation (which consumes no sugar) and yeast carbonation (which consumes a small amount) both call for the same amount of sugar. In fact, AB's recipe calls for less sugar than most soft drinks.

Additionally, my own experience (anecdotal evidence) shows that the resulting soda is roughly equally-sweet whether force-carbonated of yeast-carbonated.

Do you have a technique for preventing yeast from using all the available sugar?

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Yes. Put the soda in the refrigerator after it carbonates to prevent the yeast from turning all your sugar into alcohol.

Kayvon said:

It's been discussed elsewhere on this forum, though I can't find it off hand. Basically, the yeast doesn't need all that much sugar to create the CO2 needed for carbonation. If you'll notice, recipes for forced carbonation (which consumes no sugar) and yeast carbonation (which consumes a small amount) both call for the same amount of sugar. In fact, AB's recipe calls for less sugar than most soft drinks.

Additionally, my own experience (anecdotal evidence) shows that the resulting soda is roughly equally-sweet whether force-carbonated of yeast-carbonated.

Yes. Put the soda in the refrigerator after it carbonates to prevent the yeast from turning all your sugar into alcohol.

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Yeast will continue reproducing/utilizing all available sugar, even when refrigerated they still ferment albeit slow slow slow, until they die off. They do not know how much to use so they just carbonate your beverage so they then leave a residual sugar to keep it sweet for you. Not saying that cold crashing will not allow you to keep your soda on the sweet side for a bit longer. If keeping a yeast based soda on the sweet side when using a fermentable sugar were that easy there would be no need to force carb anything. But it is fun tinkering.

saramc said:

Yeast will continue reproducing/utilizing all available sugar, even when refrigerated they still ferment albeit slow slow slow, until they die off.

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True enough. Let me amend my statement:

Put the soda in the refrigerator after it carbonates to prevent the yeast from turning all your sugar into alcohol. Then drink all of it.

Seriously though, refrigeration merely slows it down substantially (even AB recommends releasing the pressure from the bottle in the fridge once per day). Usually, you end up drinking the soda fast enough that it doesn't matter. If you want to stop fermentation completely, you need to heat the yeast up to kill it.