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BigKahuna

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I love soda. Matter of fact it was my quest to make root beer that lead me to my first home brew supply shop where I left with a $4.00 bottle of Root Beer extract.......and over a hundred dollars worth of brewing equipment.

Now my quest is for a root "Beer" Everyone says I can't and it won't be good and on and on and on....I'm about to just give it a whirl and see what happens.

I do also know that you WILL make a bottle bomb if you don't refridgerate your soda. I ALWAYS do a minimum of 1 in a plastic soda bottle so I can give it a squeeze and see how tight it's getting.
 
I've made root beer (well, my son says he has, but I sanitize, measure, add yeast, etc) and bottled it and kegged it. It's ok, and my son likes it.

I made some homemade ginger ale (the soda) that rocked, though! I really wish I could afford some of those 2.5 gallon cornes- 5 gallons of soda really is just too much.
 
I've made root beer (well, my son says he has, but I sanitize, measure, add yeast, etc) and bottled it and kegged it. It's ok, and my son likes it.

I made some homemade ginger ale (the soda) that rocked, though! I really wish I could afford some of those 2.5 gallon cornes- 5 gallons of soda really is just too much.

We make a ginger ale with ginger root, sugar, and water. Turns out great! We make it as a syrup and dilute it with seltzer water as the need arises.

I hear you about keeping 5 gallons of it on hand. Why not dedicate a corny to seltzer water and just keep a liter or two of syrup in the fridge?
 
ya know yoop........you don't have to fill the corny all the way up..... ;)

Well, it's more the fridge space anyway! I have room for two kegs in my fridge. I don't think I can give up the space for soda. Maybe what I can do is keg it, and then bottle from the keg? Would the soda stay carbonated just as beer does? Then I could still have an occasional soda without giving up my fridge space.

One thing I like about homemade soda is that you can make it out of 100% natural ingredients- NO high fructose corn syrup. Yes, there is sugar, but I don't consider sugar something to be totally avoided.

The ginger ale had water, ginger, a lemon and sugar steeped into a syrup like sirhumpsalot said, and then water added and it was carbonated. It really was good and I might do it again.
 
I'd definately like to brew a batch of ginger ale or root beer. It'll be cool to start seeing some recipes pop up in here.
 
Maybe we need to add a 'Soda' category to the recipe database.........

Yoop, I don't see why using something like BM's counter pressure bottle filler wouldn't work for soda...it's worth a shot
 
Maybe we need to add a 'Soda' category to the recipe database.........

Yoop, I don't see why using something like BM's counter pressure bottle filler wouldn't work for soda...it's worth a shot

Yeah, maybe try it with only a few bottles, just in case. I noticed that with my son's root beer, we kept it around 30 psi to carbonate and dispense, and I needed like 25 feet of line so it didn't foam. If I turned it down, it lost carbonation fast. I wasn't sure how that would work with the BMBF.
 
Yeah, maybe try it with only a few bottles, just in case. I noticed that with my son's root beer, we kept it around 30 psi to carbonate and dispense, and I needed like 25 feet of line so it didn't foam. If I turned it down, it lost carbonation fast. I wasn't sure how that would work with the BMBF.

I was thinking that mashing some carapils might help the head retention (and carbonation retention) on a rootbeer. Just a random thought.
 
I just finished my ginger ale last week. I made it a 2L batch with 2 tablespoons fresh grated ginger. Man was it spicy and great! I am going to try it again soon. Then maybe a vanilla cream soda with or without cantalope flavoring.
 
Is root beer and ginger ale the only kinds of soda that can be made at home with ingredients bought at a homebrew shop? Could I make a coca-cola clone if I wanted to?

Homemade cola.... I'm down.
 
Is making a coca-cola clone along the same lines as trying to do a BMC clone? I think it might be. Are there pop snobs or soda geeks? This slightly interests me, but the lack of alcohol, fermentation, etc is where I lose interest in making pop.
 
I don't see why using something like BM's counter pressure bottle filler wouldn't work for soda...it's worth a shot

I bottle my Apfelschorle (apple soda) sometimes with my beergun. It works pretty well and the bottles hold the carbonation fine. Because of the high carbonation, you should expect larger foam losses that with beer, but it still works.
 
Is root beer and ginger ale the only kinds of soda that can be made at home with ingredients bought at a homebrew shop? Could I make a coca-cola clone if I wanted to?

Homemade cola.... I'm down.


You can make cola, no problem, with the extract flavors. I doubt it would taste like coke, though, because of the "recipe" secrets. I've seen all kinds of soda extracts, from birch to sasparilla. Sprecher (the brewery) sells jugs of their extract syrup in homebrew catalogues, but it's really expensive and can't be used for bottle carbing.

I would like to get away from the extracts and make my "own" cream soda. I can't find a recipe for one, though.
 
I just made my first batch of Root Beer last night. Actually it was the post suggestion to start a soda section that got me thinking about making my own Root Beer.

I found this link about making "Open Cola". Along the lines of open source technology the recipe is free. I'm not really sure how to get your hands on some of those ingredients though:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-OpenCola

I think a ginger ale is next up for me. Preferably with natural ingredients this time and not extract.
 
I have a friend that makes a commercial root beer and he uses malt as his base. It is really a wonderful product and could be accomplished with some mash runnings.
 
Maybe we need to add a 'Soda' category to the recipe database.........

Yoop, I don't see why using something like BM's counter pressure bottle filler wouldn't work for soda...it's worth a shot

I don't have a bottle filler like that, but if you don't have one, I don't think it's necessary for bottling soda from a keg. You could use something as simple as a picnic tap because you don't need to worry about oxidizing the finished product if it's not fermented like you have to be concerned with when bottling beer or wine. Assuming everything is sanitized, the worst that can happen is you lose some of the carbonation.
 
We make a ginger ale with ginger root, sugar, and water. Turns out great! We make it as a syrup and dilute it with seltzer water as the need arises.

I hear you about keeping 5 gallons of it on hand. Why not dedicate a corny to seltzer water and just keep a liter or two of syrup in the fridge?

Could you post that recipe?
 
Could you post that recipe?

I'm going off of memory here, so forgive me, but basically, here it is...

Take a ginger root (about4 inches long), slice it thin or grate it into a pot. Add enough water to make 1.75L and boil for about 30 minutes (more or less, depending on how thickly you sliced the ginger and how long it takes to extract the flavor). Add lemon juice to taste- I think we use about an eighth of a cup. Add about 1.5 cups sugar (to taste) and some brown sugar (maybe a quarter cup) to add some color.

Cool the mixture and strain it. I use 1.75L liquor bottles to store this concentrated mixture.

You can cut it 1/3 mix with 2/3rds hot water and serve as a delicious ginger tea. You can also add it to seltzer to make soda. It's also supposed to aid in digestion, so sometimes I just have a straight shot of the stuff. It's pretty good on its own.
 
Here's another recipe...

1.25 ounces of fruit flavored tea (such as strawberry tea, orange tea, etc). My favorite is a passionberry tea which is bright red and ridiculously fruity... almost like kool aid.

Add the tea to 2 quarts near-boiling water. Let it sit on the counter until it cools to nearly room temp. Add one cup of sugar.

This makes an incredible iced tea... but once my kegerator is up and running, I will probably be carbonating it into a low-sugar soda.
 
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