Brewing Hard root beer, the really easy way

[sanity1676]

Ive been searching into brwing hard root beer for a while, and believe i have found an incredibly easy method. I am going start to brew this when i rack my skeeter pee.
basically
this recipe uses 10 cups of sugar, and 2.5 cups of molasses used to make a simple sugar wash. Boil the sugar and molasses together in 4 cups of (tap or any other clean) water till everything is dissolved. then pour into a 5 gallon carboy, add 4.5 gallon of water 3 tablespoons yeast nutrient and pitch your rehydrated yeast (i hope to use lavelin LC-1118). I am going to allow this to ferment to when the bubbles just start to slow, rack to secondary. add 9 tbsp McCormick root beer extract, 2 tbsp vanilla extract, a cup of molasses and 2 pounds of honey, let steep for 3 or 4 days, backsweeten to taste, bottle 1 in plastic, and the rest in glass, when the plastic bottle is firm i will bottle pasteurize. my only concern will be clearing the root beer

 

[unionrdr]

I had some Small Town Brewery's Not Your Father's Root Beer recently. It had a quickly reducing head & the flavor of root beer that was pretty good. Not sure how they made it. I'm curious how your experiment works out?...

 

[mikeymjr23]

I'd like to try this out! What could go wrong?!

 

[sanity1676]

not too much, but the flavors may not properly mellow, idk how to clear it, and it may be too high alcohol, and wind up tasting too ''hot''

 

[mrgrimm101]

I had some Small Town Brewery's Not Your Father's Root Beer recently. It had a quickly reducing head & the flavor of root beer that was pretty good. Not sure how they made it. I'm curious how your experiment works out?...

That stuff is sooo good. I had the 19.5%. Dangerous stuff.

 

[unionrdr]

Definitely tasty & no alcohol burn.

 

[Darth_Beer]

Sounds like the recipe from this thread (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/hard-root-beer-recipe-416406/) And its very tasty.

 

[z-bob]

Is pasteurizing carbonated glass bottles really safe? What kind of pressure develops while they are hot? Maybe if they are underwater and there's a lid on the canner it might not matter if one blows up...

Be very careful removing them from the canner. ==(8-0

 

[Ike]

Is pasteurizing carbonated glass bottles really safe? What kind of pressure develops while they are hot? Maybe if they are underwater and there's a lid on the canner it might not matter if one blows up...

Be very careful removing them from the canner. ==(8-0

For your reading pleasure..

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/

One of about thirty threads I already have bookmarked from this Forum...

Ike

 

[Ike]

Sounds like the recipe from this thread (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/hard-root-beer-recipe-416406/) And its very tasty.

ANOTHER thought about these two recipes and their differences: what is the comparative "sweetness" or maybe I need to ask about the Brix potential of a pound of DME and a pound of brown/white sugar? I ask because in a recipe such as this, where all we really want is an alcohol-bearing base to which we are going to add an overpowering flavoring agent (root beer extract) does it really make sense to pay $4/pound for DME, when I can get sugar way cheaper? I know I'd never do this to a "real" beer, but for this, or a hard ginger ale, or any other hard flavored soda, well... a penny saved is a penny spent on beer gear!

Ike

 

[sanity1676]

thats why im going to try it using cheap molasses and sugar. I want a cheap fun drink. DME is too expensive to waste on something like this. Also because of inverting the sugars i doubt there would be off flavors. idk though