I dont drink soda myself but alot of friends are bragging about homemade rootbeer that they have tried. I was thinking about making some to give as gifts and was wondering how you guys carbonated the soda for bottling. Thanks in advance, Ken
Carbonation?
- Thread starter KENfromMI
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Soda is tricky, if you're not kegging. It's very easy- you add the ingredients, and then some champagne yeast. You bottle in plastic bottles, and when they are rock hard, you put them in the fridge so that the yeast goes dormant and they don't explode.
The problem would be giving it as a gift- how to you ensure that it goes right back into the fridge, so that they don't blow up. You don't want to give soda bombs as a gift!
Kegging makes it easy- you force carb and then bottle. You need super long lines, though, because the soda should be at like 30 psi. The kegged rootbeer my son made really was great, though!
Another way to do it with force carbing involved those EZ Cap carbonator or something like that. It's just a screw top with a ball lock adapter, so that your gray gas disconnect fits on it, and you chill it and then give it 40 psi a couple of times and shake it up. It carbs up the soda beautifully.
Even though glass bottles look nice, you should never use glass with homemade soda. The yeast will continue to eat the sugar, and bottle bombs are a real danger.
I've made root beer and ginger ale by using that carbonator cap. No sediment, and great taste- just like a commercial soda.
Um, yeah, what she said. You have to put the bottles in a fridge after a couple of days, or they WILL explode, even very heavy bottles. And, they CAN still ferment in there, so you have to drink them up in a short amount of time no matter what.
Using a CO2 system is great, and i'll have to try out that carbonator that Yooper talks about. Might solve my limited kegerator space issue.
Using a CO2 system is great, and i'll have to try out that carbonator that Yooper talks about. Might solve my limited kegerator space issue.
