Rhubarb soda

[bleme]

Last year my mom gave me 6 rhubarb plants to add to my garden and they have taken over a 100 gallon grow bag.

Today so sent me a link to a page with rhubarb recipes that included:

• Toss chopped rhubarb with sugar (about 1/2 cup for every 3 cups of rhubarb). Bake it in a 350 °F oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until it’s soft and tender. Puree the baked rhubarb and use it to make homemade soda, add it to boozy margaritas or turn it into ice cream.

So I am looking to turn this into a 5 gallon recipe and hoping for help. I think I will start with 3 cups of sugar so that's 12 cups of rhubarb. What about lemon juice? Any other suggestions?

 

[rushpapers]

I would try making small amounts of syrup.

That's what I do with the soda syrups and I mix 2 oz syrup with 10 oz of seltzer water before jumping to a 5-gallon recipe.

For instance, when I make cola syrup on the stove top I use 12 oz of cane sugar and 12 oz of water, plus spice and extract. The resulting amount is 14-16 oz syrup. That's about the smallest I can go and still be able to measure spice and extract to a tenth of a gram.

That being said I would substitute some of the sugar with rhubarb. I would pulverize and reduce it in water then I would use the rhubarb infused water to make syrup with less sugar than I normally use.

Just my thoughts. I may be wrong but trial and error is a large part of the process. Usually you learn a lot from making mistakes the first time.

 

[McMullan]

I like the syrup idea. I bought some rhubarb syrup recently to make a take on Aperol spritz (for my wife) as a summer drink. An apple juice base, a little orange juice, a bottle (or two?) of rhubarb syrup, cane sugar to bump gravity, gentian root for bittering and cider yeast. Here’s the rhubarb syrup ingredients: