Root Beer

[Dinbin]

SWMBO has asked me to come up with an Alcoholic Root Beer. I'm a little stumped. Now I've found recipes for Beer with root beer flavor and recipes for Root Beer Soda. The stumper is that SWMBO does not like Beer period. I've managed to get her to sample a good dozen beers since we have been together and not a single one has got a good response. So I'm tasked with finding a sweet, non bitter root beer that can give you a good buzz. Any Ideas? Any secret recipies out there?

 

[kenche]

A glass of rootbeer with an ounce of vodka is probably the easiest.

 

[david_the_greek]

I was going to suggest the rootbeer with vodka approach as well. Although I've never tried it so its probably gross as heck. What about a sweetened up apfelwein? It can be sweetened up pretty well (from what I hear) or even flavored. Its about 8.5% so it would indeed get her messed up.

 

[the_bird]

Somebody made a root-beer beer (Pumbaa?) and described it as being absolutely atrocious. I imagine the challenge is going to be maintaining enough sweetness for it to taste like root beer; adding lactose will add SOME non-fermentable sweetness, but nothing like the sweetness of a root beer.

 

[Yooper]

I made a nonalcoholic ginger ale last week- it's surprisingly good! You could easily make it with alcohol, just by fermenting it out a bit. Maybe she'd like that. (Root beer beer sounds horrible to me!)

 

[Robar]

From the sounds of it your best bet may be a non alcoholic root beer and a bottle of root beer schnapps

 

[newell456]

Are you bottling or kegging? If bottling, then you would have to add unfermentable sugars to keep the sweetness, but if kegging you could kill the yeast and back sweeten. Regardless, I don't think it would taste that good and you might want to go with root beer and root beer schnapps as has been suggested.

 

[brett]

Just get her hooked on cider and fruity/sweet alcoholic drinks. Then, after she has become an alcoholic, she'll drink anything!

 

[Dinbin]

Thanks for the responses guys. At this point I am looking to bottle the soda. Don't have the kegs set up yet, still waiting to get parts. Would it work to mix the soda with a good root beer schnapps in the bottling bucket along with some priming sugar? On paper that sounds like you could get a nice tasty result. I've read that beer can be primed with a good fruit liquor and a touch of corn sugar, would something similar work for soda?