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Thread: Home made Root Beer

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by phonejack View Post
    I use the concentrate, no yeast, dark brown sugar . Mine has an almost creamy taste.
    How do you carbonate it?

  2. #22
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    A surpisingly good beverage made from Sassafras root! I'm curious, do you use a hydrometer to know when to bottle it? I'm not sure how it works with the concentrate or how much sugar it adds, but if it's bottled too soon, there will be some of those POW-whoosh occurences. When I made beer, I bottled at 2 on the Balling scale and got good carbonation. Most of the other beer makers I met let it ferment out dry and then add the correct amount to properly carbonate. Just wondering how it works with the root beer efforts.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Walks View Post
    Would this work with the old time bottles with rubber/porcelain tops with the metal hook loop ? Closure ?
    I have made beer in that style of bottle and it works just fine, but I was under the impression bottles with porcelain stoppers were banned in California cause they couldn't separate the porcelain from the glass when recycling.
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  4. #24
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    My uncle used to make home made root beer before I was born. I remember my dad and him talking about it. Always thought he made it from some kind of root. But from reading this, I suppose they bought the concentrate and made it from that.
    What kind of root would it be made from if made from scratch?

  5. #25
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    You can use sassafras tree root to make it. The reason some bottles are leaking is because of the screw on caps. You have to use the crimp on only caps and the crimp old style bottles. The screw top bottles are way thinner. To make it you don’t need to use a hydrometer. Your not making beer or wine with alcohol. You mix the water sugar and the extract. That’s it. People add the yeast for the carbonation . It adds a very small amount of alcohol to it but it also adds carbonation. The problem with adding yeast and adding sugar to closed bottles is you have to stop the yeast from working or your bottles will blow. They have to be put in a cold fridge soon after bottling. Once you have carbonation in the bottles checked every day then you have to stop the fermentation. Putting in a fridge or pasturising with heat is the only reliable way. .This slowed the yeast or kills it to keep it from fermenting . Some people use a few grains of yeast per bottle but this only some times works.some times to little carbon dioxide some times to much. Also the yeast you use can lead to a off taste or weird taste. Certain yeast for this workes great
    Last edited by Jniedbalski; 08-17-2019 at 01:03 AM.

  6. #26
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    Kenton,

    I have saved a number of Bottles over the years. From Grolsch Beer, and the Blue or Brown Bottles from the old days when End of Trail was still held in Southern California.

    Just held on to them. Put food silicone on the rubber washers. Been storing them 15+yrs.
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  7. #27
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    I have a homemade carbonation setup . I have a 20 pound CO2 cylinder with a pressure regulator set at 40 psi. I fill 2 liter plastic bottles with what I want to carbonate attach the 40 psi line to the bottle and shake hard to make bubbles for more surface area to speed up the process ( about 30 seconds) I make seltzer water, carbonated beverages of all types including root beer, lemonade and ginger ale. After the cost for the setup, I can make seltzer for less than 1 cent per liter. I also
    re carbonate beer from kegs when it starts to go flat.
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  8. #28
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    So what is the payback? How long to pay for the setup?

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by MaryB View Post
    I would use a beer bottle with a non screw cap lid, caps are available at any beer supply store as is a capper for under $17 https://www.northernbrewer.com/colle...-bottle-capper has them for example. Bottle caps https://www.northernbrewer.com/colle...caps-120-count

    I have 2 of those cappers I no longer use...
    Let me know what you want for a capper if you do want to sell one.

  10. #30
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    Any grocery store sells extract. We make 5gallons every summer.
    Go to a home brew store and get some carbonation tablets if you need

  11. #31
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    Anyone have a decent recipe that actually tastes good? I scaled down the 5 gal recipe and it tasted weak and needed yet more sugar in my opinion.

  12. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Walks View Post
    Kenton,

    I have saved a number of Bottles over the years. From Grolsch Beer, and the Blue or Brown Bottles from the old days when End of Trail was still held in Southern California.

    Just held on to them. Put food silicone on the rubber washers. Been storing them 15+yrs.
    That makes sense, I remember looking at a brewing website and seeing that they couldn't ship to California. I had to double check that I hadn't absently mindedly wandered onto a firearms website
    quando omni flunkus moritati

  13. #33
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    Dad used to make it when I was a kid. He used a bit of yeast to make the carbonation. I NEVER liked the taste of the root beer with yeast.
    The house I grew up in had a water heater under the kitchen counter, which made the counter top warm. When dad made his root beer he placed the bottles on the counter for a day or two to ferment. Once he was making it in a gallon jug and it blew up. The whole kitchen was covered in root beer and glass. Mom banned him from ever making root beer again in the house.

    I now make it every year for a family reunion in a 10 gallon cooler using dry ice for the carbonation.

  14. #34
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    Advantage of having a CO2 system, the second line coming in upper right is set at 30psi to carbonate pop or water to mix with pop syrup, also to force carbonate a keg of beer in 48 hours(I prefer slower carbed, it does taste different)


  15. #35
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    The sassafras root you can make root beer but it doesn’t really taste like root beer but like sarsaparilla. I guess if you take sassafras root and water and added ansi liquid extract it might taste more like root beer. The best tasting root beer comes from root beer extrAct from beer supply places or soda supply online stores. The use of yeast to carbonate it can lead to some really funky off taste. Ask a beer supply place the best yeast to use like EC Kraus supply

  16. #36
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    boy home made root beer sounds good. i will have to look into making some. where do you get the stuff from.

  17. #37
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    In bottle carbonation can be problematic. Half a dozen years ago my daughter got the bright idea to make some ginger beer. She bottled it in champagne bottles complete with the wire ties she got from her grandfather (he used to make rhubarb champagne).

    First bottle she tried self-opened as she was taking the wire ties off. In the kitchen.

    The DENT is still in the ceiling.

    Next bottle I opened in the driveway, the cork went almost as high as the 40+ foot tall maples in the front yard and almost to the road at 100+ feet.

    She never tried again. With no complaints from me. Much more powerful and she would have had to apply for a destructive devices licence.

  18. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by 6bg6ga View Post
    So what is the payback? How long to pay for the setup?
    1. Purchase a 20 (pounds of CO2) cylinder , filled $100.00
    2. Get a CO2 regulator from HF 30.00
    3. Carbonation Cap for 2 liter plastic drink bottles https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01039C0Z0...v_ov_lig_dp_it
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    4. 5/16" Gas Line Assembly - Ball Lock 10.19
    https://www.amazon.com/16-Gas-Line-A...CEZAXHCCJT3R06

    $ aprox $150 Wife and I drink 6 liters of seltzer (and other mixes) per day. Cost in store about $3.
    $150/3 = 50 days. cost to refill cylinder about $15
    A cylinder full lasts me more than a year. I have saved thousands in the 7 years I have done this.
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  19. #39
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    As a kid we’d use dry ice and a pressure cooker to carbonate stuff.

    When mixing from syrup and using yeast to carbonate, do you need to pasteurize the mix in the bottles to stop the yeast from converting all the sugar? Water bath on the stove, need to figure out time and temp, but well below boiling.

  20. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by 6bg6ga View Post
    How long do you sterilize the bottles before you fill them? I've seen on you tube some people re-use soda pop bottles.
    You just wash the bottles like any thing and yes I do use the used soda bottles to bottle my root beer. Done it that way for how my parents taught use kids of how to do. Use to get the soda bottles from the store with regular caps. The ones you use a bottle opener on. I use bakers yeast on it also. After you have it start to be the way it should be.you can put the bottles in the fridge that way it will keep them cold and the heat will not have the bottles for some reason blow on you. You can tell when the caps start to round up on them . If you need to know what the mix is let me know .
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