Most soda extracts will recommend a champagne yeast for its neutral flavor.
Most soda extracts will recommend a champagne yeast for its neutral flavor.
Still trying to come up with a decent recipe. I have scaled back the 5 gallon recipe carefully making sure I had the water, yeast, sugar, and concentrate correct. It still tastes weak and doesn't have enough sugar to suit my taste. I'm still trying to get it to taste like the store bought.
Get some dextrose from a brew supply, it will add more of a sugar taste... I prefer all cane sugar though!
Thanks Mary. I'm trying to keep the cost of the root beer under that of the grocery store of $2.75 for a 4 pack. I'm retired now so I'm cheap
Mine kinda tastes like what the German Shepherd leaves in the yard daily with a slightly better smell.
Tell us how you know what that stuff tastes like, no, I don’t think I want to know
Haven't made any for a couple years. We were using McCormick Rootbeer extract. Only made it from scratch once. My Bro got the recipe from a Country Living magazine. We dug the sassafrass roots and gathered up the other ingredients naturally if we could. Bought extract oils if we couldn't. The roots have to be gathered in early spring before sap starts to rise. Make sure you use glass or crock container for mix. Some metals will kill or retard yeast action. Also use spring water, maybe bottled water could be substituted but tap water is no good.
We always use long neck beer bottles of brown or green glass. We make about 20gal a batch, bottle and stack bottles on their sides with blue tarp folded back and forth between layers. At room temp.
We had 16oz Pepsi bottles blowing up like fire crackers one year. They must be weaker than beer bottles because the clear glass would have nothing to do with it, when covered by tarp. The Govt took Sassafrass of the market claiming it causes cancer. That was the main flavoring in real root beer. They replace it with extracts of mints.
When bottling we pour through cheese cloth to filter out any small pieces of yeast that didn't disolve. If you let them get in a bottle chances are it will blow.
It use to be a tradition here to dig sassafrass roots for tea and to make root beer. The grocer use to sell it in the spring. It's a common tree around these parts. I would like to make a batch with 100% natural ingredients like the original stuff. The real stuff will have a small alcohol content, enough the blue smoke rolls when you pop the cap.
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