Making Sarsaparilla

When I was very small I used to drink root beer at my great grandmother's house. One day I grabbed a bottle from the fridge and was happily settling in front of the tv when she came running up behind me and grabbed the bottle. Turns out I had a beer bottle and not a root beer bottle! Oops!

As an adult I shared that story with my father. He said great-grandma used to make her own root beer and probably used great-grandpa's empties to hold them. Hmmm, could I make my own root beer? An interesting idea!

Another jump in time found me at Hometown Ace Hardware, my local homebrew

supply store, this past saturday. I was looking down the isle when I spotted Old Fashioned soda extracts. On the recommendation of my friend, Charles Gonzales, I bought the Sarsaparilla and went home to make some soda.

Since I am a beer brewer I have lots of kegs sitting around and I thought a short 3 gallon keg would be perfect for this experiment. The instructions on the soda box were written for someone bottling so I went online to find instructions for kegs. The best, and easiest, I found went like this; use 1 oz of extract for every gallon of water and 1 lb of sugar for every gallon of water. Simple enough.

Now what about carbonation. I could have pitched a packet of dry yeast into that sugary concoction but I decided to force carbonate using my co2 tank. I hit the keg with 30 lb of pressure and rocket the heck out of it to get as much co2 in as possible. I then dropped the keg into my freezer since cold liquid accepts carbonation better than warm.

Of course there had to be one little hiccup. I forgot the keg in the freezer and froze it solid overnight. Thankfully it was only 2 gallons of liquid in a 3 gallon keg so it had plenty of room to expand, no damage done. I let the keg sit out to thaw and sampled it a few hours later.

Wow, it was pretty good! It definitely had a sugary twang to it but the flavor was very nice. This is something I would do again in an instant.

Ok, a couple of things to note for next time. One, don't let the keg sit overnight in the freezer. Two, make sure the sugar is mixed into warm water, maybe on the stove, to ensure it dissolves. Three, apparently anything rubber that soda hits is flavored for life. So no more beer in that particular keg.

Overall this was a fun project and I would do it again. In fact I think I will!

A history of brewing

My good friend, Earl Barton, has been making beer for years. He has a garage full of kegs and always has at least six beers on tap. In 2004 he shared his love for beer brewing with me and I was hooked. He taught me about the grain, the yeast and how to bottle this wonderful product. He still has more kegs than I do, and he brews more often than I do, but I plan to catch up someday.

In those early days we were using a camp chef stove and some old kegs with the tops cut off. It was all pretty basic but we were making beer! Rich Walker, another local brewer, became my brewing partner and we made many many good beers together including clones of Mac-N-Jack, Deschutes Black Butte Porter, Fullers Porter, Geary's Hampshire Ale, and Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout to mention a few.

Of course we made a couple of real dog rockets as we were learning. I brewed a christmas spice ale with Earl using allspice from the kitchen. Do Not Try This at home kids. I couldn't even give it away! Then there was the time I decide to make an IPA using only Nugget hops. Another beer that went down the drain. Wasted beer makes me cry, you would not have enjoyed watching my tears and the beer go down the drain.

Along the way I earned the Brewer of the Year award from the Yakima Brewer

s group in 2006. That was a close race right down to the end. We had to brew five beers over the course of ten months, each being graded by the attending club members, and points were tallied in October. I studied each style, tirelessly sampled

commercial examples, and refined my brewing process. My efforts paid off when I won the award!

In 2007 I received a blue ribbon for my beer at the State Fair in Yakima in 2007.

This was a small competition and more than one person received a blue ribbon (that's how the local fairs work) butI was still pleased!

In 2007 I was in a rut (without a beer) and decided to get serious. I enrolled in the Siebel Institute's advanced beer brewing course in Durango, Colorado. There I met the giants of the beer world. Randy Mosher, author of Radical Brewing, and Ray Daniels, author of Designing Great Beers. Meeting them was the highlight of my year

and inspired me to "get radical." I also met Chris White from White Labs and Chris Graham from More Beer. So there I was with the giants, the kings, of the homebrew industry along with a group of guys that wanted nothing more than to brew really good beer. We learned alot and only had one run in with the police that is documented on youtube if you can find it. :-)

That brings us to 2008 when I decided to build "the brew stand." Every brewer dreams of having a brewing system that will make his friends drool. Buying one would cost $5,000-$15,000 so I decided to build one with the help of my friends. Ryan Case drew up the plans and dimensions, Don Barnes welded the pieces together, a local paint shop powder coated it, and Ryan came back to help with electrical and propane. The system is SWEET. It is one of the nicest looking systems I have seen and I could afford it!

In late 2008 I hurt my back badly and was not able to brew all winter long. Several MRI's, doctors, and physical therapy sessions later I'm probably 80% recovered and that is enough to start brewing again. This time I'm doing a demonstration at Ace Hardware on Tieton and 36th. I'll post all the details in a new blog entry shortly. Last time we had about 18 people show up and they cleared out the brewing supply isles afterward, a big success that we hope to replicate.

So there you have it. I love drinking beer, I love making beer and I love talking about beer. It was only natural that I would start a blog so I can tell the world about it. I'll be posting about beers that I drink, events that I attend and teaching sessions