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!