Home made root beer the easy counterbrew way.

I love Root beer.  It has always been my soda (or pop depending on your geological location) of choice.   Making Root beer at home is incredibly easy.  If you can make an extract batch of beer you can make Root beer.

For our first batch of root beer in years we bought the rainbow Old Fashioned Homebrew extract.   You've doubtlessly seen this in the home brew stores.   I used to make this when the kids were young.  And we all loved it.   I started with the basic kit, and then upgraded to add other ingredients like ginger, and mint.  I gotta tell you this was the easiest thing I have ever brewed.

Started by hydrating some yeast.  Which yeast?  Is yeast selection critical?  Can I use some ale yeast?   Let me answer... Doesn't matter ale, bread, or champagne.  We used US-05 1/8th of a teaspoon rehydrated in 6 oz of water.

We mixed the measured extract with 3/4 of a gallon of water and 2.5 cups of cane sugar and 1 cup of brown sugar.   And stirred, and stirred until dissolved.   Remember the water isn't hot like homebrew.  It will take a while to get the sugar mixed into the water.

After stirring we transferred the mixture into 2 liter bottles.   2 liter bottles are far safer for brewing root beer at home than glass bottles.  The rootbeer will build up a lot of  pressure.  Glass bottles can break.   Then we added the yeast and topped them off to about 1" from the top.   Put the lid on and let them carb up.   They will take about 5-7 days to carbonate.   And when they are done, you have delicious home made root beer.   It's just that easy to make your own soda at home.   Give it a try.  Next time were going for a real home made batch,  But this is so easy to do, Im sure well keep doing the extracts too.

We are adding Splenda to the batch next time to bring the sweetness up. Same sugar and a cup of Splenda.