Root Beers /sodas

[redtail28]

Has anyone made root beer are other sodas?
If so how did it turn out?

[yeastmeister]

Nope, but I'm about to try my first one this weekend. I bought a pack of gnome spicy ginger beer extract, I'm planning on modifying the recipe to make it sugar free using splenda. Gonna keg it and force carbonate it. So, I should be able to give you some feedback by next week.

[redtail28]

I too have gnome root beer extract. I read that root beer
comes out watery and a lack of head.

On Northern Brewer forum someone sugestion to use non dairy
creamer to add mouth feal and head reation.
Sounds weird to me.

[triple-oh_six]

I have some gnome root beer extract as well, haven't had time to use it though.

[GuitarLord5000]

Wow, I told my son a few days ago that we'd make some root beer as soon as I could get some kegging equipment.

Here's one of the sites that I was looking at:
http://www.leeners.com/rootbeer.html

This guy says that the amounts and types of sugars you add to the extract make the biggest difference in flavor. Makes sense to me, as most of the root beer extracts I've tried haven't been that great with only table sugar added. They always seem to taste like they're missing some key ingredient.

I've heard great things about Gnome. Please let me know how it turns out!

Cheers
Dave

[aleguy]

Why are you buying root beer extract? Sasafrass grows all over this place!

[GuitarLord5000]

Why are you buying root beer extract? Sasafrass grows all over this place!

Well, I'm wary about serving my kid anything that might cause liver damage and cancer (sassafras roots). Also, truth be told, I could pass by the plant all day long and never know what I was looking at! However, if you end up making some root beer with sassafras roots, I'd love to try some!

I think my son will enjoy making root beer from extract. Maybe once he gets a bit older, we'll make a more traditional root beer. For now, he's young, and making any kind of soda would be a 'cool' thing. Root beer is the obvious choice, of course.

Cheers
Dave

[aleguy]

I think the rep of Sasafrass is overrated. Your kid is more likely to get cancer from a cell phone than from a few glasses of root beer, but I understand your concerns. I wouldn't want to give my kids anything that could harm them either.