Root Beer #6 (diet)

My brother is coming to town, and I thought I should put on a batch of root beer to celebrate. Basically, this is recipe #5, except I'm going to try the stevia experiment from the lavender ale. My hope is that this might be a solution to the flatness problem. Stevia will provide the sweetness, and then I'll prime the beer with enough sugar to carbonate it, but not explode the bottle, so it can brew for a week or more and get totally fizzy... at least that's my theory. So here are the ingredients:

1/4 cup sassafras

1/4 cup birch bark

2 1/2 Tbsp sarsaparilla

2 Tbsp wild cherry bark

2 Tbsp wintergreen leaves

1 Tbsp yellow dock

2 tsp licorice

1 tsp burdock

1/4 cup stevia extract with dextrose

1/4 cup sugar

1 gal water

1/4 tsp yeast

I'll let you know how it turns out.

UPDATE: more fizz that didn't last and I'm less in love with the stevia as sweetener. Ended up dumping most of this to free up bottles.

Lavender Rosemary Ginger Ale #1

Walking around my neighborhood last weekend, I walked past several rosemary and lavender bushes and it inspired me to try a new concoction.

1/2 oz fresh ginger

1 tsp fresh rosemary

2 Tbsp dried lavender flowers

2 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp stevia extract (cut with dextrose)

1/8 tsp ale yeast

1/2 gal water

Simmered ginger alone for 20 minutes, with rosemary an additional 10 minutes. Removed from heat to steep with lavender for 10 minutes. Brewed 7 days at 70 degrees.

This recipe was really a shot in the dark, so I was completely prepared for it to be disgusting. It is not. Everything settled leaving the liquid totally clear, but the sediment makes it cloudy with a slight pinkish purple tinge. When I put my nose to it, I was afraid it would be too gingery, but after tasting it, I think the tiny bit of sharpness is needed, as the other flavors are very round. It is distinctly, but not overwhelmingly lavender-flavored. I get almost none of the rosemary, so that can be at least doubled. My room mate, who has a cold and had just drunk tea with honey, found the stevia's sweetness a bit odd. I think it's fine, though it isn't just like sugar. Most people would probably judge the level of sweetness right, but I could use a little less.

As far as carbonation, the small amount of sugar has made it bubbly enough. I'm not sure whether more time would make it any bubblier, and we'll have to see if the other three bottles turn out once they're chilled. This is definitely a good start. Perhaps some rose or ginkgo would be a way to add the next layer of complexity.

Warm Christmas

For Christmas, my dad built me a thermostatically controlled lightbulb and fan so I can carefully control the temperature of the oven at fermentation temperature. It's already been great for bread (set at 98 degrees--as high as the home thermostat will go) and I'm about to try 70 degrees for some root beer. Hopefully this will eliminate the lengthy and flakey fermentation caused by our 55-60-degree kitchen.

Root Beer #5

Since I lost recipe #4, I went back to #3, upped the bitters, as I suggested, and added wintergreen.

4 Tbsp sassafras

4 Tbsp coarse birch bark

2 1/2 Tbsp sarsaparilla

2 Tbsp wild cherry bark

2 Tbsp wintergreen leaves

1 1/2 Tbsp yellow dock

2 tsp licorice root

1 tsp burdock

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/8 tsp ale yeast

1 gal water

This is getting close to what I want. It definitely has a much woodsier aroma than commercial root beer, but it's sufficiently sweet (wondering if more licorice or something like stevia can substitute for some of the sugar, though) and has a complex, well-rounded flavor. There might be a little too much bitterness, so maybe taking the yellow dock back to 1 Tbsp would be good.

It definitely has a taste of ale that you don't find in non-brewed carbonated soda. There must be something in the roots that inhibits the yeast, because even at a steady 70 degrees, the root beer carbonates much slower than ginger ale with the same yeast. After three days, a not-completely chilled bottle got a bit of a head, but wasn't super-bubbly, so I gave it another day. Fully chilled after four days fermentation, and it has a nice bubbly feel in the mouth, but doesn't get a head or look very bubbly. 1/4 tsp of yeast in a gallon seems like a lot, but I'll have to give it a try.

Talking about it with my roommate, I counted the ingredients. Perhaps this should be called eight-tree ale. That has a good ring to it.

Ginger Ale #3.1

I brought pre-mixed ginger and herbs to North Carolina to whip up a batch of ginger ale while visiting my brother's family. Just had to add water, sugar, and yeast. I used the bread yeast that was on hand, and in a 70-degree kitchen, it was fully bubbly in two and a half days. Also tried bottle caps on some twist-off bottles, and that seems to have worked fine. An easy New Year's treat.

Kristmas Kola

zest of 1 small lemon

peel of 2 mandarin oranges

1/3 oz piece of cinnamon bark

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 anise star

1/2 tsp kola nut

1/6 oz fresh ginger

1/2 vanilla bean

1 tsp wintergreen leaves

1/2 tsp citric acid

1 tsp maple syrup

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 gal water

1/8 tsp ale yeast

Looking up cola recipes, I found a number of pages listing supposed original recipes for Coca-Cola, and modern reverse engineering attempts. Most used alcohol-based extracts, rather than steeped raw ingredients. I had most of the flavorings commonly used in dried or fresh form, so took a stab at something I hoped would be cola like. While it boiled, it filled the apartment with Christmas scents. Finished, it's pretty unusual. I don't think anybody would take a sip and think Coke or Pepsi. It's hard to tell what the flavors are. Nutmeg and orange seem to dominate. Brown sugar adds something unexpected in a soda. It's not unpleasant, but it's pretty weird.

Ginger Ale #3

2 1/4 oz. young ginger

6 cardamom pods, broken

2 Tbsp juniper berries

1 tsp white pine bark

1/4 cup yarrow flowers

1 1/2 tsp fresh lemon zest

1/2 tsp citric acid

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 gal water

1 2/3 cups sugar

1/4 tsp yeast

We're on to something here. I took several bottles of this just finished batch to Thanksgiving dinner (fermented in a lighted oven to be sure it would be fizzy on time.) Perfectly floral, ever-so-slightly ginny, tangy and refreshing. It's definitely gingery, but without so much ginger heat. Juniper berries are at exactly the right amount--they would be lost with less, but startling with more. A bit more yarrow, being subtler, probably wouldn't hurt, but isn't needed. It isn't markedly lemony, but is satisfyingly citrusy. The cardamom seems lost--maybe a couple more pods to see next time. The pine, too, doesn't seem to be adding much, but perhaps that's as it should be.

The more gingery recipe certainly deserves to be called "Carribean." What we have here might be more of a "mainland" version.

Ginger Ale #2

A couple weeks ago, I visited the new pizzeria in my neighborhood, Pi Bar. I spied in their cooler a tiny bottle of Fentiman's Ginger Beer, and asked for a bottle on the way out. I'd intended to savor it at home, but the bartender opened it for me. It was 125ml of delight, sharply gingery, but with strong herbal fragrances. The label keeps nothing secret: it lists ginger, speedwell, juniper, and yarrow extracts, rather than the usual, coy 'natural flavors.' Although it contains carbonated water, this British company seems to actually brew with yeast at some step of their production. So I promptly went to Rainbow and bought juniper berries and yarrow flowers. (They didn't have 'speedwell.') These, I hoped, would add a better complexity to the ginger-sugar combination than the fruit juice of my last batch.

3 oz young ginger (no skinning needed)

4 cardamom pods, broken

2 Tbsp yarrow flowers

1 Tbsp dry juniper berries

1 tsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp citric acid

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 2/3 cups sugar

1/8 tsp ale yeast

1 gal water

I opened a bottle after six cool days, and it was drinkably fizzy, though I'll give it another day before chilling. It's very satisfying, with a hint of herbal scent. I think the cream of tartar gives it a smooth mouth-feel. It definitely can use a good bit more of the juniper and especially the yarrow, which smells lovely raw. It might, at some point, be worth trying to extract the essence with alcohol, rather than just boiling, though that opens up a whole new line of experimentation...

Root beer #4

So, this batch was so finicky, and ended up taking so long, that I have misplaced the ingredient list. It might be lying around somewhere, but I do remember that I increased the burdock and yellow dock, as I suggested to myself after the last batch, and, along with the new, blue bottles, I ordered wintergreen and ale yeast, so it's got that too.

After a week of fermentation, I put the bottles in the fridge and took some to work to share. The bottle I shared with Rachel gushed, and shot all over her office and out the door into the library, but then three other bottles were only slightly carbonated. I gave the remaining four a few more days, and cracking the bail tops only released a little gas. Finally, when I bottled the hard cider I was making (with champagne yeast) I put a little of the dregs in the root beer. The bottle I'm drinking now is really tingly and some of the sweetness has gone boozy. The flavor might not satisfy a 10-year-old either, but I like it.

It's perhaps a bit more bitter than the last batch, and there seems to be more going on. I can't distinctly make out the wintergreen, which, made into a tea, was rather mild, nothing like a wintergreen Lifesaver. Maybe there is some coolness to the aftertaste, though. Mmmm.

Ginger Ale #0

The ginger beer I posted about a couple weeks ago seemed a little simple to me, compared to the super-simple Trader Joe's based concoction I'd done before, so I decided to make that again as a base-line to compare to. I still highly recommend that anyone interested in trying to make their own soda throw some yeast in a bottle of lemon-ginger-echinacea juice and let it sit till it's fizzy, but I wasn't as enamored of the result this time. It lacked the really sharp, carribean-style bite you get from fresh ginger, and it was, well, rather juicy. I think I can do better: a project for this evening.