Homemade Root Beer!

[MajorChode]

I almost never allow soda pop in the house. The only exception we have is on special occasions I may spring for a six pack of good quality root beer which my kids love. I can remember when I was a kid, my dad and I used to make homemade root beer, so I decided to give it a try. The results are fantastic and incredibly easy.

I ordered my root beer extract from Zatarains, but I think when it runs out I'm going to try some of the Hoptech flavors. A rough guess is 4 oz of extract is going to make about 20 liters of root beer give or take. You can substitute just about any flavoring for the root beer extract and make whatever kind of soda you want. I just followed the directions contained in this website:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/rootbeer_jn0.htm

On Dr. Fankhauser's web site, you'll also find directions on how to make cheese, bread, and yogurt from scratch. I really like some of his methods and I'm going to give more of them a try.

[Denninmi]

1. I tried his method for cheddar cheese last summer.

It worked well. We were suppossed to let it age for a month in the fridge before eating it, but it was too good as-is, and we ate it all in under a week.

I was going to try his Feta, but I screwed something up and it wouldn't set, so I just cooked it down into ricotta and called it a night.

[MajorChode]

2. I've never tried to make any cheese other than yogurt cheese

I'll eventually give some of his recipes a try though.

[kestrel91316]

6. I made homemade cottage cheese a couple of times that was HEAVENLY.

It was all I could do not to eat the entire batch in one sitting......

[Warpy]

3. I tried a batch of root beer once

with home brewed sassafras root. The few bottles that didn't explode were amazingly good, although we opened them very carefully, expecting shrapnel and suds at any moment.

Beer was actually easier.

Now I use a root beer syrup plus the C02 setup and it's acceptable, although I do miss that foamy head you can get only with naturally brewed root beer.

[MajorChode]

4. Dr. Fankhauser has the best idea

You make the root beer in plastic bottles. That way you can squeeze them periodically and tell when they have fermented enough, then put them in the fridge.

I remember as a kid making them in glass bottles and we would occassionally get one that exploded, so it wasn't something you could do indoors.

[kestrel91316]

5. I gotta make my own birch beer and sarsaparilla and such some day.

We have a shop here that sells the flavor extracts.