Home-Brewed Root Beer
When I learned a few years ago that Sassafras (the original flavoring for root beer) grew in abundance in Brooklyn, I was determined to brew some of my own root beer. After all, I have a thing for kitchen-chemistry. When I found myself cycling through Prospect Park (where sassafras can be found in abundance) with my daughter the other week, I decided it was time to try.
It was an easy matter for us to locate sassafras-saplings, and we collected several roots. They went into the refrigerator at home until I could get the other ingredients. I had purchased Stephen Cresswell’s Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop a while back, and I was going to make his Three Root Beer. The other roots I needed were burdock (purchased at the local Whole Foods Market) and licorice (purchased at Kalustyan’s). I was going to use regular instant-yeast (instead of the recommended ale-yeast) which I had at home.
The basic recipe goes like this:
1) Boil the roots in water for about a half an hour.
2) Add sugar and boil until disolved.
3) Remove from heat, strain out the solids and cool to a temperature that won’t kill the yeast. I waited for 100°F.
4) Add yeast and stir until dissolved. Since I was using instant yeast, this was fairly quick.
5) Put mix in bottles. I used 1.5 liter soda bottles, cleaned very well. Leave an inch or two of head-space.
6) Leave bottles for 2 days at room temperature.
After 2 days, the bottles were hard, from the buildup of gas. Time to refrigerate them, which stops the yeast. When they were cold, it was time to try it. It worked - I had made my own soda! There was a definite root-beer flavor, but the other roots added their own flavors. It was a very refreshing result.
Nice! If you want a (semi)mass-produced but similar drink, Virgil’s Root Beer definitely has that similar sort of flavor. I never thought about making it at home, though.
you make it sound so easy!
and it just gets fizzy by itself?
Did it bother you that sassafras contains a carcinogen? (See end of Wikipedia article you have linked to.)
BS”D
Rachel, it get’s fizzy because the yeast is converting the sugar in the recipe into alcohol and carbon dioxide. In a closed container the CO2 pressurizes the vessel and becomes dissolved in the liquid. The more important question is, can you give this soda to a child to drink, due to the alcohol? This is definitely an adult beverage. It’s about time that root beer got back to it’s roots, as it were, as an adult, sophisticated beverage.
Rock on! Great stuff, very Alton Brown.
Barak: I don’t take everything the FDA says at face value. Much like Aspartame, I’d need to be a rodent, consuming extremely large amounts, for an extended period of time for it to be an issue. A few glasses of sassafras-root-beer now and then won’t hurt. You can use Root Beer Concentrate, if you want to be safe.
Craig: How much alcohol do you think was produced? Most of the reading I’ve done indicates that the alcohol content would be minimal. I don’t think there’s any easy way to measure it, but it didn’t taste too ‘hard’.
Craig: I forgot to address the ‘giving to children’ issue. As I said, I couldn’t detect alcohol - and I did offer some of it to my children. A small sip - nothing dangerous. They weren’t interested in it, as it didn’t taste like they expected root beer to taste. I was happy to keep it to myself.
sweinberger,
I would love to try some of your root beer. I have seen and foraged burdock in Prospect Park and in other parks in Brooklyn (It is quite abundant). Would be glad to share locations.
Sweinberger:
After a couple of days fermentation, it could have a couple percent of alcohol- not much, and certainly less than beer. But while your refrigeration, and the pressure build-up will inhibit fermentation and slow it down, it will typically not stop it. So like Belgian ales, which are sweet but which get drier and stronger (and develop more sophisticated flavors over time), so too your yeast fermented root beer. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s just something to keep in the back of your mind, for reference. Children, who love soda and can drink gallons of it, may eventually ingest enough to get a kick out of your soda, quite literally. There’s more alcohol in it, for instance, than in dealcoholized wine.
velorutionary: I’ve dug burdock out of parks in NY too, but I found the cultivated version superior. Or at least larger and thicker.
Craig: Thanks for the info! I guess you’d have to be an expert on fermentation to be a winemaker. :)
For more info & recipes, CHOW.com has a make-your-own soda project. They explain about the supposed carcinogenic effects of sassafras. Quote: “Since there have been no human studies, nobody really knows what levels might be dangerous to people.”
sweinberger,
The foraged burdock roots do indeed vary in size and shape. You can’t exactly control wild plants.
Craig:
I found this website about homebrewing root beere, and they claim that they tested the root beer in a lab to determine alcoholic content and the results showed .35 to .5%.
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/ROOTBEER_Jn0.htm
If I don’t have a local, wild supply of sassafras, where might I find it in a retail setting?
The FDA’s decision that it’s a (potential) carcinogen means that it can’t be sold for human consumption. It is available ‘for external use only’ at a few herbal supply sites, e.g. this site I just found. Of course, it’s best fresh.
You probably do have a local source of it - once you learn how to recognize it. It’s common all over the eastern-half of the U.S. Try this guide. The 3 different-shaped leaves on one plant, and unique scent of the crushed leaves, make it easy to identify.
Query: How does one make ginger ale then? Particularly since the ingredients may be more readily available to many of us.
Harlan, there is a ginger ale recipe at the chow.com site linked above. it’s kind of complicated though and you need special equipment. sometimes i steep ginger in sugar syrup and just mix it in seltzer, with a squeeze of lime.
Actually Rachel, the recipe on chow.com is for ginger-beer, not ginger-ale. Ginger beer has more bite, and is quite good but I think this recipe is what Harlan is looking for.
Thanks for the ginger ale link. This is what I had in mind as it is not so complicated. I will be trying it soon.
The .35-.50 percent alcohol level is the same level the factory brewers make there NON- ALCOHOLIC beerish flavored drinks. If the courts say it is NON-ALCOHOLIC I think I’d let my kids drink it… Wouldn’t you??? You’d have to drink about 1 1/2 gallons per hour to get any kind of legal buzz…
I forgot to mention a few things about fermentation.. When making alcoholic beers the CO2 is allowed to escape for several days while the alcohol level is increasing to the point that there is no more CO2 activity which is the result of fermentation. (Alcohol and CO2) You have to add more sugar at botteling or use co2 with your kegging system to get carbonated beer. Possibly if you used the correct yeast and you fermented the same way as beer you would gain a higher alcohol level but in so doing you would lower the sweetness and flavor because the sugars would be turning into alcohol…