..: Homemade Soda

Because everything is better when it is homemade!

Over the weekend, my brother, friends, and I made a pit stop at the Ithaca Brewing Company. My brother and my friend's boyfriend opted for free beer tasting, while my friend and I opted to peruse the shelves and see what we could come across. Rest assured that I not only found something fun to use in the kitchen, but we also partook in the on tap root beer tasting...DELICIOUS!!!

While looking through the home brewing kits and barley and hops, I discovered two little brown packages of root beer and sarsaparilla (pronounced sass-pa-rill-ah) concentrate for making homemade soda. Jackpot! Not only did I have visions of homemade soda dancing through my head, but also the thought of making root beer float flavored cakes with vanilla cream icing and sarasparilla flavored cookies, too.

With the snow storm finally hitting us late this evening, my sister and I decided that tonight was the perfect night for our soda making venture. I brought home one gallon salad dressing containers with screw on lids from work, washed them until they no longer smelled like dressing, and got down to business.

One mixture makes approximately 4 liters, or just under 2 gallons, of soda. The mixture got water, yeast, sugar, and the root beer concentrate. The yeast will actually cause the soda to carbonate naturally while it reacts with the warm water and sugar! It will take 4 - 6 days at 70 degree room temperature for the soda to be ready. The directions say it will be ready to drink when the bottle is firm like an unopened bottle of soda.

I'll will have an, for lack of a better word, epilogue over the weekend with the end results! I just hope it doesn't end up tasting like dressing! Here are some pictures of the process so far...