Kegged Soda
I made a really excellent keg of Sarsaparilla. (yeah, that’s my amature label making at work). If you’re going to throw a big party with lots of homebrew and you expect some Designated Drivers and/or kids, soda is a great idea for not leaving anyone out of the loop. Soda is so easy compared to beer. Since it is kinda tough to find many resources on the internet for soda kegging instructions (using homebrew beer equipment), I’ll post a little “how to” here.
Basically, you can buy a little 2 oz bottle of most soda extracts from homebrew stores. As always, I am a fan of buying local, but there are countless stores online too. Sarsaparilla, Root Beer, Cherry cola, orange soda, birch beer, ginger ale, and cream soda are just some of the options I have seen.
If you aren’t a homebrew kegger, there are instructions included in these extracts for naturally carbonating your soda in bottles… no need for special equipment. However, if you do have some 5 gallon cornelius (corny) kegs, you are in luck, because you can make a 4 gallon batch in about 10 minutes (although I highly recommend giving yourself 2 days… keep reading for why).
The key to getting soda that isn’t flat is carbonating much of the water before you add the extract and sugar. So, take one of your sanitized kegs, add about 3-3 1/2 gallons of water. Apply 30psi of Co2 and shake it as if you would a keg of beer. Keep this at 30psi for about 24 hours. (remember, cold liquid carbonates easier, so if possible, chill it before you do this). Then simply mix up your sugar and extract mixture (follow the instructions, but I think all of them are about 8 cups of sugar per 4 gallons) in about 1 gallon of water. Personally, I substituted some of the granulated sugar for molasses and corn syrup to make the sarsaparilla a little richer… so feel free to add unusual sugars instead of the plain ole stuff… since you aren’t fermenting like with beer, you can get a little more creative with sugars and not have to worry about stuff tasting funky.
Add your sugar mixture to the keg and top it off to 4 gallons with water. Then carbonate it again at 30psi. Unlike beer, you aren’t going to OVER carbonate this stuff, so shake the hell out of it. Let is sit for another 24 hours at 30psi if you can.
Then you’re ready to take the pressure down to 5psi and serve just like beer. Warning! Soda is a much stronger flavor than any beer… it will leave a flavor in your kegs O-rings. I suggest buying a set of O-rings just for soda, because I’ve read that bleach, boiling, etc. will not get the flavor out. And of course you don’t want that flavor getting into your next batch of beer.
homebrew, keg, kegging, root beer, sarsaparilla tiki
August 10th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Well this is just awesome. I’ve always wanted to make sasparilla, my dad brews beer so we’ve got the equipment.
When I was very small we were visiting some friends of the family and their son had made sasparilla and to this day it sticks out in my memory as the best damn sasparilla I’ve ever had. It was so good. Of course, part of it was that they told me that there was a little alcohol in it from the fermentation, and, well, that made me feel all grown up.
This next part is something that I wanted to email you but I can’t find your email address anywhere on here.
I’ve discovered the most delicious of sodas. A tad bit pricey, but I am going to look into buying cases of it. You need to try Izze sodas. I had the Grapefruit the other night, and it was superb. What was funny was that I had it with some chicken fajitas the other night and I liked it so much I went to look for them online. Lo and behold, that was their recommended pairing. (Yeah, they’ve got pairings. They are that serious).
August 10th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Totally. IZZE is excellent. There’s some in my fridge now.
I’ll have to do a post on it sometime.
Actually, although never mentioned by name, it is in the photo on this post:
http://www.dranktank.com/?p=102
September 7th, 2006 at 11:34 am
[…] Assuming (wrongly) that I couldn’t bring a keg of BEER along to a state park, I made a last-minute keg of rootbeer (basically the same as my Sarsaparilla, only I used 100% granulated sugar instead of throwing in mollassas and corn syrup). It was excellent. Way more drinkable than the Sarsaparilla, and I liked it better than the very popular Cream Soda I made back in July. Although I love beer, I think I’ll just keep a keg dedicated to soda… because it’s extreamly easy and quick to make a batch of brew appropirate for almost any setting. In reality, you can brew soda in about 20 minutes from the time you decide to make it to when you are drinking it. keg, root beer sarsaparilla […]
May 19th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Hi,
I’ve been looking for a recipe of how to make sasparilly, would you mind contacting me via email? I can’t find one online…
I like the idea of kegging it too….