BTW:
This is my third batch of root beer that I've just made tonight. And, this one tastes pretty good already. :)
Tonight's recipe:
.75oz Sassafras root bark (about)
.25oz Sassperilla root bark (about)
2 whole star annises
1 vanilla bean, guts scraped out
1c table sugar (just the plain white stuff)
1c packed brown sugar
2qt boiling water
1qt(ish) ice
3qt(ish) water
Add sugar and vanilla guts to boiling water. Put the barks, star annises and vanilla bean husk into a fine mesh bag (kinda looks like a large tea bag; picked it up at Doc's Cellars), put in boiling water. Boil for 15 minutes, stiring occationally. Remove bag. Add ice to cool mixture. Realize that you didn't have enough ice and should've gotten more to cool it down more. Oh well. Laddel mixture into sanitized Tap-a-draft bottle, fill the rest of the way up with water. Add a bit of food-grade petrol-greese to the gaskets around the bottle lid and the cartridges. Cap, pressurize with 1 CO2 cartridge and 1 N2O cartridge, stow in fridge.
While boiling this batch, I tasted it and it tastes _GOOD_. All the other batchs I did tasted "eh" at this stage and got better as the tastes mellowed. I hope this is a good thing with this batch. :)
Note a few differences:
- There is about twice as much flavoring ingredients in this batch as the first batch. This is in response to the comments I got about the first batch, that it was a little lacking on flavor.
- I used some Sassperilla bark and a couple star annises, in addition to the sassafras bark.
- There is 2/3 the sugar. I'm not 100% sure why I did this. The extract batch was kinda sweet, and it had 3 cups, so I thought I'd go down a notch.
- I used a CO2 cartridge and an N2O cartridge; previously, I only used CO2. Hopefully, the nitrogen will give it a thicker head.
Ideas for future batches:
- Honey instead of sugar.
- Malted barley instead of sugar. Ask anyone who does home-brewed beer, you can extract an awful lot of sugars and flavor from a pound of barley. I'd be interested to try this and see what the outcome tastes like. When my friend Dave was showing me how to do home brew, he let us taste the barley he was going to use for his next batch, and _DAMN_, that was good.
- Half-and-half batch, brewed ingredients and extract. Might make it a little more pallatable for those who like "conventional" rootbeers, but still be something special.
- Birch Bark. My local hippy store doesn't stock it, but can order it for me: 1lb for $8. 1lb is a lot of birch bark, but $8 isn't a lot of money, so I'm thinking about doing it. :-)