We are new to making homemade rootbeer Suggestions Welcome?!
We are new to making homemade rootbeer Suggestions Welcome?
The Rootbeer recipe we used called for 1/8 tsp of yeast per quart. We left plenty of head space, even more then the recipe called for. But after only 2 1/2 days we had 4 glass quart bottles explode together. What a bomb that was. Thankfully it happened when we were sleeping. It really could have injured someone. We thought that we had 3 days before we had to move bottles to a cool place. Does anyone know if there is any difference in yeast. I have read some homemade rootbeer recipes that call for Champagne yeast and some show to use bread yeast. Is there any difference? Basically I want to know about the yeast differences if any, and also how many days does it take to be finished processing until you can drink it. We arent giving up on this Rootbeer project just yet. We are in the trial and error process. We used bread yeast, and we know that we are going to need to decrease the yeast amount. Or does someone know if we should be useing a different yeast. Any good Recipe out there?
Answers: Use Pasteur champagne yeast.It forms a sticky deposit in the bottom of your bottles and leaves very little yeast flavor.Your main problem is the air space level in your bottles.Bottles must be filled to within 1 inch from the top of the bottle.Too full and they wont develop pressure,not full enough and they build up too much pressure and explode.Once your bottles are carbonated they should be placed in the refrigerator to stop the fermentation process and to settle.Age in the fridge for at least 2 weeks for a creamier tasting root beer.Remember your yeast is still alive so if the root beer goes flat take the bottles out of the fridge and let them sit out for another 2/3 days and they will repressurize. If you are trying to bottle it, I can't help. But I can tell you about root beer adventures from my childhood.
We would buy Hires Root Beer Extract (small bottle-approx 2 oz.). We would mix in about 5 gallons of water, a pound of sugar (I think it was a pound) and then stir it up. We used a plastic container for "brewing." For carbonation we used dry ice. It would go flat in about two days-we usually drank it all before that happened. We would also make homemade ice cream. YES-Root Beer Floats! The dry ice vapors coming out of the brew had a captivating effect on "us kids."