I watched an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown made homemade ginger ale and while it looked fun, it also looked like way too much work. (I believe you had to actually grate the ginger.) Homemade root beer, however, that’s something I’ve wanted to try before, so I bought some extract.
According to the internet recipe, I had everything else – a 2-liter bottle, yeast, water and the all-important azucar. My internet guy said, “1 cup of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of yeast, 1 tablespoon of root beer extract, fill with water, swirl to dissolve, cap, let sit around 3-4 days to carbonate.” He also said that 1 cup of sugar was too much, so I used less.
That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was thinking that I could wait 3-4 days for an experiment to be done. I opened it on day 2 to some disappointing non-fizziness.
I made Lloyd drink some first.
Lloyd: “Bleh. What’s wrong with this?”
Me: “I didn’t use the whole amount of sugar.”
Lloyd: “Savory root beer? Good grief.”
I took a swallow, well aware that the recipe guy said that ‘real root beer should have a heady, yeasty flavor’
Me: “Achk! It smells like feet.” It also tasted like feet, but don’t hold me to that – the last time I tasted feet I was in first grade and had some bizarre hygiene rituals.
I tried to remedy it by pouring some sugar into the bottle, which only led to a re-enactment of the Diet Coke & Mentos phenomenon. (The camera was out of memory space, though, so I’ll only have Lloyd’s laughter to remember it by.)
Bottom line: Cough up money for A&W. It’s totally worth it.