Pappy Kurt's Olde Tyme Root Beer

I've always liked root beer. Even as a kid, I (mistakenly) considered myself a bit of a root beer connoisseur. In college, I was introduced to both Henry Weinhard's and Thomas Kemper's root beer, and realized that root beer could be even better. It wasn't long after I started brewing beer that someone asked me when I was going to make root beer. I actually lived with a guy who liked root beer so much that we always had a supply of bottled root beer on hand, because he drank it with every meal. Between my own love of root beer and my desire to make something for my non-beer-drinking, non-cider-drinking friends, I finally caved and bought some root beer extract from the local homebrew shop a couple of weekends ago. Recently, I volunteered to bring some beer in to work for a St. Patrick's day event, and I was going to dye it green. There would definitely be some folks that felt left out, though, so I decided to make the root beer that weekend, and take it in for the work event alongside the green beer. It couldn't have been easier, and the results were great.

My daughter (almost six) usually likes to help out when I'm making beer, usually by helping me weigh out and mill grains. Since she might actually be consuming a non-trivial amount of this, I figured it would only be fair to involve her. She's also gotten pretty excited about having root beer ever since my mother let her have some when they went out to dinner one evening. The instructions that came with the extract said to use table sugar, but I have always had a soft spot for the way Thomas Kemper uses honey to sweeten their root beer. Thus, entirely honey-sweetened was going to be the order of the day. After some brief calculations, I picked up a 5-pound jug of clover honey from Safeway ($20, ouch!). The extract itself was $10 (though extracts can be had for cheaper online), bringing the total for the batch to $30. That works out to about $0.70 per 12-ounce serving. Definitely cheaper than buying bottled root beer. If I had used cane sugar it would have been significantly cheaper still.

Pappy Kurt's Olde Tyme Root Beer

Batch size: 4 gallons

Ingredients:

• 2 oz. root beer extract
• 5 lb. clover honey
• 4 gal. water

Process:

• Heat 1 gallon of water to 170°F or so
• Dissolve the honey in the water, followed by the root beer extract
• Pour into keg, top up to four gallons with cool water
• Force carbonate

The root beer turned out really tasty. I was impressed. Folks at work who tried it incredulously asked, "You made this?" Right now the root beer is a bit undercarbonated because I'm carbonating it off the same regulator that I'm using for a beer. I guess I'm more OK with undercarbonated root beer than I am with overcarbonated beer. It has a sharp taste, with strong notes of anise (licorice). The honey flavor is there, but it's even stronger in the aroma. I'm curious to compare it with a batch made with plain cane sugar. I'm happy it was such a big hit, I feel bad when I put a bunch of work into a beer and then the non-drinkers feel left out. I've made a lot of new friends lately that fall into that category, so I want to make sure they still feel loved!

One thing to keep in mind is that root beer has a very strong flavor. Anything plastic that you use for root beer (and for most sodas) should be dedicated to root beer or soda from that point forward. The liquid lines will impart the root beer flavor into beer that runs through them. It may be possible to completely clean it out with a very extended soak in something like PBW, but liquid lines and picnic faucets are cheap, so it's easier just to get an extra set for root beer. I think the keg will probably be fine, even though the o-rings might get a touch of the flavor. That said, most used homebrew kegs started out as soda kegs anyway, and the o-rings can be replaced cheaply. I'm not worried there.

In the future, I'd like to try creating my own root/spice/herb blend instead of using an extract, but I'm not at all ashamed of what I've made, given that it is my first foray into root beer. I've seen some videos online with some interesting recipes, right now I'm still trying to look into the whole sassafras/safrole debate and see if there is really any merit to the worries of safrole being carcinogenic. I was also considering adding some maltodextrin to see if it would give the root beer some more body. Many experiments lie ahead, and I should have no problem getting rid of root beer to make room for more.