Do your kids like root beer? One of my children wanted a homemade root beer kit for Christmas. He didn’t get it. The kit looked complicated and was expensive. To create the root beer involved steeping roots and sterilizing bottles. It didn’t sound like much fun to me.
A few days ago at the store we spotted Root Beer Concentrate next to the vanilla and peppermint extracts. One the back was a simple recipe for root beer so we tried it.
In a saucepan you bring one and a half cups water to a boil. Stir in ¾ c up of sugar until it dissolves. Add 1 ½ teaspoons of Root Beer concentrate and stir until mixed. The recipe says to refrigerate the mixture until you are ready to serve. Well, we were ready to serve and try the root beer. The next step is to slowly pour one liter of cold soda water, seltzer, or club soda into the root beer mixture. We added a liter of club soda since that’s we had. It wasn’t cold though, and it had been opened the day before so it wasn’t all that fizzy either.
The flavor of our homemade root beer was great. It tasted just like root beer. It wasn’t quite bubbly enough for us though. I think if we had cooled the original mixture, or at least used cold club soda then we would have had more carbonation. I also think the homemade root beer would make great root beer floats and root beer ice pops!
It was fun to try something new and to be able to make soda ourselves. It almost made me want to buy the kit with roots and bottles and to sterilize. Maybe some other day. Our bottle of concentrate is good for a few more batches.
Also See:
Cooking With Kids – Root Beer Floats
Baked Potato Night – Cooking With Kids