Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I'm trying out a recipe I found. Don't know how it'll work out but it sounds good enough to try.

This is how to make real soda. Like the stuff they used to have at pharmacies in the old days. You can use sassafras root (root beer), licorice, lemons, ginger, etc.

This stuff is good for you too. It's fermented by lactobacteria, not yeast, so these are non-alcoholic beverages. Lactobacteria are present in other fermented foods like sauerkraut.

I got my starter culture going right now.

Two recipes:

http://westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/Realthing.html (recipe at the bottom)

http://homegrown.org/blog/2009/02/la...beer-and-more/

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I made some with yeast. Never tried anything like this though.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I bought some yeast today to try it that way too. But it's baker's yeast from Wal-Mart some I'm not sure it will even work. Can I use baker's yeast?

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

It worked for me. I was told that champagne yeast is better. I went to a winery and they said something about bread yeast rotting your stomach or something.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I am formulating a way to make my own soda with nothing but sugar, water and my breath. I will report how it all works out when I am done with my tests.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Thanks , I read the links , I doubt most people ever stop to think that they could be drinking a live soda instead of the dead mass produced crap we're used to. No wonder so many are sickly , I hope people take the time to read the links, pickles,sauerkraut,wine and much more all dead because they kill the fermentation.....the good stuff :confused_ma:.

In the case of mass produced soda they don't even ferment it anymore....just shoot the carbon dioxide to some high fructose corn syrup and water with flavoring and call it good. :no_ma:......sad when you could be getting something beneficial from it.

I plan on making a batch pretty soon , should be simple enough, I used to make wine but no longer imbibe so this should be right up my alley:ok:

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Yup. Here's a good excerpt from one of the links:

In working with my bacterial soda culture, I sometimes get the feeling that the bacteria themselves don�t want to be sold. Similarly, I feel that sauerkraut wants to live in a barrel in the basement. Before you dismiss this as a flight of fancy, consider the uncanny resistance of truly wholesome food to mass production and mass distribution. Most fresh foods, for example, have a limited shelf life, which can only be extended by killing the food through processing, or putting it in suspended animation by refrigeration or freezing. The former response diminishes its healthfulness; the latter has environmental costs. (Also I never have believed that freezing fully preserves the healthfulness of food. It tastes less vibrant, even if all the enzymes are supposedly intact.) Other preservation methods, namely dehydration and fermentation, might arguably work for mass production and distribution, but even here there are problems with storage and shelf life--the food companies� use of preservatives and pasteurization is not entirely gratuitous. Besides, such foods cannot account for the bulk of one�s year-round diet.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Are you making root beer? My parents did this a few times in the early '70s, when I was very young.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Yeah. Flavored with sassafras root and ginger. Not that rootbeer extract crap at the store.

The fermentation process has been slow going though. Lacto-bacteria don't replicate as fast as yeast.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

If you can find Capt Eli's root beer, you should give it a try. It's a craft brew with cane sugar and flavored with wintergreen oil, anise, and vanilla. Absolutely the best root beer I've ever tasted.

http://www.downeast.com/Down-East-Ma...t-Rootbeer.jpg

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

where are you getting your supplies?

www.mountainroseherbs.com
has some good prices and they even carry sassafras root which is hard to get after the FDA banned sassfrol as a carcinogen, of course they only tested on rats and even the old timers knew that sassafras would kill rats-- not humans.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Got the sassafras root while helping a friend pull up trees on his property. Thanks for the website.

This is a trial run so I only brewed a gallon. So far the bottles are getting kind of bubbly but it's not done yet. I put one half gallon in a clean out juice bottle and it's starting to get pretty firm, which means it's filling up with c02. A good sign!

For the next run I want to get a real carboy for fermenting and some of flip-top beer bottles.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Too bad there are no distributors in the midwest; UPS is expensive, twice as much as the cost of the root beer alone to ship.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Ok, I just started my culture too.

Do you use the ginger culture for root beer too? Or do you make a sassafras culture?

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Looks like my culture is starting to bubble after 2 days.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Yeah I used ginger root to make the culture. Waited for it to get bubbly. The article says wait a week but it only took a few days for mine to get bubbly.

Then I boiled sassafras and ginger in half a gallon of water for about 20 mins. Removed the roots and added 1.5 cups of sugar. Stir and add another half gallon of water. Then wait for it to cool and add the culture. I didn't have a carboy or beer bottles, so I put it a plastic juice bottle and a wine bottle. Not sure if the cork is tight enough on the wine bottle though. It probably would have been better to use a champagne bottle and cork but I didn't have any of those lying around.

Actually though, the plastic bottles are probably a better idea because you can check to see how pressurized the mixture is by squeezing the bottle.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

This is a great thread, scholar. If yours comes out good I may try to find out if the lactobacteria will eat the birch sugar human guts don't. If they will I can make my wife diabetic ok root beer and ginger ale. She misses fizzy stuff and the commercial non sugar kinds are aspartame and splenda hell.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

There is a soda named Zevia, sweetened with stevia (not a sugar but comes from a plant) you might look into. By birch sugar do you mean xylitol, which is really an alcohol sugar ( has a very small impact on blood sugar levels)?

Also remember if you let the lactobacteria ferment all the sugar out it will not taste like soda anymore, probably much more akin to kombucha in taste.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

scholarcoon, what part of the sassafras root did you harvest? What exactly is root bark?

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

She might enjoy mixing seltzer water with some juices. I do that sometimes and it's fizzy like a soda without all of the crap.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I took a nice long 12 inch piece of root. The whole thing. In the kitchen I cut off about a 3 inch piece and boiled that. The bark breaks off the root very easily. Places probably sell the root bark because it's easier to grind up. The root itself is pretty damn tough. I had to saw a piece off with my pocket knife.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Yes, I mean xylitol or other sugar alcohol. I dunno if lactobacillus eats it, but if it does I can also make kefir for my wife, which she loves, and get good gut bugs in, plus enhance her enjoyment. She finds stevia bitter. We tried it. But she finds the sugar alcohols indistinguishable in taste from sugar.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I doubt they will eat it. Try the KAL brand of stevia, while I have not personally used it, I have had good reviews from my customers, they say there is no bitter aftertaste.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I suspect they won't too, but for sure they won't eat stevia, for one thing because it takes so little of it, and lacto fermentation is the point. If the lacto bugs eat neither then we are down to adding fizzie to whatever.

I don't know why many here think stevia is to be preferred to sugar alcohols. Why do you? (Though it is kind of you to tell me which stevia is better.) I get told to try this and that to make my wife like stevia when we have found a product, several kinds in fact, that seems equally safe and natural which she vastly prefers. (And she is a woman of strong opinions, so I try to make sure my battles are meaningful.)

The slightly best tasting one is a mild laxative for my wife, which she likes about it, but the one we bought a bunch of is not a laxative. For some people the laxative one... maltitol or something, is highly laxative. We got erithritol (sp) in bulk from Honeyville, but her favorite honey substitute, her apricot preserves, and her hot chocolate mix have the laxative one.

Maybe it is that stevia is pretty easy to grow. I had some in the garden one year.

I'd actually gladly do without lacto root beer to know that yeast did not eat it and contribute to excess gut yeast. I may test both.

I had seen some soda named Z or something in Canada but could not find any locally. I think they had orange and cola flavors.

Since sugar is, IMO, horrible for humans in the quantities normally eaten in America, I have joined her in eating these sugar alcohol products. I figure it is better for me and presents her less temptation to mess up her blood sugar, which is doing great.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Update: I just inoculated my ginger ale, 1.5 gallon batch, smells good so far.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

How much pressure will a carboy hold?

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Depends on the bung, but I wouldn't want a carboy under pressure. That is what a bottle/kegging system is for. If you used a carboy, as soon as you open it up it's going to depressurize, leading to flat soda.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Thats what I was thinking. I wonder if you could put an automatic pressure relief valve on one, and allow enough pressure to carbonate it, but without blowing the carboy up.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Buy a capper, caps, and save the bottles from your Guinness or Sam Adams-- much easier.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

oh my god, birch beer is delicious! and lowers swelling...

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Just stumbled across this thread, sounds like a really interesting little hobby to have... And who can argue with delicious?

How much would it cost to get all the necessary equipment to start doing this? It sounds like it would be pretty easy to make a few gallons a week for friends and family.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Ok so I got bored waiting for the lacto stuff so I added beer yeast in the ginger ale recipe and it turned out good. I would recommend more ginger but other than that...
Here's my recipe:
10.2 oz of ginger root grond up in a blender
3 gallons of water
9 cups of sugar (about 5 pounds)

bring all to a boil
then add
8 lemons juiced
and cool to pitch temperature and add beer yeast

let sit a day or two and bottle

let bottle condition for 2-3 days and refrigerate

notes:
I would like to try champagne yeast and let it ferment out a little more

Always use white sugar, I tried brown and it really overpowers the citrus and ginger spiciness.

enjoy

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Anyone else try this?

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

I plan on making root beer in a few days, I'll let you know how it turns out.



I wish others would give feedback on their recipes too.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Made another batch last week. This time with regular bread yeast. It fermented A LOT faster. Oh boy was it good.

My recipe had locally foraged sassafras, foraged wild ginger, licorice root and a bit of vanilla. I made some stuff from root beer extract bought from the grocery store just to compare. The real stuff is far and away better. :wink:

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Do you mind posting the recipe, I would like to make some today.

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

Bump...

I have been steadily making ginger ale now for a few weeks thanks to this thread. Thanks

Re: Make your own lacto-fermented sodas and rootbeer
 

here's some good links for soda making
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f95/want...otbeer-108871/
http://www.cocktailchronicles.com/20...7/ginger-beer/
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f95/
http://www.chow.com/recipes/10681
http://forevermore.net/articles/root-beer-recipe/