Birch Beer

[ibwahooka]

Hey everyone,
I'm new to the whole homebrew scene and my wife and I wanted to do a mead, but since we will be moving in about 3 months the gentleman at my local brew shop suggested otherwise. So, we made soda!

Has anyone else ever dabbled in soda? If so, how was your experience with it? We used yeast, so that we would get natural carbonation in our soda. Also, it didn't seem like to soda was doing any kind of fermenting when we were bottling it, so would that mean that it will happen within the bottles within the next 24 hours?

Ok, enough on that. We want to make more since this was such a fun experience, but we maybe wanted to use beer bottles next time with some caps. Are there any dangers of the caps flying off if we use regular bottles? Would we be better with some grosch(sp?) style bottles, or even some small wine bottles with corks? Any help on the bottling with the carbonation process would be appreciated.

Thanks for listening to a newb!
Shawn

 

[wildaho]

Hi ibwahooka, and Welcome to the Got Mead? World!

If there is one rule in any endeavor where yeast are involved, it's this: yeast do NOT have a convenient on/off switch. If there is sugar to eat, and you haven't exceeded the alcohol tolerance of the yeast, the yeast will keep on eating until the sugar is gone.

Sodas tend to be sweet. If you plan on drinking it quickly and keep it cold, you can use yeast to carbonate. Even keeping it cold, the yeast will keep on working and will try to convert all that sugar to CO2 and alcohol. There is a careful balance that can be reached but you have a definite time frame that you need to work with.

When carbonating beer, wine or mead you are letting yeast do it's thing to the majority of sugars in the batch. Typically, you let the yeast work until all the sugars are gone and then add "just" enough more sugar to reach the desired level of carbonation. It's a tricky balance. Natural carbonation will add another 0.2% to 1.5% alcohol to the equation. And the yeast will keep working until the sugar is gone.

With soda, yeast will try to eat all the sugar it can. You are always in danger of "bottle bombs" if there are more sugars than the yeast can consume safely without building excess CO2 pressure.

Your best bet (for long term storage ie. over 1 month in cold storage) with soda is to force carbonate in a corny keg with a CO2 bottle and bottling from there.

:cheers:
Wade

 

[crowquill]

Haven't made a birch beer but my wife has made ginger ale following the process and recipe in Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop by Stephen Cresswell. The ginger ale turned out great and he does have a birch beer recipe in the book.

 

[ibwahooka]

Wow! Thanks for the advice guys. I guess I'm just a little too excited for my soda to be done. I tasted it before I bottled and it was really good so I can barely wait to try it. I will keep an eye on the soda and see if the bottles firm up within the next 24-48 hours or so.

I did manage to follow the directions that were given to me, so I'm pretty confident. I guess I'm nervous since I've never done any really cooking or baking with yeast. If we keep up with the soda (I imagine we will) I will definitely be looking into a keg system down the road.

I will let everyone know how it turns out!

-Shawn

 

[ibwahooka]

Well, my soda is flat!

It still tastes great though! I think I cooled the yeast before it had a chance to really take hold of the sugar and help with the carbonation process. My next batch, which will be a sasparilla, will be better I hope. I think my problem this time was that I was rushing the soda since my bucket was leaking around the seal for the spigot.

Also, if anyone has a 2.5 gallon soda keg they are looking to offload, I will be happy to take it off your hands since my wife would like me to make it on tap. I'm going to really start experimenting on my soda since I like the idea of making it myself and also my wife wants me to start trying it with Splenda so she doesn't feel guilty about drinking it so much.

Thanks for the help everyone and I will post my next batch as soon as I make it.
-Shawn

 

[Medsen Fey]

If your soda is flat, take the bottles out and let them warm up so the yeast get going again and wait for the plastic bottles to become hard, them put them in the fridge.

The small kegs often cost more than twice what a 5-gallon keg costs ($20-$30). It might be more cost effective to get a 5-gallon keg. You can store 2.5 gallons of soda in it just as easily as you can store it in a small keg, and it gives you room to grow. ;D

Medsen

 

[osluder]

Also, if anyone has a 2.5 gallon soda keg they are looking to offload, I will be happy to take it off your hands[.]

Shawn, PM me. I have a spare 2.5 gallon soda keg. I'm sure we can work something out.

The small kegs often cost more than twice what a 5-gallon keg costs ($20-$30). It might be more cost effective to get a 5-gallon keg. You can store 2.5 gallons of soda in it just as easily as you can store it in a small keg, and it gives you room to grow.

Medsen, sometimes there are other considerations: A buddy and I brew together and the 2.5 gallon cornies are perfect when splitting a batch. Also, from a storage standpoint, I can fit twice as many varieties of libation in roughly the same volume. ;D

-- Olen

 

[ibwahooka]

OK.

Here is another curve ball that I'm going to throw at everyone. What if I substituted my sugar in my soda recipes for honey? I currently know the following about honey substituting:

-1 cup sugar = 1 cup honey
-Honey is generally 20% sweeter than sugar, so as amount of sugar increases, decrease the amount of honey by 1/4 to 1/3 cup.
-Honey is approximately 20% water, so I would have to decrease the overall amount of water by 20%.

Since I'm going more for the natural carbonation route with yeast, would the honey play havoc on my fermenting? Or would I just have to wait a little longer for the carbonation to take place?

Any thoughts?
-Shawn

 

[Medsen Fey]

Yeast can ferment honey with no problem - Heck, that's what mead is all about!

If you use honey in a soda it will give a pronounced flavor so make sure that is what you are looking for.

A cup of sugar and a cup of honey are not quite the same.

A cup of sugar generally weighs about 0.44 lbs (the volume/wgt may be different depending on how fine the particles are)
A cup of honey weighs around 0.75 lbs of which about 80% is sugar, so around 0.6 lbs.

Generally you are best to go by weights of sugar to make certain that you get the correct amount

Medsen

 

[ibwahooka]

So with the honey and the soda it would definitely have to be a work with type thing. I will have to try a small amount with my next batch to see what happens and see how it tastes.

What about the natural carbonation process? Think it will take longer since I know that fermentation takes longer with mead?

I will make sure to try it on my next batch and let people know how it turns out.

-Shawn

 

[wildaho]

...What about the natural carbonation process? Think it will take longer since I know that fermentation takes longer with mead?

Fermentation DOES NOT take longer with mead. It's just that most people don't know how to properly manage their fermentation when working with honey and there are a lot of "bad" old recipes out there that give the uninitiated that impression. In fact, I've sped up and improved my beer fermentations by following the procedures I've learned here. Fermentation times for mead are entirely comparable to fermentation times for beer and wine.

 

[ibwahooka]

Well crap!

I've learned something new today! Thanks for the info on fermentation.

Shawn

 

[ibwahooka]

It Fizzled!!

Hey everyone,
My wife opened up the last bit of our birch beer tonight, which was bottled from the very bottom of the bucket and it carbonated out! Now granted our birch beer now has a little bit of kick to it, but that's just fine. I'm so happy, I got carbonation!!

-Shawn