So my 2.5 year old REALLY wants to brew this weekend. I asked him what he wanted to brew and he said strawberry soda.
Well I am not one to deny my child’s wish to brew so.
I am thinking I will make a strawberry syrup by soaking strawberries overnight in sugar to draw out the juices. maybe a little heat or maybe not. Add this syrup to an empty two liter bottle with water and enough additional sugar to get to the sweetness we want.
I have some us-05 in the fridge I figure .25 packets of that and leave it on the counter till the bottle gets tight and then chill.
Anybody have any additional ideas?
would a few drops of vanilla or almond extract go amiss?
the idea is that you let it ferment only enough to carbonate the bottle then refrigerate it and consume quickly. It’s how all soda used to be made. There won’t be enough alcohol to be significant and as long as you do small enough batches and it’s not gross you will drink it all up before it becomes an issue.
I want to do a homemade soda one day. Whatever tasty fruit that’s on sale. I was thinking I would blanch/pasteurize the fruit. Then stir it into sterile water, add cane to taste, cold crash, keg and force carb. Probably an over night deal.
I couldn’t get fresh strawberries of course so I started with 1 package of frozen strawberries which I macerated with about a cup of evaporated cane juice (raw sugar) I added a handful of fresh mint leaves as well. I left that for about 4 or 5 hours to thaw. I gave it a good stir to break up all the berries added about 1.5 liters of water (maybe a bit less) and then brought it up to a boil (I meant only to bring it to 180 but I forgot).
The result was a lovely pink syrup with ugly whitish gunk floating around in it. I strained it through a ss mesh strainer.
Into two empty plastic 1 liter former sparkly water bottles with a sprinkle of us-05 in each. I squeezed out all the air from the bottle just for fun. By morning they were swelled and hard so I popped them in the fridge and had some with dinner tonight.
My son didn’t like it because it was sparkly (he doesn’t actually like soda ::)) but it’s pretty good. decent fresh strawberry aroma and flavor. mint is there but is a supporting role. no boozy note although one person who tasted it detected a slight kombucha-y flavor but I don’t get that.
I don’t think this will become a regular occurrence at chez mort but it was a fun experiment. and dead simple.
I do want to make some flavour syrups and just mix them with the soda water I make by the keg load though.
given that it was only actively fermenting for about 18 hours before going in the fridge I doubt there was a significant amount of alcohol in there so champagne? maybe not. and a pack of frozen organic strawberries, a cup of sugar or so and part of a pack of yeast = about 5-6 bucks for 1.5 liters of soda so cheap? maybe not so. Easy though for sure ;D
I bet it does. and a lot cheaper to I bet. I can see keeping that partial pack of us-05 around just for this actually. and Ginger beer should be cheap and easy. at least around here ginger root is dirt cheap.
you can actually build a culture from fresh ginger root and do a lactic fermentation but I thought that might be a little funky for my son.