If you love root beer, you’ll enjoy our Almost A&W Root Beer copycat recipe. This frothy, full bodied recipe offers Champagne taste on a “Beer” Budget. 😉
You’ll Need:
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. hot water
1/2 tsp. plus 1/8 tsp. root beer concentrate.
Cool. Pour into 1 liter cold seltzer water
Dissolve the sugar in the hot water (you can do this over the stove or you can do it the easy way, just run a pot of water through your coffee pot and use that water instead!). Once it’s completely dissolved add the root beer concentrate, let it cool completely. Add 1 liter of cold seltzer water to the mixture. It tastes best if you serve the drink over ice, Drink immediately or store in fridge (Tightly Covered)
To make Root Beer Floats, add 1 scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream to the top of the mug!
This sounds good–I can’t wait to try it for the kids.
i look forward to trying this recipe with vanilla ice cream …. yummy
where do you find rootbeer concentrate?
I’m guessing you could find it at a restaurant supply store like Cash & Carry (Smart & Final).
Seeing as this is a bit of an older thread, I hope you found the answer you were looking for. If not, there are several sources for extracts.
McCormik’s makes an extract you can get in the spice section of your local grocery store.
You can also get extracts from your local home wine and beer brewing store. They will have a variety of other extracts as well, including Sasparilla, orange soda, cola, and a variety of others.
I have not tried this method of making rootbeer, but I have tried the “home brewer method” which is to mix the ingredents, put in glass bottles with yeast and sugar, and let it sit for a few days. The yeast will generate carbondioxide and carbonate the rootbeer. With kids around, this could be a bit dangerous as too much carbonation can turn the bottles in to small shrapnel grenades.
If you wan to get real technical with it, you can go with the method I intend to do. That is to use what is called a cornealius keg (the old pepsi and coke type soda kegs) with a CO2 system to force carbonate the root beer. This is great for parties and picnics.
You can get kegs from 2.5 to 15 gallons and various ways to use co2 to carbonate and dispense. Put the keg in a bucket of ice and salt water, hook up the CO2 and use a “picnic” dispenser and you’re read to go.
There I go, rambling again, hope this helps you out a bit.
Steve
If you decide to go with the glass bottling method, you will need additional supplies and equipment.
1. Bottles, empty, cleaned, sanitized beer bottls (pop off cap type) work just fine. You can buy new bottlels for around $15 per case at you local brew store.
2. caps, the metal crown type pop off caps (usually a couple bucks for more than enough)
3. sanitizer. I use a product called starsan.
There are others out there, also available at your home brew store.
You can also use plastic bottles, however, I found the caps to be prohibitively expensive compared to the metal crown caps. The bottles are a bit cheaper, but, you more than make up the cost in the caps.
4. a capper. This is a red, two handled plastic device and costs about $25 new.
Check craigslist for used supplies and equipment. try searching for homebrew or home brew or brewing.
Steve
root beer concentrate is available on amazon.com
please note~ a&w contains pure vanilla extract you might add 1/2 teaspoon. Minty67
I pick up some concentrate at Walmart last year. Hadn’t figured out what to do with it yet. Now I have an idea/recipe.
Thanks.
Root Beer Flavoring at Spice Barn
You can buy it here also.