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January 21, 2010

Homemade soda ()

by fluffy at 11:32 PM
I just realized I neglected to post this here: lately I've been experimenting with homemade soda. I had a few really bad results the last time I tried this (a year ago) but I decided to try Alton Brown's ginger ale out. After I assembled it all, I felt like experimenting with my own base as well. I'd been thinking of making root beer, but then had a flash of inspiration and decided to make chocolate mocha soda.

The ingredients:

  • 6 ounces (by weight!) of sugar
  • 8 cups of coffee's worth of coffee beans, ground fine and extracted with 4 cups of boiling water, strained through a coffee filter (as odd as that sounds)
  • 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1/8 tsp of yeast (I used regular ol' instant bread yeast but champagne yeast would probably be better)
  • A clean 2-liter plastic bottle
The assembly is pretty straightforward: I just put all the above (except for the 2-liter bottle and the yeast) into the 2-liter bottle, filled the bottle to the neck with cold water, gave it a good vigorous shake (with the bottle closed), then added the yeast (with the bottle open), then once again closed the bottle and allowed it to ferment for a couple days. I kept it in the shower when I was away at work so it wouldn't explode all over my kitchen (my bathroom is already perennially infested with ants anyway). I suppose I should have put the 2-liter bottle into the 2-liter bottle as well just for completeness' sake, but I couldn't make it fit.

The resulting soda is quite delicious, although a bit rich (a 4-ounce portion is perfect), and also on the slightly bitter side. Next time I will make the sugar into syrup first (which inverts it so it's slightly sweeter), and maybe use 7 or 8 ounces. It also continues to ferment quite nicely in the refrigerator. It also fermented so much that when I first opened it (even after a day of chilling) I had to be very very slow and careful and did it in the sink because otherwise there was no way to avoid a gigantic frothy chocolate fountain spraying everywhere. Basically I'm saying this stuff ferments like nobody's business.

I should of course add that the ginger ale also came out wonderfully. Alton's recipe works much better for my tastes than Fankhauser's (but Fankhauser's is more of a ginger beer anyway).

Comments

#12802 01/22/2010 01:01 am
Well, no wonder you had trouble fitting the two liter bottle inside of the two liter bottle- you should have splurged and gotten a two liter Klein bottle!

Heh, the soda sounds delicious. I know some folks who make their own beer/ale/wine, but I always miss out on the tasting fun since I don't drink. Mayhaps I'll try out your recipe and share it with them...
#12804 01/22/2010 06:34 am Interesting
Thanks for the ginger recipe links.

As far as yeast goes, stick to the bread yeast. Champagne yeast is....aggressive. It could either blow your bottles or make you something totally alcoholic.


Gedvondur
#12806 01/22/2010 08:03 am
Linktoreality:
Heh, the soda sounds delicious. I know some folks who make their own beer/ale/wine, but I always miss out on the tasting fun since I don't drink. Mayhaps I'll try out your recipe and share it with them...


Note that there is a tiny tiny bit of alcohol in these things, so if you have some sort of religious objection to that, well... you shouldn't eat bread either. Wink

I think the best analogy I can give for the chocolate soda is that it's like a rich stout, except with caffeine instead of alcohol. Many stouts are actually enhanced with chocolate, and some are beginning to appear with vanilla added as well (I had a really good vanilla stout at the Cour D'Alene brewery in Spokane), so it makes sense that something brewed from chocolate and a hint of vanilla would have a similar flavor profile.
#12807 01/22/2010 08:07 am Re: Interesting
Gedvondur:
As far as yeast goes, stick to the bread yeast. Champagne yeast is....aggressive. It could either blow your bottles or make you something totally alcoholic.
Really? The first and only time I ever brewed root beer (around 15 years ago) I used champagne yeast and I remember it came out really good. But it was from a brewing kit, and they already knew the exact measures of things and it used 1-liter bottles and so on.
#12809 01/22/2010 09:17 pm
fluffy:
Note that there is a tiny tiny bit of alcohol in these things, so if you have some sort of religious objection to that, well... you shouldn't eat bread either. Wink


Nah, nothing religious- I'm just still under-aged, and the few times I've had enough alcohol to get intoxicated despite that, I haven't exactly enjoyed it all that much.
#12811 01/22/2010 10:44 pm
Yeah, I never really got the whole "getting drunk" thing. I do enjoy the relaxation a drink or two can bring but even getting buzzed is just kind of meh.

Incidentally, I had to toss the rest of the chocolate soda tonight as it had gone bad (but I actually made it a few weeks ago so that's not too surprising).