Pro Tip: You can top up the volume of the herbal tea by adding water to it. Cover and allow the sweetened herbal tea to steep and cool for about two hours or until the tea is about 80 0F. Boil the mixture for an extra 20 minutes for the tea to really soak up the sugars. Place the pot on medium-high heat and stir the liquid until the sweeteners dissolve. So, add the molasses and brown sugar into the stockpot containing the strained tea. What’s great about making your own root beer is that you can control the amount of molasses and brown sugar to add to your beer. And of course, both help to sweeten the drink. You might be wondering: why use molasses and brown sugar, and not white sugar? We’ll, the brown sugar will give your drink a nice, brownish color while the molasses bring a delicious caramel flavor. For a homemade root beer, the main sources of sugar are brown sugar and molasses. In addition to its crispy mouthfeel and fruity flavors, root beer is popular for its sweetness. Now, you have a herbal tea that is ready to be fermented into a root beer. Discard the residue that is left on top of the cheesecloth.
Next, carefully pour the contents of the pot over the cheesecloth sieve. So, hang the cheesecloth over another stock pot and fasten it in place with a string to create a sieve. Sieving with cheesecloth ensures that the resulting tea is clear with few if any, impurities. You can use any type of strainer but we prefer cheesecloth because it traps even the smallest particles of the residue. This will simply leave you with a herbal tea. Now, you want to separate the water from the herbal residue in the pot. Once the liquid has had enough time to steep, much of the herbs and roots and other additions will fall to the bottom of the pot. You are only limited by your imagination, so experiment as much as you can. You can also throw in as many spices, herbs, and flavors as you want to come up with your signature root beer drink.
If you do not have one of the roots, herbs, or spices that we are using in this recipe, feel free to substitute. Steeping extracts all the flavors from the herbs, ensuring that your drink is packed with maximum herby flavors and spice. Let the pot of herbs steep for about 2 hours. When the water and herbs mixture comes to a rolling boil, turn off the heat.
This infuses your water with the flavors of the herbs and roots. Then, add the mixture of herbs and roots including sassafras, sarsaparilla, mint, wintergreen leaves, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, licorice, ginger, nutmeg, and vanilla beans.īring the pot to a boil at high heat for about 30 minutes. Pour distilled water into a 5-gallon stainless steel pot. This next step basically entails brewing up a herbal tea that will make up the basis of your root beer. Step 2: Boil the herbs and spices together The heat will kill the yeast and therefore you will not be able to use the yeast to ferment your drink. To activate the yeast, pour it in a half cup of distilled water and set it aside. Before then, you want to activate your yeast and set it aside as you prepare the beer.įor this recipe, we will use ale yeast. Later in the process, you will use yeast to carbonate the beer. Here is our easy guide, which includes tips and recommendations on making root beer right from your kitchen. There are many root beer recipes but we’ve chosen to go with one that is as close to the traditional root beer recipe as possible.
Read on and follow our simple instructions showing you how to make root beer at home. Other than that, you will not need any expensive equipment to pull this off. Some of the dried roots you will need for this recipe can be slightly costly but they do go a long way. Making root beer at home is such a great idea because you can control the amount of sugar in the drink and experiment with different flavors until you find something that suits your palate. But, do not worry if you do not have sassafras trees growing in your area-you can make root beer with dried roots and the drink will still come out great. Traditional root beer is made using the real root of the sassafras tree. Sweet, crispy with hints of musk and earth, root beer is the ultimate summer chill-out drink.