Weird Soda Endorsement...

I went to my local Fred Meyer(Pacific Northwest's regional Kroger) earlier tonight to pick up some tasty beverages(Virgil's Root Beer, and Virgil's Real Cola) and happened upon something that seemed utterly ridiculous-Captain America on a 2 liter bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale.
What exactly were they thinking here? Apparently it is a tie-in with 7-Up's full lineup, but don't you think it's a little odd that they would include a ginger ale that originated in a country that is...not the United States of America? While Canada might be a large portion of the North American continent, "Captain America" is, was, and always will be a symbolically patriotic comic book/television/movie character representative of the good ol'(snicker) U. S. of A. Even so close to Independence Day as well.
Next thing you know we're going to have Alpha Flight on cans of Coke...at least then the colors would match.
So, in short, Captain America is iconic, not ironic, eh?
Say no to hipster ginger ale.

Review: Oogave Cola

Oogave Cola. Where do I start? This...is an awful soda. Through and through. I couldn't find one redeeming quality beyond the labeling. I love the minimalist design. It's simple, effective and eye-catching. You've got your brand name, your ingredients list, your flavor, and the requisite color to coincide with the flavor.
Opening the bottle, I took a whiff-sweetness. That was about it. Tasting it was something I would regret, and for some reason I continued to take sip after sip, even stomaching a mouthful, in a vain effort to convince myself it wasn't as bad as I thought. It never got any better, only much, much worse.
What did it taste like you ask? Well, it sure as hell didn't taste like agave nectar(which has a sweet, burnt taste), and it certainly did not taste like cola(at least, nothing you should market). I can pinpoint exactly what it tasted like-it was like drinking sugar water that had been poured from the inside of a hot, inflatable pool toy. It was incredibly off-putting how much this soda tasted like cheap plastic/rubber. I also detected a little hint of something I had noticed myself in my first attempt-that strange chemically flavor that happened when I fermented my ingredients. I don't know what it is about colas, but it seems to be a recurring theme that one of the ingredients "spoils" in the fermentation process and turns the whole batch completely awful. Hell, it even happened when I was working with a cola-flavored extract. My guess would be that the lemon and/or lime juice "sour" the yeast...but that's a risk you take when you make a homemade cola(I've made a few successful batches of cola from extract). Difference is, there's a chemical reaction in the mix with a homemade soda-the yeast, heat, sugar, spices, yada yada yada. You don't have any of that coming into play with a store-bought soda. Store-bought sodas are mixed up and false-carbonated with co2, yeast isn't involved at all-so what gives? I don't know, and I don't really want to know. What I do know, is that I will never even look at an Oogave Cola bottle if I can help it. The memory of that awful taste would just drive me to madness.

Packaging- 3/5
It was clean and effective. It looked like a cola, and I could clearly read the brand from across the store. Points for the company distributing in a glass bottle, although I can only imagine that a plastic bottle would merely enhance the awful flavor they were clearly shooting for.

Taste- 0/7
Did I mention the inflatable pool toy juice? Blech!

Aroma- 2/5
Sweet, slightly burnt. Much like agave nectar(the sweetener used in the bottle), but lacking some of the quality, probably due to the dilution I'm sure. Very deceptive, actually made me think this wouldn't be so bad.

Overall- 5/17
Not only do I recommend not buying or consuming this swill, I actively discourage you from even mentioning it lest it fly into your unsuspecting taste receptacle and pollute your flavor receptors with it's ungodly plastic juice-ity.

Buy Oogave Cola

Sorry for the delay...

There's been a lot going on this last week with moving, family visiting and work. I will be making a proper post later tonight. A review is on the way, along with another possible batch of soda. Stay tuned!

Finishing the latest batch-a few tips.

So, all 28 bottles of the most recent batch of root beer are gone.
The soda was incredibly tasty and a huge hit with the family. It can really be best described as a sweet beer with the slight hint of root beer barrels at the end. I suspect that if my sinuses had not been congested for the majority of the 8 days we were drinking the batch I would have been able to taste more of the root beer flavor.
Then again, there are several things that could have gone wrong, based on my previous experiences.
The first(and usually the most likely culprit) possibility is that the bottles sat at a warmer temperature than I expected and the yeast was over-active. I assumed my apartment was averaging at the mid-high sixties range, but in reality could have been closer to the mid-seventies. In this case(if you know for sure the temperature of your soda), the easiest solution is to transfer your batch from the "warm" location to the fridge. "Over-active" yeast carbonates more quickly then "regular" yeast, and as such it tends to consume more sugar, produce more carbonation, and more alcohol(usually homemade soda comes out with a 0.5 % alcohol yield, and over-active yeast will bring it closer to 2-3%, not yet the same level as beer by any means, but if it's that high of a content you've lost most of your sugar and have very little flavor remaining(beyond the yeast's flavor itself). Since the batch this time turned out very sweet and still carried a little bit of the flavor extract with it, I'd guess I could have done two things to remedy the problem.
First of all, I could have transferred up to half a day sooner-I waited from Friday night around 9 p.m. until Monday morning around 11:30 a.m. If I had put it in the fridge at 2 a.m. or even as earlier as 9 p.m. the previous night, I could have still a had a tasty soda with sufficient carbonation. You can avoid exploding bottles by arresting the process sooner, but you can also arrest the process TOO soon and end up with flat soda.
Secondly, I could have waited the right amount of time(about 2.5 days(62.5 hours)), but having left most of the batch in the cardboard box it was stored in may have taken too long to cool down enough to arrest the yeast-which of course would mean it actually continued to carbonate for up to 12 hours longer than I had originally intended.
When I first started making my own homemade soda a few years back, someone asked me why I wasn't just brewing beer. Well, there's two reasons behind that. Most importantly, I'm not really a beer drinker. There's a few select beers I thoroughly enjoy, and a few that I can drink in the right circumstances, but for the most part I just don't enjoy it at all. I enjoy all kinds of soda, and am constantly seeking out new ones to try out.
Second of all, after beginning my journey through the process of making a homemade soda, I discovered that it's much more difficult. There are tons of resources available for the homemade beer brewer. There are dozens(or even hundreds) of kits on the market, libraries of books dedicated to every aspect of getting a good beer, and there's a very large community out there to support you if you need the help. When it comes to making soda, however, there are only a few specialty books that I have run across. In addition, most books that have homemade soda recipes act as guidelines. They tell you how to make everything as long as all conditions are normal and run nearly perfect. There's no support for how to deal with any variables during the process. Making a homemade soda is much like perfecting a dish, it takes time, and practice. There are a lot of tweaks to be made, and a lot of things to be considered. It's a chemical reaction, and not a very easily controlled one at that. Since I found there to be a lacking support channel for homemade soda makers, I figured another thing I should focus on with this blog is discussing the potential downfalls and how to avoid them, or at least how to make them work for you.
On a parting note, I will also bring up that homemade soda produces a much more solid level of carbonation in your soda that I had forgotten about until recently. Because the carbonation is throughout the soda in a "natural" fashion, the carbonation holds for a long while. How long? Well, while we were in the process of moving my wife opened a bottle of soda on Sunday evening. She took a few drinks and forgot about it. We went about our moving routine, and upon returning to the house Tuesday afternoon, I picked up the unfinished bottle, took a sip and was amazed at the level of carbonation still left. It had the same "sting" of a freshly opened bottle, and when I poured out another bottle that only had a sip or two left in it from elsewhere in the house it fizzed the whole way out and left a streak of bubbles lingering towards the drain in the sink. So, an opened, uncapped bottle of homemade soda left in a 65-75 degree house for nearly 2 days was still kicking ass in the carbonation department. Try getting that from a store-bought soda!

Tasting the new batch...

So, officially my wife tried the first bottle of cold soda. Problem was, she tried it only 2 days(Wednesday) after we first refrigerated, and minimum is 4 days. It opened with a bit of an overflow from all the carbonation, tasted sweet, yeasty(as homemade sodas tend to do), and very little like Root Beer. There was a hint of the flavor in the aftertaste, but merely a hint.
My wife's reaction? "This tastes like beer, but a lot better. If this is what beer tasted like, I'd drink it all of the time. So I guess it's a good thing that beer doesn't taste like this."
Oh, and yes, she did make some root beer bread. It was incredibly tasty, and maybe I can talk her into relating her experience on her own blog.
So, after telling her that it needs to age a little more, I went back to ignoring the soda for a few days. On Friday(the first day we should have opened it...), I pop open a bottle, and take a whiff...
It's...yeasty. That's the best way to describe it. It's tangy, sweet and slightly sourish. I take a drink-much like it was on the first try, but a little less yeasty then before. My wife has continued drinking it, and the girls have even shared a bottle or two. From our initial 28, I believe we are down to 15. My wife doesn't think it tastes as good now as it did the first few times she tried it, but I only detect more and more of the extract. I know from previous experience with other batches of homemade soda using extract that the longer the bottles sit, the better they are going to taste(up to a point), so the extract will just come out more and more. I just hope that it actually lasts long enough to get to that point.
So, let this be a lesson for all of you potential homemade soda makers out there...the longer you let a soda "age" in the refrigerator, the better it will taste when you get to it(at least a week is best). There's also no accounting for personal taste, however, so if you're more of a yeasty kind of person(as my wife is), you may enjoy it from an earlier point on.
I must go now, my oldest kitchen assistant has just requested breakfast and one of our sodas. I will keep you posted on this batch if it matures a little more. I'll do that if the soda does too.

Testing the most recent batch...

Let me start off by accounting for the length of the last post. Since I originally promised pictures, and provided none, I wanted to be as descriptive of the process as possible. 

With that being said...

This morning my two apprentice soda-makers accompanied on a car trip to a closed destination. Upon returning home, I was faced with a regular conflict in our household-Biggle had gone inside peacefully, but Middle was insistent upon staying in the car. So insistent, in fact, that she brought her knees to her chest and locked her arms around her legs to prevent me from even unbuckling her from her car seat. I left her door opened and went inside the house, explaining to my wife what was going on. She rolled her eyes and went about her business, and I returned to the vehicle.

I had an ace up my sleeve today(I usually don't-which results in me hanging out around the car out of her view, sporadically checking up on her to see if she's ready to come inside yet).

"Middle, do you want to come inside and test our soda? We'll see if it's ready to go in the fridge yet..."

She looked at me, slowly allowing a smile to creep across her face, and then said "Okay daddy". She dropped her legs and allowed me access to the buckles, freeing her from her self-sentenced, plastic-formed prison. She hops down out of the car and trots inside. 

I was planning on waiting until after dinner to check the sodas, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

I grab the not quite full bottle, grab the bottle opener and pop the top. Well, I didn't "pop" the top as much as I allowed the pressure inside the bottle enough breathing room to hurtle the cap through the air(I swear it hit the ceiling), along with a fountain of soda to rival the greatest Diet Coke/Mentos youtube videos. Half of the bottle was spent, leaving a trail about 2 feet long across the kitchen floor, foam in Middle's hair, and yeasty-goodness all over my pants. I did manage to minimize the damage by quickly getting it to the sink(next time, open over the sink...), but it was still quite the mess.

Time to sample! The prospect of drinking our own root beer was really what lured Middle out of the car, so it was time to come through on my end of the bargain. I poured the remaining contents into a nearby glass and took a quick swig while she looked away-yeasty, but delicious. It takes a few days in the fridge for the soda to actually taste like soda instead of yeast, so don't get discouraged if/when you make your own at home. The longer it sits in the fridge, the better it tastes.

Back on point-Middle enjoyed it, Biggle thought it was ok, and the wife said she felt like she was drinking sweet bread, and wondered if she could use our soda to make her own root beer bread(she's crafty like that).

So, all being satisfied with the level of carbonation attained in 2.5 days, we loaded the sodas into the fridge and continue our wait for homemade awesomeness.

As an aside, my pants still smell like rising yeast, and I keep licking my lips at the prospect of enjoying some of my wife's fantastic homemade bread fresh out of the oven. Unfortunately for me, there will be no oven warm bread unless I throw my unwashed khakis into the dryer and try to take a bite. 

Adventures in Soda Making

So, as promised, me and my two oldest girls made some soda Friday night. Originally I thought it was going to just be my oldest and I, but when we were talking about doing it at dinner the middle one decided she wanted to join in on the fun as well. Awesome! I get to share my hobby with my girls, and they get to learn a little bit about old-fashioned soda making!
Anyways, my middle daughter was most excited about the prospect of us making our own "Doggy Soda"(her affectionate term for ALL root beer since discovering that Mug Root Beer is her favorite soda/pop of all time). I explained to her that we wouldn't be able to drink it for at least a week, but she was hearing no part of that statement.
I filled our 12 quart pot up with water, set the heat on and proceeded to clear the dishes from the dinner table. My wife chimed in "Hey honey, are you going to be able to get this all done in a half hour?"-we were getting a late start do to some running around and playing before I we finally got to dinner that night.
"Sure," I said, "we can get the soda mixed up within thirty minutes, and then the bottling will go pretty quickly without them"
"Honey," she said, "you have to bottle up a couple with them."
Oh yeah, of course they'd love to bottle. I'll have some helpers, for the first couple(I thought), and then they can go upstairs, change into pajamas and brush their teeth while I finish up the rest.
Long story short, nothing goes quite as smoothly as planned. Anyone with children also knows what happens when you have two little ones(mine are currently 5 and "still 2" as of this writing), and so there were a few minor conflicts.
Anyways, I bring them in the kitchen, and start setting bottles up on a TV tray positioned underneath the counter top with my new toy on it. The girls immediately start grabbing my old, back-up bottles and bringing them into the kitchen. "No girls, we don't need those in here right now. Put them back, and we'll get them when we need them."
They continue to get them out and play with them without bringing them into the kitchen(because technically, they're not bringing them "in there"(the kitchen) "right now"....and they are "putting them back"). So, after a few minutes of back and forth with them(and some great mom interference), we get them back on task and in the kitchen.
I break out the candy thermometer to confirm temperature(110 degrees F-perfect for our needs) to make sure it's hot enough to dissolve the sugar, but not too hot to kill the flavor in the extract(a lesson I've learned the hard way before, which I'll go over more in another post). Since we're making 3 gallons worth of soda, I get out the big jar of extra sugar, and pour it out into a 2 cup measuring cup-I pour in the first one, and have the girls each take a turn pouring the next two subsequent cupfulls into the pot(for a total of 6 cups of sugar). Now, that might sound like a lot, but the yeast will eat up a bit of that in the carbonation process, and it breaks down to about 40ish grams/12 oz. bottle*(most commercial root beers clock in between 38-46 grams/12 oz...).
Then, we each take turns using our big spoon to stir the sugar into the pot until it is completely dissolved. You want to make sure that you don't leave any sugar undissolved to get it as evenly distributed as possible, and the best way to tell is to stir until there are no more "gritty" scrapes along the bottom of the pot. Another way to tell is when the water takes on a very light yellowish-brown twinge(much like flat ginger ale) and is obviously "sticky" on the spoon when you lift the spoon out.
We get to that point and add the extract-we put in 2 tbs. and 1 tsp(roughly 35 ml**), and we each take turns stirring that in. I'll also note here that us taking turns has never been as simple as I make it out to be. There is fighting between the two of them as to who gets to stir first, and who gets to stir next after dad stirs again. So we make it through all of the stirring and get to the taste test. I'm the first to go, and it's very sweet, but a liitle light on the root beer flavor. Middle's turn- her verdict? It's good, but this kid spoons sugar, so her opinion is a little biased at this point. Biggle's turn. She arrives at my conclusion, but in her own way-she observes that it tastes like sugar. So, I ask them if we add more flavoring. Agreement all around, so 2 more tsp(or 10 ml) is added, we all take turns stirring. The second tasting proves satisfactory. Time to get the yeast ready.
I scoop a bit of the slog out into a cup, and consult my resident kitchen expert on how much yeast to use. We  agree on 1/2 tsp(4 scoops of a 1/8 tsp), mix it into the slog cup and we clear the girls for the transfer from pot to bucket. The slog is still cooler then their bath water usually is, but if I slip and spill there will be a huge sticky mess that I don't want them to be part of. Transfer goes off smoothly(much to my wife's relief), I give the slog a quick stir and it's time to bottle.
"Come on girls, let's start bottling up our soda!"
"Honey, do you know what time it is?"
"No-why? What time is it?"
She announces it's 7 minutes before I need to get ready for work. I still have 3 gallons of soda to bottle up...panic mode sets in. I rush the girls into the kitchen, and start to work filling the bottles as quickly as possible. I love my new toy, the siphon valve fills the bottles at least 3 times more quickly then my old method of ladling the slog into each bottle through a funnel. The biggle starts talking-"Daaaaad!! When do I get a turn?", then middle chimes in and repeats the same phrase in the same tone. Oh crap, I was supposed to be bottling with them...
After getting 5 bottles filled on my own, I show my girls what I'm doing and how to stop the siphon valve so it doesn't over-fill the bottle. We have a few spill overs, they alternate. While biggle is filling her bottle I send middle to go get a towel to help soak up the overflow and set the bottles onto to prevent them from slipping on the linoleum on the kitchen floor.
Then, I decide we need to start capping some bottles before filling all of them. Biggle is on bottle-holding duty while middle dances around us and alternately continues trying to fill bottles. Before my wife has the great idea of giving middle a new job to keep her occupied(placing the bottles back into the box where they will be going through the carbonation process) my middle has sprayed a bit on the floor, and my improper placement of the siphon valve when she sets in on the floor(in addition to forgetting to turn the spigot to the "closed" position), results in a bit of loss on the floor and counter tops. Not drastically much, mind you(about 3 bottles worth), but enough that my panic is turning into madness with the stress of things not going perfectly(I get a little anal sometimes) AND the fact that I'm running out of time to shower and get dressed for work. So I get the rest of the bottles capped and put away, and even spent some of that time convincing my biggle to lean the bucket forward to get the last couple of bottles(as the spigot is roughly at the 1 gallon mark) filled.
After all was said and done we got 27 full bottles and 1 slightly-short bottle(which will be the one me and the girls open later tonight to check for carbonation levels).
It took only 15 minutes from start to finish to bottle everything(where 1 gallon used to take me about 40 minutes), and I got to do a fun experiment with the kids. I had to rush to get through my work prep(shower, shave, getting dressed, etc.) and I had to feel horrible leaving such a sticky mess for the wife, but I managed to make it to work JUST on time. Next time I'll start a little earlier, though-just in case.
I'll be back with updates on how the initial taste/carbonation test goes and back again to report on how well this batch turned out after aging for a few days in the refrigerator. The package says 2 weeks gives the best results, but I(along with my girls), barely have the patience to make it through one whole week, let alone two.
Until next time...
*For all you math geeks out there, it breaks down like this-each cup of sugar contains 201 grams...so 6 cups is 1206 grams of sugar. Divide that by 28 bottles, and you're left with 43g/bottle. As stated, though, the carbonation process eats up a few tablespoons in the process, so it'll end up being 38-41 g/bottle after all is consumed and ready for drinking.
**Another math geek moment. The directions said to use a whole 2 oz. bottle for a 5 gallon batch. 2 oz. equals a bit over 59 ml, so to make 1 gallon you'd need about 11.8 ml-multiply that by 3 and you get 35.4 ml.