Recipe: Cardamom Cream Soda

I first tried Cardamom a few years ago in the form of cardamom ice cream, made locally at an ice cream shop in downtown Bellingham, Washington known as "Mallards". It's a rich, aromatic spice that lends itself well to many dishes-meat, stews, sweets and treats. It's also most widely recognized as one of the components in chai tea.
I decided I wanted to try a cardamom-flavored soda, but I think I may have been overly ambitious with the large amount of ingredients. It produced a very good flavor, but I may have let the yeast work a little too long and ended up with a less then sweet, spicy concoction. Flavorful, to be sure, but not at all what it should have been.

20 cardamom seed pods
1/4 cup of raisins(coarsely chopped)
1 6 inch vanilla bean(cut)
1 sliver of nutmeg(probably too much nutmeg)
1 3 inch cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
2 cups of brown sugar
1 gallon of water
1/8 tsp. yeast

Combine all ingredients besides the cream of tartar and sugar(and yeast) in a large stock pot, and let it steep as it comes to a simmer. Let simmer on heat for 10-15 minutes, then remove from heat, stir in sugar and cream of tartar, and let steep for 20 minutes.  Add 1/2 gallon of cold water(I've found that making the water cold helps quicken the cooling time), strain the mixture into bottling bucket(or strain into a different large stock pot), and let cool to about 90 degrees.
Meanwhile, activate yeast in a cup of brew that is also around 90 degrees, let sit for 5 minutes, and then stir into brew.
Bottle and let sit for 2-3 days until carbonated.
My first and only tester bottle came open after about 2.5 days, and was sufficiently carbonated-it didn't fizz over the top, and had a nice amount of carbonation to go with the flavor. I detected far too much nutmeg in the initial brew, and it kind of overpowers the rest of the flavors besides the cardamom and raisins.
The flavor is very akin to a hard apple cider without the apples or alcohol. It's very crisp, but spicy at the same time. The raisins added a bit of a fruity tang to the mix, but I think less nutmeg would have done the brew well to help bring out the subtle notes of vanilla that were on the lips afterwards.

Memory Lane- Planting the seeds.

It's 1992, summertime. I'm eight years old, on break from school, and thirsty. I'd been running around outside with the other neighborhood kids, playing sports and climbing trees. My father, on the other hand, had been at the grocery store, picking up some refreshing treats-popsicles, ice cream bars-and something new.
What's this? A dark brown glass bottle with a green label? That's weird. Pappy's Old Fashioned Sassafras Tea? Huh. Interesting. I'd never heard of sassafras tea before. I'd heard the weird sassafras before-it was something to call smart-mouthed kids, maybe even something from Looney Toons...but I'd never heard of it being a tea (the following is a rough approximation of how it went down).
"What's this dad?"
"Well, you love root beer, so I thought I'd get you some tea made from sassafras-sassafras is what Root Beer was originally made from.
Sounded tasty to me. We poured some in a glass, filled it with water and ice and I took a sip...interesting. It tasted mostly like root beer...but different. Of course, the difference was mainly due to the lack of carbonation, but at 8, I didn't think of such things. I added more tea concentrate. It definitely satisfied my sweet tooth a lot better-so sweet in fact that it made my mouth pucker.
Anyways, I did eventually find the right mix of tea concentrate and water, and it was a very enjoyable substitute for regular ol' root beer.
It also inspired me to start trying to create my own sodas for the first time. I didn't know anything about home carbonation or yeast or anything like that. I don't remember my specific recipes, but I do recall the process was taking an empty 2-liter bottle, rinsing out the leftover soda, and combining all kinds of thins from around the house-any kind of liquid(besides milk) that I could find was combined with other things. Most of the time it was hot water, sugar, and some kind of juice-but I do recall one batch had a cap full of Scope mouthwash poured into it. I would then walk around the house trying to convince people to try my homemade "soda."  This worked pretty well for a little while-my parents or aunts/uncles would try my concoctions-usually grimacing from all of the sugar or the weird combination of apple juice, sunny delight and vinegar. However, once the bottle with mouthwash in it was sampled, word spread around and people started refusing to try my mixtures. I understand why, of course, but that discouraged me and quickly lead to me discontinuing my soda experiments. At least for a little while...