Root beer

If root beer is bottle conditioned will it have alcohol in it?

Hi there! I’m new here but will take a stab at answering your question: Alcohol is a by-product of fermentation. ‘Bottle conditioning’ typically refers to the carbonating of beverage that has become alcoholic due to presence of yeast and sugars. The carbonation is created (CO2 is another by-product of fermentation) by feeding the present yeast cells a small dose of sugar before capping in bottles.

I’m not sure if you can force-carbonate root beer at home in a keg and then transfer to bottles to produce carbonated bottles of root beer. Obviously commercially produced root beer can be bottled in this manner - and need not (typically does not) contain alcohol.

I do know that ginger ale - started with ‘ginger bug’ - will contain low levels of alcohol but, again, the ginger bug is a fermentation process and it will produce both carbonation and alcohol as a result of the process. The ginger ale is bottled (plastic bottles recommended) - with some added ginger bug (active yeast/fermentation) and left on the counter until the bottles become hard.

It doesn’t take long at all for pressure to build. The bottles are then stored in the refrigerator to stop the fermentation. A person has to be careful with the plastic bottles nonetheless as, if too much internal pressure is created from fermentaion, they can explode.

Hope this helps! :cheers: Jon

Yes

And you need to be careful with it so it won’t explode the bottles. There needs to be a lot of sugar in root beer, so you need a method to make the yeast stop before they eat it all. Most recipes do this by adding just a tiny amount of yeast, but when I’ve done it I make sure to refridgerate when the plastic bottles feel like they are pressurized enough.

So I shouldn’t serve it at a 3rd birthday party.

Well . . . .

This might be a better choice:

Sprecher Root Beer Extract - sold by our sponsor

The same famous soft drinks made by the Sprecher Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The syrups contain sodium benzoate, a preservative, which means that you cannot naturally carbonate this by adding yeast. All flavors contain one gallon of concentrate and yield five gallons of soda.

Easily keg-carbonated. :cheers: Jon

Technically, bottle conditioned root beer has a little alcohol. It also depends on how long it has been conditioning. If it is freshly made and only a couple of days old, the alcohol is most likely less than 0.5%. And if the root beer is more than a week old… the alcohol could start getting up there into the 1% range or something like that, maybe.

To serve to my own kids, I would be fine with this. To serve to other people’s kids… perhaps not the greatest idea.

+1 Great job Dave; both technically and politically correct :cheers:

Keg and force carbonate FTW. Perfect excuse to get the gear if you don’t have it: “It’s for the KIDS!” :smiley:

[quote=“zwiller”]+1 Great job Dave; both technically and politically correct :cheers:

Keg and force carbonate FTW. Perfect excuse to get the gear if you don’t have it: “It’s for the KIDS!” :smiley: [/quote]

:cheers:

“Honey, I need a couple more kegs for root beer for the kids!!!”