I know this is winemaking but....

One of the best things my Dad did for us when we were kids was to make root beer. It is extremely easy to do and tastes so much better than the stuff in the stores you won't believe it!

He used the Hiers extract that you should be able to find in any homebrew shop, sugar, Fleischman's yeast and water. The directions are on the box. Follow that and you won't go wrong. You need to use beer or champagne bottles to handle the pressure, sealed with crown caps. Your kids will

BTW, it's my understanding that the alcohol generated in the process is on the order of ½% or so - not enough to give them a buzz.

Tom S

"Following the directions" being an importat part of this advice. A Mormon friend of mine once tried to make ginger beer from a recipe. Since she didn't want the beer to be alcoholic (being a Mormon), she added very little sugar in the initial fermentation, but then quadrupled the amount of sugar she added while bottling because the beer wasn't sweet enough.

Luckily, she asked me for advice about this before any of the bottles exploded.

Cheers,

I make root beer all the time. The best advice I can give you is make sure everything is clean. The URL below is the recipe I use and is also the website where i get many of my wine and beverage supplies.

Thei extracts are greatr. I also found a manufacturer of commercial extracts, but the ones on this site are fantastic. Good luck!

Thank you all :) This sounds like it will be great fun!

My dad used to make an A&W style root beer for us kids using water, sugar, Sarsaparilla extract, Fleischman's bread yeast, a dash of oil of wintergreen and a dash of anise extract. Don't know the detail quantities, but oh we enjoyed it immensely.

Gene

Althoughm you will get result with Fleishman's yeast, I found the best yeast to use when making root beer is a champagne yeast or other good wine yeast like ec-1119.

I think you and the kids will enjoy it. I made root beer in the past and it was great. Have not made it in years. Should do it again.

Ray