Doug Freyburger wrote:
> Jean B. wrote:
>> Sqwertz wrote:
>>
>>> I make my own very potent ginger ale.
>>
>> recipe? Coincidentally, I am sniffing around for recipes for root
>> beer, sarsaparilla, birch beer.... I need to make a list of
>> ingredients and go back to a few shops that carry the
>> more-esoteric ingredients.
>
> This weekend my wife was going through a box of ancient papers and in it
> were ones I printed or copied in the late 1970s early 1980s. I'll see
> if the page with root beer, birch beer and spruce beer is still
> available.

This is from page 53 of some book that I photocopied a few pages of back
in that era. I've long since forgotten what the title of the book is.

"Root beer

You'll need 1/2 ounce each of hops and dried burdock, yellow dock,
sarsaparilla, dandelion, sassafras and spikenard roots for each gallon
of water. Wash and bruise them well, using a potato masher or pie crust
blender. Cover with the water and bring to a boil over high heat.
Lower heat and simmer 20 minutes. While still hot straininto a large
crock, discarding roots. Add 1 1/2 cups molasses to each gallon of
water and cool to lukewarm.

When lukewarm add 1 teaspoon dry yeast (or 2 tablespoons homemade liquid
yeast) and stir well to mix. Set the crock in a warm, draft-free corner
where the temperature is 70 to 80 degrees. Cover with a cloth and let
set for two hours. Then bottle, filling to within 1/2 inch of the top.
Cap bottles using capper and metal caps not corks.

Place capped bottles on their sides in a warm (70 to 80 degree)
draft-free place for 5 days, then set upright in a cool place. Root
beer is ready to drink after 10 days, but will keep well through the
summer."

My notes on the first time I made this recipe - Keep the bottles
outside. A few exploded. The cloth cover during the resting period was
insufficent as the surviving bottles foamed to much for all but a taste.
Weird flavor.

My notes from the second time I made this recipe - Using the metal cover
not the cloth cover worked to prevent infection by bacteria or wild
yeast. Should use beer brewing sanitation methods. The smell and
flavor of the spikenard was far to wierd, suggest using more sassafras
and/or sarsaparilla. The resulting soda was good to anyone not told it
was root beer and I think it was the spikenard wierdness that did that.

My notes many years later - The boil phase could probably be continued
until the liquid was reduced to a concentrate. Soda could be made from
that concentrate. I wonder how to get it to work with liquid Splenda
drops to make a diet root beer.

The recipe on the next page is for birch beer. Notice that the
flavoring comes from wintergreen leaves as much as from birch bark.

"Bark and root berr

Gather a half bushel of mixed spruce boughs, sassafras roots,
sarsaparilla roots, sweet fern, wintergreen leaves, black birch bark,
black cherry bark, dandelion roots and burdock roots. Clean well, cut
up and boil in 6 gallons of water to which has been added a large
handfull of hops and a quart of wheat bran.
Cook for 20 minutes then strain through a sieve into a large crock.
Add 3 quarts of molasses. Cool, then stir in 1 cup liquid yeast (or 1
yeast cake disolved in 1 ccup of water). Cover and let set 3 days in a
warm place. Bottle and cap. It will be ready to drink after 3 more
days."

As I have not tried this recipe I don't have notes from my experiences.