Root Beer Recipe #2 - "Blackstrap"

This root beer recipe comes from Ted Danyluk, a homebrewer. I would have followed his recipe exactly but there was a couple of differences that I had to use. His recipe is for a 3 gallon keg and I have a 5 gallon keg. The other difference is that I couldn't find cassia buds anywhere except for 1 place online and I didn't have time to wait for it this time around. There may also be slight diffences in the brands that used.

Here's the ingredients for my 5 gallon recipe:

• 4 cinnamon sticks (cracked)
• 1/2 oz licorice root (cut)
• 1 teaspoon grains of paradise (fresh ground)
  
• 4 1/2 cups organic evaporated cane juice sugar
• 3 1/3 cups organic light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup blackstrap molasses
• 1/2 cup malto dextrin
• 5 Tablespoons root beer extract (I used 4 1/2 T of birch root beer extract and 1/2 T of regular)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Boil 1 1/3 gallons of water with spices for 30 minutes. Turn off heat. Add sugars and extracts. Place pot in sink filled with cold water to cool down the mixture. Add to keg. Top off keg with cold water. Force carbonate.

It took longer to carbonate than I had anticipated. I'm sure I'll learn the techniques better as I do more.


Color: The color was much darker. A color that I would expect a root beer to be. I'm sure that the molasses and root beer extract helped in that.
Taste: This had a very good root beer taste to it. There is something to the taste, however, that makes me not want to drink a lot of it in one day. I'm thinking that it could be just a little too sweet, or something with the sugars, or it could be the birch root beer taste instead of just root beer.
Overall: This was a good recipe. I'll most likely come back to this with some slight modifications when I want a root beer from extract.
Rating: 8 out of 10