Homemade Soda

Today we made three batches of homemade diet soda. We started with Cream, then Raspberry and lastly Root Beer. It is a very simple process the one caveat is you must sterilize everything that comes in contact with the liquid and keep an eye in the temp of the liquid or you could lose the whole batch to mold or non-carbonation.

First, we sterilize the bottles with a solution of C-Brite, a powder mixed with water; you can find it at any homebrew store. We own two bottle washers one we put the C-Brite mix in and one we fill with plain water. First we rinse with the C-Brite and rinse with the water. We now need to sterilize the bottling bucket once again first the C-brite and a rinse with plain water to remove the residue from the C-Brite.

Now to make the soda mix. We mix one package of champagne yeast (purchased from the homebrew store) in one cup of 100F water, mix and let sit or bloom. Next in a sterilized bowl, we place 6 cups of Splenda and 2 cups of white sugar. The soda ends up sugar free because the yeast eats the real sugar and produces carbon dioxide gas, which is the natural carbonation in our soda. If we did not put the real sugar in the yeast would not have anything to feed off of and the soda would be flat. We then add 100F water and the soda base and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.

The sugar, Splenda, soda base and water mix are now transferred to the bottling bucket and more water is added to reach the 4 gallon mark. The temp is tested again and should be in the 98 – 104F range. The bloomed yeast is now added and stirred vigorously.

The sterilized bottles are now filled with the soda mix and capped with sterilized caps. The soda should be kept at room temperature and will be fully carbonated in one to two weeks. If soda did not carbonate one or more of these things could have gone wrong – something was not sterilized and killed off the yeast, the bottles were not sealed correctly and the gas escaped, the mix was too hot or too cold and the yeast was killed off.

All supplies including the soda base can be found at your local homebrew store or on the internet!

Give it a try!

TO SEE THE PROCESS CLICK ON THE PHOTO BELOW

Homemade Soda