HomebrewandBeer.com forum

Hey guys,


I've seen kits for alcoholic ginger ale & lemonade, but I really like sars soft drink/cordial

can I simply chuck in a cordial concentrate, the right amount of water, a pile of dex & then some sort of yeast & make alcoholic sars soft drink?

What yeast would you use for this sort of idea?


Cheers
Ash

Hi Ash,

Just remember that the cordial stuff will have fermentable sugars in it, so when it is fermented, it will loose its sweetness. If you want to add more sweetness, use lactose, because this does not ferment. You may also want to add some more glucose or malt to bump up the alcohol or get the fermentation going niceley.

As for yeast, I used Safale yeast for my ginger beer I made a couple of weeks ago. That seemed to work well.

I'm pretty sure that the Sars you would buy from the supermarkets would all contain artificial preservatives which will kill the yeast.

ahh, good point Iron-Haggis - have to read up on whats in it I guess.


I asked if they made a kit at a local HBS & they looked at me like I was nuts - well I am but that's a different story

Hi Ash,

They have Sars in my local HBS! Have only had it a couple, maybe 3 months. So it is around and available. Haven't tried it yet, but I will soon I think. It's in a purple & white cardboard 'tin'.

I read a story on the internet a few years ago about a guy who tried to make green cordial alcoholic, tried & tried but gave up, wouldn't ferment, assumed it was the preservative.

Steve

my homebrew shop stocked the sars up until a few months ago, I asked about it and he said they dont make it anymore, supposedly us queenslanders were the only people who drank it and it just wasnt a popular enough line for the manufacturer.

do a web search for 'root beer' and look for the alcoholic recipes based around sarsaparilla root. You can get this here if you look, else you can get a sarsaparilla plant (there are two varieties of the smilax genus available) and grow your own.

EDIT: spelling :p

hey steveo, which home brew shop is that? i'm kinda near you, would not mind trying out the alco sars

-Phill

dude, if you really want alc. sars, make an alcohol base of maybe 7% using just dex and water and a lager or even wine yeast. then add the sars to the base like normally making the cordial and bottle, or even just bottle the alc base, and carbonate, then add the sars when drinking. it probably wont be fizzy if it goes in the bottle, but it'll work easy enough.

Ash,

Do a search for the word cordial. This has been discussed before and the consensus was that it wouldn't work.

This post may be of most use: http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/forum/vi ... .php?t=815

Sorry!

Oliver

DarkFaerytale wrote:hey steveo, which home brew shop is that? i'm kinda near you, would not mind trying out the alco sars

-Phill

Bayside Hydroponics & Homebrew in Seaford, 2/8 Rutherford Rd.

I was in Bendigo yesterday and saw they had sarsaparilla home brew kits for sale there. They were in a purple cardboard package also.

thank you steveo

There is actually a Hbs in the usa selling essences for different types of sodas including cola, sars, creaming soda, rasberry and so on the place is called the beverage people and there service and prices are fantastic.
I ordered some cola ( which u can make alco or not ) and it was deliverd to my door in bout 5 days

http://www.thebeveragepeople.com

I'd be interested in hearing how this went? I've been lookingto make an alcoholic sars for a while now. Did heaps of research on the net about ingredients, found an online herb store and bought various ingredients (Sarsaparilla , sassafras, wintergreen) and they are currently sitting in my kitchen cupboard. I haven't been brave enough to actually make a brew but will one day.
Probably use a Ginger Beer kit as a base...I just haven't had the spare brewing capacity to do it. (don't want to lose a weeks production producing something that may {read probably} turn out horrible.)

hey could someone point me in the direction of a website that sells [preferably in Australia] sarsaparilla, sasaffras and wintergreen spices/extracts?

found this recipe on BYO and interested in giving it a go:
http://byo.com/recipe/312.html