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Cane sugar puts the pleasure in specialty pop |
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Written by Ed Murrieta, MCT
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Monday, 14 May 2007 |
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When it comes to sweetening fizzy soda, there's nothing fuzzy about the flavor of pure cane sugar.
"The sweetness really snaps," said brewmaster Don Spencer, who makes ginger ale and root beer at Silver City Restaurant and Brewery in Silverdale. "It's not the dull sweetness you get from a corn sugar."
Before high-fructose corn syrup started dominating the pop market (and Americans' diets) in the late 1970s,soda was made with sugar. It still is in Latin America, Europe and Asia, and by boutique bottlers in the United States, including Seattle's Jones Soda, which recently switched to cane sugar from high-fructose corn syrup.
Sugar is how Spencer learned to sweeten the root beer he made with his dad growing up on their Poulsbo farm. It's how he made root beer in the four years he worked at Thomas Kemper in the 1990s. It's how he makes root beer and ginger ale today at Silver City.
"I haven't even tried making soda with corn syrup," said Spencer, who admitted to drinking soda made with high-fructose corn syrup. "Pure cane sugar is just a cleaner sweetness. You can really taste the difference."
Cane sugar, along with honey from Stedman Bee Supply in Silverdale, is what sets Spencer's ginger ale apart from similar sodas. Spencer's nonalcoholic ginger ale - with an upfront burst of honey, followed by a snap of citrus and a mild, spicy finish - won a gold medal at the 2005 North American Beer Awards.
"I had made ginger ale at home using real ginger root," Spencer said. "Then I found a natural extract. It's got an authentic ginger flavor that I was looking for. I was pretty much able to duplicate on larger scale what I was making at home in small batches."
Whether you're making 4 gallons of soda at home or 48 kegs at the brewery, authentic soda starts with authentic ingredients.
"When it came to producing our own brands or brands under license, I decided to use cane sugar because, in my opinion, it produces the best version possible," said Danny Ginsberg, who founded RealSoda, the Seattle company that makes and distributes nearly 1,400 boutique soda pops, many made with cane sugar.
In the United States, thanks to the government's import tariffs on sugar and supports on corn production, high-fructose corn syrup is the favored alternative.
"As soon as you leave the U.S., high-fructose isn't the cheaper option," RealSoda co-owner Chris Webb said. "Everybody uses sugar because that's the cheapest and closest way to do it."
For American bottlers, Webb said, "It's not that big of a cost difference. It's maybe only a dollar more a case. That's a nickel a bottle to bottle with cane sugar vs. high-fructose corn syrup."
Ginsberg, whose e-mail handle is soda sommelier, noted a surge of "new age" soda brands that have switched from high-fructose corn syrup to cane sugar.
"It's better for you, it's better-tasting and, overall, it's better for the environment," JonesSoda CEO Peter van Stolk, said in November when his company announced its sweetener switch. "If you are going to sell a treat, you should make people feel good about it."
High-fructose corn syrup, which has a higher glycemic index than sugar, has been linked to obesity and heart disease and has drawn warnings from some nutritionists.
"Whether it's cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, it's a lot of sugar," Webb said of a 12-ounce bottle of soda, which contains 1½ servings. "No doubt, I would tell anyone to limit themselves to one soda a day."
Tim Patty, brewmaster at The Powerhouse in Puyallup, Wash., makes root beer in 62-gallon batches, using 50 pounds of cane sugar per batch.
"That's still a lot less sugar than regular soda pop," he said.
While many people are sweet on sugar, some sodas made with high-fructose corn syrup taste more natural, Webb said.
"Fruit punches, orange flavor and grape sodas actually taste better when they're made with a much sweeter high-fructose corn syrup," Webb said.
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SODA SOURCES
The Beer Essentials in Lakewood, Wash., (2624 112th St. S., Lakewood; 253-581-4288; www.thebeeressentials.com) sells soda-making supplies and extracts.
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Making soda is almost as easy as drinking it. Here are some tips.
HOW MUCH TIME
From mixing to bottling, a 4-gallon batch of soda takes approximately 90 minutes to make, said Peter Quails, manager of Beer Essentials, a Lakewood store that sells soda-making supplies.
EQUIPMENT
A food-grade bucket for mixing, preferably larger than your batch size.
Quails recommends a 6-gallon bucket for a 4-gallon batch. You'll also need a thermometer; sanitized bottles; a bottlebrush; and bottle caps and capper. Reusable glass bottles are eco-friendly and authentic, but plastic may be a safer bet for first-time soda-makers. Overly carbonated bottles can explode.
Choose thick glass bottles.
STARTS WITH WATER
"We recommend that you use filtered water from the tap or store-bought drinking water," Quails said. "The reason is that public water has chlorine in it and that may add an adverse flavor to your soda."
FLAVORS
Many flavors of commercial soda extracts are available and home-brew supply stores and from online vendors, including: cola, root beer, sarsaparilla, ginger ale, birch beer, passion fruit, orange and grape.
SWEETEN UP
Artisan soda makers are sweet on pure cane sugar, but many use honey or a combination of sugar and honey. If you're trying to cut calories by mixing artificial sweetener with sugar, use enough sugar to carbonate the soda - about a 1-to-1 ratio - as sugar is necessary to feed the yeast, which fuels carbonation.
COOL IT
After heating sugar and water to make syrup, Don Spencer, brewer at Silverdale's Silver City Restaurant and Brewery, recommends cooling the syrup to room temperature. "If you try to throw in ginger extract into something that hot, all the very important essential aromas evaporate off.
If you can smell ginger, that's not good because that means all that good stuff is going into the air and not staying in the soda."
YEAST
Ale and champagne yeast are most often used to carbonate soda, but bread yeast works if you're not up for a trip to the home-brew supply store.
Nutritional yeast won't work because its yeast cells are not active. Lager yeast can over-carbonate soda.
ALCOHOL
While soda is a soft drink, yeast fermentation does create alcohol, though negligible. "There's hardly any alcohol," said Spencer, the brewer. "There's just enough for the carbonation to get going."
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MICROBREW SODAS in WASHINGTON
The Powerhouse, 454 E. Main St., Puyallup, 253-845-1370.
A dose of vanilla gives this extract-based root beer upfront mellowness. Panama bark gives it finishing bite. On draft by the glass.
Fishtale Brewpub, 515 Jefferson St. S.E., Olympia; 360-943-6480.
Ginger ale made with honey and raw sugar. Spicy edge and citrusy nose. On draft by the glass and by the half-gallon growler to go.
Silver City Restaurant and Brewery, 2799 N.W. Myhre Road, Silverdale; 360-698-5879.
Locally produced honey gives ginger ale a start-to-finish sweetness. There's snap of citrus and spicy finish. Honey and vanilla give root beer an overall smoothness that kids will love. Both on draft by the glass and by the half-gallon growler to go.
Heads Up Brewing, 9960 Silverdale Way N.W., Silverdale; 360.337.2739.
Anise comes on strong in licorice-laced root beer that finishes dry on the tongue.
On draft and by the half-gallon growler to go. Heads Up (www.headsupbrewing.com) offers soda-making and bottling facilities. Cost is $33 for a 12-gallon batch.
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GINGER ALE
Yield: 11 12-ounce bottles
1¼ ounces fresh ginger root, coarsely grated
3 to 4 quarts water
½ lemon, cut into several pieces
1¾ cups granulated cane sugar
1/8 teaspoon ale or bread yeast
¼ cup lukewarm water
Combine ginger, lemon and sugar in a large pot. Add 2 quarters of water.
Simmer, covered, for 25 minutes. Remove from head and let stand until cool.
Pour ¼ cup of water in a small bowl. Sprinkle the yeast into the water.
Let stand for 5 minutes.
Using a funnel, pour 1 quart of cool water into a 1-gallon glass jug. Pour the warm ginger liquid into the jug, straining the ginger and lemon as you go.
Aiming to make the overall temperature of the liquid lukewarm (70-76 degrees, on a thermometer), adjust the temperature of the remaining water and add it to the jug, leaving about 2 inches of head space.
Place a cap or stopper on the jug, and agitate it vigorously for a few seconds. Let the capped jug sit for 15 minutes.
Remove the cap, and add the yeast-water mixture. Cap the jug again and shake the jug. Let the capped jug rest 15 minutes.
Remove the cap, top off the bottle with warm water, cap loosely and proceed immediately to bottling.
Using properly sanitized bottles and a funnel, fill each bottle with soda from the jug. Secure caps on bottles with a bottle capper.
Store bottle in a large plastic bin at room temperature.
Carbonation time will depend on the quality of your yeast and the temperature of the room, between 48 and 72 hours. If your room temperature is above 77 degrees, you might want to check your carbonation after 36 hours.
When carbonation is right, put all the bottles in the refrigerator. For better flavor, wait a couple of days before drinking.
Source: "Homemade Root Beer, Soda and Pop" | Only registered users can write comments.
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