Home Made Root Beer

Tonight, Scott and I had the opportunity to make some home made root beer. It was an interesting experience. First off, I've been reading up on the process and found that this is a fairly dangerous activity. A lot of pressure involved if you don't handle it carefully. With that said, we decided to work in a save environment. Somewhere we felt safe and secure. We went to Mom's kitchen. Here, I began by mixing up 13 cups of cold water, a tray of ice cubes, 1.5 cups of sugar and a half ounce of root beer extract in a pitcher. Once I had it mixed up, I realized that there would be too much in the pitcher to fit and we poured some out into a 2 liter cooler. Then came the fun part. We added about a pound of dry ice to the mix. Wow did it bubble over. I replace the lid as best I could an held it in place until the pressure within forced me to turn it and release some of the force. It was really cool to watch. This high level of bubbling pressure happened for about 15 minutes. At the end, we had some fairly good root beer. I'd say give it a whirl some time.

Next week I'm doing the same thing with my students in science class. Stay posted for the results. I'll try to get some video/photos on too.