Root Beer take 2 (FAILED)

[CrealCritter]

I purchased some brewing yeast (Ale) for this batch. I have it boiling now, house smells like a root beer factory. My wife loves the smell, I do to.

Ingredients

 

[CrealCritter]

Here's the quantities & 30 minute boil in 1 gallon spring water. Stir in lime juice when you cut off the fire at the end of 30 minute boil. Place covered pot in sink of cold water until wort is 70 degrees or below. Remove the lid after 20 minutes and check it's temperature.

Inoculated, airrated, bunged and airlocked.

Original Gravity = 1038ish... 3 lbs of fermentables (dark cane sugar). It should finish out around 1010 final gravity, so that would be around 4.8% alcohol contents or there abouts.

Was good tasting going in to the carboy, hoping for a successfully ferment

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 1 - looking and smelling good so far.

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 2 - picking up slightly. Nice peaceful ferment.

 

[CrealCritter]

Peppermint extract? I had no idea! Looks like a good batch of stuff that should taste good in the end!

Peppermint is yummy

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 3 - running well, so far so good.

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 4 - I like the way it's fermenting nice and peaceful with Ale brewing yeast, instead of ginger bug that I used in my failed batch. It looks like it still has a few days left to go. Seeing very little trub in the bottom of the carboy but the bubbles inside the carboy seem to be more white now. So I would guess it looks like the yeast eat through the sassafras root sugars first, probably because it was a more of a simple sugar than the dark brown sugar cane sugars are. It'll be interesting to see what the yeast does when it breaks down the more complex sugars from some of the other multiple ingredients.

You can really see the bubble color difference by comparing both day 1 and day 4 pictures. Yeast I'd a very interesting organism.

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 6 - I moved the carboy to the kitchen counter to bottle later this evening. The brewing yeast has pretty much finished eating itself out of house and home. A sniff of the airlock, smells of root beer & alcohol, I guess that's the way it should smell .

Now that I moved it to the kitchen counter, I'm so tempted to remove the air lock and bung and use my wine thief to get a little taste and see if its any good or needs to go down the drain, like my first attempt.

Patience, Palawan Learner, patience...

 

[CrealCritter]

OK... I had my wife help me with tasting and syphoning. Its not sour so that's good. We both agreed... it's pretty alcoholic, the hydrometer bottomed @1010 out so its fully fermented. It is most definitely not sweet at all, it tingles your tongue, its tart, flavors that come through is cinnamon and vanilla. A mouth full leaves your entire mouth tingly.

I added 2 cups of dark brown cane sugar dissolved in spring water as a primer and bottled 4 pints to see how it tastes again after it's carbonated. The rest of the 2 1/2 gallons I dumped down the drain.

I'm not considering this a failure until after its carbonated and give it another taste test. Then I'll decide if it's a failure or not.

Since I can make a good tasting root beer in the pot before it goes through fermentation. I have another idea to make hard root beer. But I need to think through it a little bit more, before I put root beer take 3 into action.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Peppermint extract? I had no idea! Looks like a good batch of stuff that should taste good in the end!