It’s St. Patricks day this week! And while we don’t drink beer we do enjoy ROOT beer!!! And my favorites? Root beer floats!
Did you know you can make root beer at home? There are a few variations and recipes out there, one is even on the back of the root beer extract recipe. BUT we’re scientists at our house, so we went searching for a version made with dry ice! Fun to make AND fun to drink!
Dry Ice Root Beer
16 C cold water
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 Tbls Root Beer Extract
1 pound dry ice, broken
Stir the cold water and sugar until the sugar is dissolved! This step is the most important, if your sugar isn’t dissolved it will stick to the dry ice in chunks. Once it’s dissolved add the root beer extract and stir it in!
Crush the dry ice, but remember to be careful. Dry ice is fun, but not a toy, you can easily get burned. Use hot pad holders, or thick gloves when touching it. We crushed it in a bag on our wood cutting board with a hammer.
Pour it into the root beer sugar water….
and stir to keep clumps of the dry ice from sticking to the bowl!
The kids LOVED playing with the “smoke” cloud… and we let them stir, supervised of course.
You can see it bubbling away here! keep stirring it until the dry ice has all dissolved.
Then pour into glasses and enjoy!! Ours wasn’t quite as carbonated as store bought root beer, and seemed a tad bit off. Maybe a different brand of extract would be the key, but it was still really fun and the kids loved it!
Ashlee
Wow! 2.5 cups of sugar and 16 cups of water. That’s a ton of sugar. This looks like a fun experiment, and also a good way to teach kids about how much sugar is in food.
yeah, but what pop isn’t full of sugar? We normally aren’t soda (or pop or cola or whatever you call it) drinkers. So making root beer is a pretty fun treat for the kids! We just tossed away what was left over after that one night
I am also a non-soda-drinking fan of rootbeer. I must shop slower, because I have never seen this extract in the grocery store.
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I had no IDEA dry ice was safe to ingest after dissolving it. Now I have to google it. What a fun kitchen science activity!
{pinning this
So much fun! We always use dry ice for camping and road trips and we love playing with it afterwards, my husband and kids are all scientists! But yes, totally safe, but a bit on the flat side…
Homemade root beer always reminds me of our family reunions.
Really? What a totally fun tradition! My family makes Grandma’s homemade beans and tamales and Grandpa’s meatloaf (not on the same night
those are my family reunion foods!
I am so glad I found your blog! I don’t drink a lot of soda but Rootbeer is something that I’ve loved since I was a little kid. I”m a new follower & would love to have you come link up to Sunday round up http://www.kaylascreationsblog.com/2012/03/sunday-round-up-1.html
Can’t wait to try this recipe out!
Kayla
I hope you like it! I’d like to try a few other homemade recipes, because it wasn’t quite as good as I remember, but that could be the extract I used or maybe the technique. Some recipes call for ginger ale- so precarbonated.
What a fun thing to do!
Would love to have you come link up at Sunday Round Up…. 3 blogs = 1 party.
xx,
Heather
http://www.heatherlyloves.com/2012/03/sunday-round-up-1_8663.html
Thanks so much! It really was a very fun thing to do with the kids, they had a ball!
Who knew you could make your own root beer?!?! This is a must try! I’m pretty excited about it!
Thanks for sharing!
Found you on Flamingo Toes
Visiting from Well Rounded, leahkoenig.blogspot.com
Thanks so much! I know some people grew up making homemade root beer, but this was our first attempt!
You had me at Root Beer! Yummy! Consider, if you will, sharing with my readers over at http://sassafrassalvation.blogspot.com/2012/03/sasss-sunday-salvation-show-17.html
Hugs,
Sass
We love root beer too! I think I want to try another recipe next time to compare!