Recipe: Homemade Soda Pop

We love soda pop but hate spending the money, and hate that the store-bought sodas are so full of sugar. We got to thinking ... what if we could control the ingredients? We did a little research and found these recipes. Can't wait to try them!

Root Beer Soda Pop:

Our VHTS's favorite soda!

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups sugar (will experiment to see if we can substitute honey)

1 quart hot water

4 teaspoons root beer extract

Directions:

Dissolve yeast in the 1/2 cup warm water. In a separate container, dissolve the sugar in the 1 quart hot water. Combine both mixtures in a gallon jar with the root beer extract. Fill the jar the rest of the way with warm water. Gently stir until all is mixed together very well. Cover. Set in warm sun for about 4-6 hours. Refrigerate. Serve the next day. NOTE: Experiment with the amount of yeast - too much and it'll taste too carbonated and "nasty". Try 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of yeast.

Ginger Ale Soda Pop:

Great for stomach problems.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups water

4 inch long piece of ginger root (peel and chop)

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

3 teaspoon lemon extract

1/2 teaspoon stevia (sweetener) powder

Directions:

Boil the ginger in the 3 1/2 cups water for 10 minutes. Strain. Pour the ginger juice/syrup into a large jar. Add the extracts and stevia. Mix well. Cool then store in refrigerator as a ginger-soda-pop syrup. When ready to prepare as a drink, pour 1/8 to 1/4 cup of the ginger syrup into a tall glass, and add 1 cup (or a little more) of sparkling water. Add ice and serve.

How to Make Sparkling Water or Seltzer:

There are a lot of gadgets on the market to make your own soda pop or seltzer or sparkling or carbonated water. You could get those and use to make your special drinks.

You need two items:

-a seltzer bottle (aka soda syphon)

-chargers (small cannisters of pressurized CO2)

Don't buy the cheap plastic kinds as they'll break easily. The seltzer bottle is like a thermos bottle with a sprayer built into the top. The chargers do the actual carbonation. The charger fits into the spray head. Fill with regular water, snap-on or screw-in the charger. Press the plunger. Out comes freshly carbonated sparkling water. It's not as fizzy as what we could buy in the store, but it'll do!

We've been trying to figure out how to make carbonated or seltzer water without using a gadget, but so far no luck. Anyone know?