I have so much fruits this year that I cannot humanly have enough time to transform all of it into jams. Both our freezers are jammed packed too so I’am exploring the possibility to make soda. I have zero experience and would like to make alcohol-less soda.
Before looking for tutorials/books on the subject on the Net, I would like to know if the cost is reasonable or not? I need bottles of course, sugar, yeast(?) etc. How on Earth am’I (sorry don’t know how to write) going to make carbonated water?
ive played with it a little, honestly I think you are better off making carbonated water and then adding a fruit syrup to it, to make soda, at the time you pour it. If you have any sediment/pulp in the syrup, you will get a ton of fiz and your soda will go flat really quickly.
Making carbonated water is easy, but you need to purchase a keg, regulator, and CO2 tank. You could also carbonate smaller quanities of juice directly in a carbonating bottle once you have the tank, regulator, hose, and fittings.
We actually went to a natural soda making class at a farm a month ago. It’s very easy! The process was basically to use champagne yeast with sugar or simple syrup. Add whatever fruit/herbs/petals/whatever you would like (you don’t need much at all) and let it sit on the counter with a breathable top (cheese cloth) for a day and then move to a narrow mouth bottle and refrigerate for another day.
If you brew kombucha, that is a great place to add fruit. —Not while brewing, but when you pour some off, you just add some cut fruit and it will seriously sweeten and flavor it. Kombucha has an effervescence to it.
just ferment them slightly. look on you tube . there’s a couple on there that makes homemade ginger ale as well as ale of other fruit. if you control the ferment, you will get the fizz with very little alcohol. its the easiest way but you will still get a very small amount of alcohol, but not enough to effect you. i did it and it was delicious! they dont even add yeast. just the natural yeast on the fruit. adding yeast would speed up the process but might give you more alcohol.
Along the lines of @TheDerek re adding carbonated water to juice, each year I make about 60 quarts of juice (grape, apple, plum, pear, peach) and add it on demand to carbonated water from a Sodastream.Tastes great.
I use a steam juicer (I don’t shop at Walmart but googled steam juicer and I see they have a sale on steam juicers for $55, half the usual $110 price) and pour the hot juice into hot bottles. They seal within a few minutes. No need to water bath them. I guess to be super safe you could measure the juice’s acidity but I’ve never had a problem with this method of canning straight juice.
Granted this workaround is not as cool as opening a bottle of already carbonated juice but many friends love the bottled juice and add carbonation or mulled spices on their end.
Check out adventures in homebrewing and the other beer making sites like Northern brewer. You might want to get set up with an old soda keg and a CO2 canister setup, basically a larger soda stream that costs way less to refill and force carbonates. I had purchased my CO2 gauge from Beverage Factory.
That’s an awesome idea, actually. I’ll have to look into it. My better half and the girls love their ‘spicy’ water and it would be much more cost-effective to have it on tap than buying cans.
Not exactly soda but we do the same with our sparkel machine. It uses little packets of citric acid and baking soda to carbonate things instead of co2 cartridges.
We like to squeeze juice from various things we grow into the water. Very yummy! Have used calamondin, lime, mint, star fruit.