VulgarCelt wrote: |
We are a Midwest brewery in the process of opening a tap room. I am planning on making several sodas available including root beer. I have tried a few recipes here at the brewery over the last couple of weeks. We found some good ideas but I have had to remove sassafras from our recipes since we are a commercial establishment. What we have been making is in some cases quite good but not what the general public would easily identify as root beer. I'm not sure if its the elimination of sassafras or some other factor. Is there anyone out there with recipes, advice or both who would be willing to help us tackle this? I have little to no interest in RB extracts. I want something we can craft ourselves.
These are what we have done so far. In both instances per some advice we received we substituted licorice root extract for sassafras.
This was quite tasty but very "tea-like":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI3yvNNmgnE
This one was more popular among our tasters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2jnZeu7Y3A |
The second formula is not all natural because it uses artificial vanilla flavor. Neglecting any self imposed constraints on natural versus artificial, the best taste solution is to replace all sassafras and anise with approximately 3 ppm food grade dihydroanethol which you can buy at
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p-8095-dihydroanethole.aspx
You may or may not be able to get a natural version of dihydroanethol elsewhere but flavor-wise, this is the best, by far, solution.
To save money you can also buy what's in the bottle of imitation vanilla flavor:
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p-7665-vanillin-crystals-natural.aspx
or its cheaper synthetic version:
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p-6237-vanillin-crystals.aspx
and replace wintergreen leaves with about 30 ppm food grade wintergreen oil:
http://www.lorannoils.com/essential-oils-1-oz-and-larger-sizes/wintergreen-flavor-natural-0050-fgeo-larger
or food grade methyl salicylate:
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p-7325-methyl-salicylate.aspx
The general procedure for incorporating essential oils or flavor chemicals is to dilute them to less than 5% in a water miscible solvent such as alcohol and add that to vigorously stirred water. In your case, "water" is your herbal tea after it has been filtered. Another method is to produce an emulsion using gum Arabic and sugar syrup such as here:
http://www.opensoda.org/
Do your homework on flavor substances here:
http://www.thegoodscentscompany.com/search3.php
Once you have perfected your formula and are ready to go into production, you can buy food grade flavor chemicals from wholesale sources such as
https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/industries/flavors-and-fragrances.html