Homemade Root Beer Soda - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 gallon water
2 cups water (for making extract)
2 ounces fresh gingerroot
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon yeast

Preparation

Slice the ginger into thin sections and add them to two cups of boiling water.
Simmer this on very low heat for 20 minutes.
While this is simmering, boil the gallon of water and two cups of sugar for one minute and set aside.
Pour the ginger and liquid into a blender and blend on high for about one minute.
Pour this blend into the sugar water, through a strainer.
With a soup ladle, pour a few cups of the hot brew through the remaining pulp to extract a bit more of the ginger flavor.
Cool to room temperature. When cool, add vanilla, yeast and stir until dissolved.
Let sit for about 30 minutes.
Then bottle and age.
The simplest, safest and least expensive method of bottling is to use one-liter plastic soft drink bottles with screw caps.
These can be sterilized by rinsing in a mixture of household bleach and water and then rinsed with clean water.
After filling, the bottles should be set aside at room temperature for about 48 hours, or until hard (check by squeezing).
Then refrigerate to finish the aging process.
Leaving the bottles at room temperature too long will cause over carbonation.
Using glass rather than plastic bottles can cause shattered bottles.
Another nice feature of the plastic bottles is that they can be re-carbonated if only partially consumed.
Just let it sit out over night with the cap on and refrigerate it when hard.