Dandelion Root Beer, All Drunk Up

So, I know you're all waiting impatiently to find out how this soda concoction worked out. Or maybe not. Maybe you figured my silence on the matter meant it had turned toxic and I'd given up in despair and hoped that everyone forgot about my crazy ideas.

But probably not, as the blog's stats show that there seem to be a lot of people googling about dandelion soda, so everyone else out there must be as broke as me, and looking out at their lawn covered in dandelions and going hmmm....

Back a few days ago (I stopped keeping track of how many days were involved in all of this) I capped up the root beer. After another few days, it seemed to be getting pressurized, so I stuck it in the fridge. But then when I checked again later, the bottle seemed pretty squishy, so I put it back out on the counter again, and went ahead and capped the tea bottle, too.

Yesterday they were both feeling pressurized, so I put them in the fridge, and today we tried them. I could tell by feel that the root beer was once again not quite there, so I opened the tea first. It gave a whoosh! Yay! We tried it. It was fizzy. Yay!

Not quite sure about the flavor of that one. It's still a little on the Ricola side of things. And kind of like kombucha. Not that this is a shock, given that they're both fermented tea. It's not bad, just different. It would undoubtedly be refreshing on a warmer day than today. LemurBoy liked it. LemurGirl didn't.

The root beer was, as I expected, still pretty much flat. LB didn't like the flavor (he hasn't from the beginning). LG did. Convenient, that. I'm not sure why it didn't work out. It definitely had a bit of fermenty-something going. LemurDa, who has done quite a bit of homebrewing before, said he could taste a difference in the cultures between the two, which is kinda strange, as they used the same starter. It could well be the syrup vs. sugar thing - I'm pretty sure I'd added regular sugar to the starter by the time I started the tea-soda.

So that's the result - half success, half not-gonna-kill-you-but-not-really-soda.

I think I'll start some more tomorrow.