Batch #5 - J.A.K.E.'s Boot Reer - FAILURE#2

Tonight we tried our hands at root beer making. Jared and I had the boys helping. I think they liked it but did not really enjoy the work. But who enjoys work? We bought a bottle of the flavoring and followed the directions that it came with. It really was very easy. If we like this we will be making some more!


We started with four and a half gallons of water. It said that it should be room temp but we did not have any that was not ice cold. So we boiled some up and used the immersion chiller to cool it down to ninety eight degrees. Jared using the immersion chiller on the bucket of water. I have to warn you that a lot of the pictures were taken by the kids. I wanted to get them as involved as I could.
A close up of the immersion chiller. We have already sent this one in to get printed. It will be going on our beer wall!
We used one pack of Champagne yeast.
We let the yeast soak for a bit in room temp water, as per the directions.
The Teche boys sterilizing bottles
We used eight cups of sugar. The above picture is of Kellen stirring the sugar into the water to dissolve it and Ethan adding the sugar
Now they are reversed. Kellen is pouring and Ethan is stirring
Adding the flavoring. I only added half of the bottle to start with.
Kellen stirring the flavor in
First taste test
YUMMMMY!
Thumbs up! We thought that it tasted a little light on the flavoring so we added the rest of the bottle. Then it was too strong so we added another cup of sugar. So we have a grand total of nine cups of sugar and one full bottle of flavor. After the last taste test we stirred in the yeast and water. And then we were onto the bottling
We bottled some of the Boot Reer in half gallon growlers. The above picture is of Kellen getting a growler filled
Ethan filling a growler
We also filled some bottles. This is a bottle being filled. Our filler wand broke just before we were going to use it so I had to use the auto siphon to fill. It was a pain and messy. With having two kids helping we had a few over filling problems.
Ethan working hard to cap his bottle
A beautiful filled growler
Kellen capping
More of Kellen capping. Watching the boys cap was VERY funny. The faces that were made were hilarious!

In total we made four gallons of Boot Reer. We are storing it in the tub just in case a few of them explode. We are expecting to have a few bottle bombs on our hands. I will post again how it tastes and if any explode.

I am thinking that a Boot Reer float party is in order this weekend!

Update:
The root-beer didn't turn out. The flavor is fine, but there is zero carbonation. No pop, no fizz when you open the bottles. We tried the same trick with the beer, moving the bottles in front of a heat register, but this didn't help. We're pouring our our first attempt and trying again soon. We still hoep to have a successful root-beer by Christmas.