One down the drain

[vakkotaur]

The attempt at vanilla cream soda didn't work out all that well. There was some vanilla flavor and there was carbonation. There was also an overwhelming yeast odor. It swamped and ruined the vanilla flavor. I sampled it. Twice. jmaynard sampled it. I dumped it down the drain.

I have started another bottle, going lighter on the sugar and the yeast, and leaving a smaller air gap in the bottle. If I can get the yeast smell down to a tolerable level and still have carbonation, then I'll consider things a real success. As it is, well, who wants yeast soda? I certainly don't.

Comments

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I was puzzled when you announced that you were starting this experiment. Won't the yeast produce alcohol as well as carbon dioxide, creating something that is not soda but a sort of vanilla wine or something?

I thought carbonated soft drinks were usually carbonated by injecting carbon dioxide under pressure at a controlled temperature. I have done this on a small scale using a soda water bottle. Dunno if you can still get those, though. They used compressed carbon dioxide cartridges to inject a premeasured quantity of gas into clear water in a sealed metal bottle. Bar supply places used to sell them. I used mine to carbonate apple juice, mainly. It worked very well.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

According the site I got this from, while there is some alcohol, it's been measured to be 0.35% to 0.5% or about as much as a "non-alcoholic" beer. It's not enough to be concerned about unless there are religious or medical reasons to stay away from even traces of alcohol.

It is indeed possible to get "soda siphons" that use CO2 cartridges. They do work, but I never really was comfortable with CO2 cartridges. The yeast method avoids that, but it does of course mean there is yeast, unless I were to make things more complicated and somehow set up a two-vessel system or get something like a gasogene - not the sort of thing one is apt to find nowadays. At least not find and care to use as it'd likely be better to preserve such a thing.

This one-bottle mix appears to have an elegant simplicity to it, but maybe the excessive yeast odor is unavoidable in so simple an arrangement. I'll admit I mainly wanted to play with fermentation a bit without generating a truly alcoholic drink. The idea of a homebrew beer is admittedly tempting, but I suspect I'd have trouble on a couple counts. I simply do not need that much beer (even a small batch would be a few gallons) around, and I'd probably want something more difficult to produce. From what I've read of wine production, it's much more difficult than beer. Or it is if you want something that is about taste and not just alcohol.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Are you using baker's yeast or brewer's yeast? We've made a fair amount of wine in the past, and always used a champagne yeast. No yeast flavor or odor. Baker's yeast always has that characteristic "bready" smell.

Yeasts also produce significant amounts of sediment. In traditional champagne making, they actually held the individual bottles "en point" (with the cork down) so the sediment went into the neck of the bottle. Then they would crack open the seal of each bottle to let the internal pressure blow the sediment out before resealing the bottle for storage.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Right now I am using baker's yeast. I would quite happily switch to brewer's or champagne yeast but I haven't seen any locally. Perhaps on my next trip to a larger town I can find some. I am aware of the sediment problem, and have handled the finished bottle gently and decanted carefully to avoid stirring up the sediment.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Beer and winemaking yeasts are readily available by mail order. E.C.Kraus and Homebrew It both have web presences, and we used to get supplies from Anderson's Orchard near Valparaiso, IN by mail.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

sistaur visited a homebrewing supply place today and I should be getting a couple packets of champagne yeast soon. I'll see how that works.

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

Using soda water or some other fast form of carbonation would speed up the process, so you can tell whether the recipe would turns out tasty or not without having to wait.

Then again, if speed were the top priority, it'd be easier to just buy cream soda in the store.