Butler - Making soda at home: mastering the craft of carbonation

MASTERING THE CRAFT
OF CARBONATION

JEREMY BUTLER

2014 by Quarry Books

Text 2014 Jeremy Butler

Photography 2014 by Quarry Books

First published in the United States of America in

2014 by

Quarry Books, a member of

Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

100 Cummings Center

Suite 406-L

Beverly, Massachusetts 01915-6101

Telephone: (978) 282-9590

Fax: (978) 283-2742

www.quarrybooks.com

Visit www.QuarrySPOON.com and help us celebrate food and culture one spoonful at a time!

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the copyright owners. All images in this book have been reproduced with the knowledge and prior consent of the artists concerned, and no responsibility is accepted by the producer, publisher, or printer for any infringement of copyright or otherwise, arising from the contents of this publication. Every effort has been made to ensure that credits accurately comply with information supplied. We apologize for any inaccuracies that may have occurred and will resolve inaccurate or missing information in a subsequent reprinting of the book.

Digital edition published in 2014

Digital edition: 978-1-62788-036-7
Flexibound edition: 978-1-59253-913-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Butler, Jeremy, B.S.

Making soda at home : mastering the craft of carbonation / Jeremy Butler.

pages cm

Includes index.

1. Carbonated beverages--Amateurs manuals. 2. Soft drinks--Amateurs manuals. I. Title.

TP630.B87 2014

641.875--dc23

2013048662

Book Design: Debbie Berne

Photography: Paul Sobota

Styling: Dana Sobota

In memory of Bradley Allen, whose friendship and encouragement extend well beyond the short 20 years in which they were offered.

W ait You make your own pop? Its a common reaction I get from people who learn of my hobby for the first time. So how did I get here? I was going to be a director. I was going to live in Hollywood. Then a brief no-start in film school taught me that it wasnt what you know, its who you know, and as it turned out, I didnt know anybody. Having to pull my stolen car out of a Compton tow yard only further tarnished the dream and helped me realize I didnt belong there. Moreover, I needed the promise of something more than being a waiter after graduation.

I discussed at length my predicament with my longtime friend Brad, who was at that time also trying to switch gears in school. He told me that he just needed to win the lottery so that he didnt have to worry about money and he could just focus on learning and doing whatever he wanted. Neither of us being gamblers, we understood the guarantee of that never happening. The discussion turned to the next best thing: being our own bosses and owning a business. I must have gotten carried away with the DIY attitude when I posited the idea of a soda shop where we could make our own flavors of soda and ice cream. I dont know where that came from. I had never made soda flavors before and had done very little with homemade ice cream. He killed the daydreaming session early and told me to slow down and look into food science as a major. He thought I would enjoy it, so I took his advice and he was right. Ive never looked back.

Ive always played with my food. I remember as a kid making my own recipe for single-serve microwave brownies and peanut butter cups in my mothers kitchen. I also like to do things sometimes as a proof of concept. The Ill bet I can turns into I need to so I can move on and think about something else. So one day, sitting in a chemistry class and discussing weak acids, namely carbonic acid, I thought to myself that armed with my Chem 105 knowledge, I could make my own soda and do it well. I also wanted to go old school and use actual roots to flavor my root beer. Thats when it started to snowball. Always trying to better my batches, I started writing my blog (homemadesodaexpert.blogspot.com), and that has brought me here.

On my journey, I have read the handful of books available on homemade soda and I have noticed that each one seems to focus more on one method of soda making than on a range of methods or techniques. Some books have recipes for fermentation but not much advice on other matters. Other books are just collections of syrup recipes that dont have much advice on adaptation. They are good books, to be sure, and they contain some really great recipes. I recommend them for any soda makers library as much as anything else. However, there needed to be something a bit more all-encompassing. Enter the Expert. There are a handful of principles employed in this book that other books sort of gloss over or touch on only briefly. The craft of carbonation is truly a blend of science and art. Grasping these principles is what really allows one to understand and improve ones craft.

W hile this may not be the end-all, be-all homemade soda book, its intent is to be a handbook for beginners, to guide them to become masters. The key to really mastering home soda making is to understand the science. Armed with that, there may be mistakes in the occasional batch, but knowing what went wrong and why is the first step toward warding off discouragement and giving up on the hobby altogether. Ive tried to keep the technical stuff to a minimum, but as a trained scientist, its sometimes hard to do. Fortunately, the science included in the first couple of chapters isnt a full-out college chemistry course; there are only a handful of principles to grasp and they are pretty straightforward. For anyone who wants to skip directly to the recipes, thats certainly doable. It might be more of a rough road if theres a lot of trial and error, but its doable.

Keep in mind that this is more than just a recipe book. In fact, the recipes here are not as fancy or avant-garde as those that can be found elsewhere. They were intentionally designed that way. Unlike other recipes, however, they are adaptable for the various methods of carbonation in order to bring into focus the possibilities of adaptation. Lots of people like their ginger ale a little tarter, while lots of others like theirs with a little more bite to it. Theres nothing wrong with changing up the ingredients a bit to suit individual tastes.

The recipes themselves all have very similar ingredients and methods. To keep the repetition to a minimum, the full technique for each of the three possible methods is given as a recipe template in the opening chapters. These templates are meant for reference in using the actual recipes in Chapter 4. These individual recipes are all scaled to 1-gallon (3.8 liter) batch sizes. I believe that this is a good size because it can easily be scaled up for a 5-gallon (19 liter) keg or scaled down for a siphon. A fermented batch will fit nicely in two store-bought 2-liter bottles, or a batch of syrup will be enough for four 1-liter home carbonated bottles. It is a very convenient and versatile batch size.