Hires Big H Root Beer Extract, Root Beer Soda and Dessert Syrup, 4 Fl Oz (Pack of 1)

I grew up with home brewed root beer with the old original Hires extract. My grandma would make it in huge batches and bottle it in glass bottles and it would take about a week to carbonate. Man, I remember those summers with fondness. It had its own flavor, enhanced by the yeast, and I grew to love it, especially with Root Beer Floats! As an adult, I wanted to share that tradition with my children, so I looked into it and found the old recipe. Unfortunately the original Hires extract is no longer made. So I searched out the various brands of true extract available and there aren't many. Zatarains is fairly good, though it has a really licoricey flavor that I'm not as fond of. Rainbow Homebrew also makes one that is pretty good, but their bottles are small and fairly expensive. Then I found Hires Big H. They aren't the original Hires I grew up with, but the flavor is darn close and the instructions on the bottle are identical to my grandma's old recipe. Also the price is good. But the good news is that I don't have to make it in 4 gallon batches and find glass bottles and caps anymore. There is a really simple recipe I found that works GREAT and is ready in just 24 hours. It's simple and inexpensive and fun to do with my kids. Here goes. What you need is: 1 2-liter bottle (brand doesn't matter. just make sure it's empty and clean before you use it. Contamination from bacteria will make it taste funny.) 1.5 cups sugar. (Or for a low calorie version, use 1/2 cup sugar and a cup (or equivalent) of granulated splenda or stevia. I prefer a mix of the two. It carbonates just fine) 1/4 tsp yeast (simple bread yeast works, though some prefer champagne yeast which is harder to find) 1.5 tbsp of Rootbeer Extract funnel All you do is use a funnel to pour the sugar in the empty 2-liter bottle. Add the 1/4 tsp yeast, Add the 1.5 tbsp extract and fill to the top with cool water. The yeast is sensitive to heat, so warm water can be too warm and kill it. I just stick with cool water. Filtered water is best, but tap works. Then screw the cap on, shake it up and lay the bottle on its side for 18-24 hours. The bottle should stay at room temperature. It will take forever to carbonate if cold and will die if the heat gets too high. You can tell that the process is working if the bottle becomes tight. If you squeeze it and it's hard as a drum, it's carbonated. If you leave it too long the pressure will just keep building so take care when opening it that you do it slowly or you'll have a root beer fountain. Once it is carbonated, refrigerate it. I will sometimes make a batch and put it in a cooler full of ice to chill it quickly. Chilling the root beer slows down the carbonation process greatly and make it less likely to erupt with suds. Also if you want smaller bottles, you can use this 2-liter recipe, mix it up, but instead of sitting it on its side for a day, fill up empty 20 oz bottles. Each 2-liter does about 4 20 Oz bottles. Then just lay those bottles on their sides and you'll end up with the same results a day later. Enjoy! You'll get excited by how simple it is and if you're like me, you'll want to experiment with carbonating other beverages by adding yeast. (Hint: Apple juice is pretty good, though it tastes beery. Chocolate milk was a mistake.) P.S. for those worried about the fermentation process, you will not get drunk on homebrewed root beer made this way. The yeast does not have enough time to produce any measurable levels of alcohol. I read an article by a professor who did the math and it would take well over two gallons to equal the alcohol in a single beer.

We use this all the time for making root beer for big parties Great flavor

The root beer extract is fine. Haven’t used it yet but it smells root beer-y enough. Unfortunately, it was a small bottle in a box 6 times its size with no packing whatsoever and it must have rolled and banged around the whole trip to my house. The inside of the box was wet, my hand was solid brown from the extract all over the sides of it, and I do not have a full bottle of extract.

I did a massive taste test with some 300 people at a neighborhood party for dry ice root beer. The Hires was well received, but not necessarily because it was a recognized flavor as the brand name would imply. My notes indicate that this extract had a "full sweet flavor" as prepared by my recipe and different enough to give the homemade experience I was aiming for. I refer to this as a "safe" flavor, but not necessarily the best for all tastes (NONE of the extracts were hands down best for all.) My recipe: Makes 4 gallons 4 gallons slightly chilled water (too cold may not dissolve all the sugar) 2 cups white & 2 cups brown sugars. Mix with drill & paint stir tool One bottle of Hires (SHAKE bottle. FYI-most extracts are 1 oz per gallon) 4-5 lbs of dry ice partially broken up (add slowly and as needed to keep the mix from "boiling over") I have several tricks (like the paint stir tool) that you will have to figure out on your own to serve the root beer to 300 people in a short period of time...) You ask? "What was the best received flavor from my taste test? Honestly, the brand did not matter. The extracts all have distinct flavors (okay, I tried, in NO specific order: Hires, Zatarains, Cook, Gnome, Rochester (hard to find), Watkins & McCormick.) Some flavors are "drier" (more flavor/less sweet) while others are sweeter (Hires was on the sweet side.) People just wanted cold, fizzy, and sweet with a taste different from commercially bottled root beer (they want a "homemade" flavor and experience...with the mists coming out of the serving containers!) Yes, I have my favorite and I could tell the differences, but honestly, the less expensive $1/oz was as well received/enjoyed as the $4/oz extracts. No one turned down any of the flavors

If you are watching your sugar intake, or don't drink high fructose corn syrup, try using this extract with seltzer water and your favorite sweetener. You'll never tell the difference from the sugared stuff.

Bought to use in Soda Stream and mini-Keg so we could carbonate without the dry ice. First try in soda water, I don't think we got it sweet enough. Taste was almost yucky after trying Portland Syrup brand. Next try was the mini keg, We adjusted the recipe for 2 gallons instead of 3 gallons. Calls for 10 cups of sugar! We calculated 6.666 (6 2/3) cups of sugar. Mixed, chilled and carbonated in keg. Nice foamy head. wonderful smell. Flavor was alright, standard root beer, but WAY, Way too sweet! All I could do is take small sips for a sugar rush. Older friend and my 19 yr old nephew both took one sip and wouldn't touch the rest because it was too sweet for them. Today we'll mix another 2 gallon batch WITHOUT sugar and mix with this too sweet batch.

I saw a recipe for a root beer pie on a social media site and my grandson went crazy for me to make it. I couldn't find any root beer flavoring here locally so I hopped on Amazon and it was here the next day. I chose this product after reading reviews and let me tell you that pie with some kind of good!! Very pleased with my purchase. Good taste, flavor and excellent quality.

My 11 year old wouldn't tell me what he wanted for Christmas. This opened the field so I could get him something unusual. I decided to introduce him to home made root beer. We purchased a kit from Amazon and he really didn't like the results. So I decided to try other extracts. Watkins and McCormick had a chemical taste. The no-label extract from our local brew store had no flavor. I liked Zatarains but it has a distinct pasty aftertaste (wintergreen oil) that my son did not like. Then we tried Hires Big H. We both liked the taste very much! After making several batches, I decided that the flavor was just too close to bottled root beer and needed something to make it special. After researching several recipes for making rootbeer from scratch, I decided to add cherry bark flavor to the recipe. Our current recipe is: Heat 1 gallon of filtered water to a boil, add 4 lbs plus 1.5 cups of sugar to make syrup. Pour syrup into a 5 gallon Cornelius Keg and add 3 gallons of cool filtered water followed by 1 bottle Hires Big H Rootbeer Extract and 2.7 ounces Cherry Bark Syrup (1/3 of an 8 oz bottle purchased from Amazon). Add filtered water to make 5 gallons then force carbonate at 30 psi for two days rotating occasionally. Drop pressure to 3 lbs to serve. Sometimes we will use a little bit of Zatarains instead of the Cherry Bark. This makes a very good root beer that doesn't taste like everyone elses. Last weekend we served 75 rootbeer floats to a theater group and it went over very well! Highly reccomended