Rainbow Extracts Birch Root Beer

for this extract mixing, instead of using the quick mix directions i scaled down the directions for making it with yeast. which involved a bit of extra water, 4 cups instead of 3, so a 33% increase, but more extra of the other stuff than seems justified. the extra extract was 50% more, a whole more 1/4 teaspoon! and i think even more extra sugar, let me check… yeah, 1/2 cup versus 3 tbsp, which is 133% more. kind of strange that they would vary that much. although i may just be bad at math. anyway it came out better than the other two, so maybe this is the way to go. more on that later.
so they call this one “birch root beer.” which leads me to a conundrum, it is like cherry root beer and thus a root beer? or is it just emphasizing that it is made with birch root and thus really a birch beer? this is exactly why i review birch beers and sarsaparillas though, to me, they are all “root” beers of some sort. soft drinks made from roots. so i will go with the ‘birch beer’ designation.
as i said in the header, this is a better soda than the root beer and sarsaparilla from Rainbow. at least the way i mixed them. yet i think it would be better anyway. the birch is more present along with a good wintergreen taste that doesn’t overwhelm but lets the herbalness of the birch present itself too. it is what i want and expect from a brown birch. it actually reminds me a lot of a slightly less minty A-Treat on tap and that is a good thing. the canned version of A Treat was not nearly as good but this extract might be a better match to the keg version. i’d make this again. which is saying a lot since it is a process, even doing it in the siphon bottle as i did.

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