How to Make Root Beer Water Kefir

You can make your own healthy root beer! Flavoring water kefir with a simple syrup made of nourishing roots and herbs is simple to do and tastes great. Not only that, root beer water kefir is packed with gut and other health benefits. A treat that is also good for us!

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Root beer (and the soft drink in general) tends to fall away when we start to improve our diets. Commercial carbonated beverages are obvious and simple, though not always easy, to eliminate from our lives in order to feel better.

The familiar brands of root beer tend to contain high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, and a number of other undesirable ingredients. Sometimes you can find brands that are made with sugar and fewer unrecognizable ingredients, but there is still a lot in those brands that is working against us. They are usually a bit pricey, and more of a splurge than a part of a nourishing diet.

However, what if you could, for a reasonable price and level of effort, make a root beer that is actually nourishing? Even a part of your plan to feel and function well?

I have made a few forays into root beer brewing. This is the one! At least for now. Many recipes use a ginger bug as the base, and that is a good way to do it. It takes a bit more effort than my method, but it works well and tastes delicious.

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Lower Effort Root Beer

This time, I decided to use water kefir as the basis for a root beer, mainly because I have had the water kefir going for a few years. That part of the root beer project requires no thought and almost no time or effort.

I also don’t necessarily want to add yet another ferment to my repertoire of jars bubbling on my counter. I already have milk kefir, water kefir, jun kombucha, sauerkraut, and sometimes others, like pink lemonade, salsa, ketchup, and more! Enough is enough.

If you are not familiar with water kefir, this is your lucky day! Essentially, it is water fermented with a bit of sugar and some water kefir grains. The grains consume the sugar and culture the water over a few days, then you remove them from the water kefir. You can drink it like that for its probiotic and other benefits.

Even better, you can do a second ferment with some flavoring and a bit more sugar in some form to feed the ferment. The result of this second ferment is a bubbly, fizzy drink that tastes like whatever you used as flavoring. An excellent replacement for those soft drinks we don’t want to have but also kind of miss!

What Is Water Kefir?

More and more people are making water kefir these days, but it still seems less commonly known than its cousins, milk kefir and kombucha.

Milk kefir is similar to water kefir in that you use “grains” to culture the milk. Both follow a very similar, simple process. You combine the grains and the liquid in a jar and let them sit for awhile at room temperature. Then strain out the grains and start over, consuming the finished product.

The grains used for milk kefir are not the same as those used for water kefir. Milk kefir is available in most grocery stores, either plain or flavored. It is like a thin, drinkable yogurt.

Kombucha is similar to water kefir in that you use water and sugar, but no milk. It includes tea (very sweet tea) and, rather than kefir grains, you use a scoby to provide the cultures. Though kombucha is also fairly widely available in stores now, it tends to be expensive and weak in comparison to the homemade version.

Benefits of Water Kefir

Water kefir offers a number of benefits, including:

• probiotics (may improve gut health)
• antioxidants
• anti-inflammatory properties
• better blood sugar regulation
• improved immune health
• nutrients (vitamin C, B vitamins, minerals)
• decreased risk of obesity and hypertension

Beyond the health benefits, water kefir is fun to have! For those of us who didn’t grow up consuming fermented foods, it can be a challenge to develop a taste for things like sauerkraut, kimchee, and fermented vegetables.

Not so with water kefir! It makes an excellent replacement for carbonated drinks, and it is not a difficult taste to acquire. None of my (now) young adult children has managed to love sauerkraut yet, but they all liked water kefir from the very first sip. Even the hyper picky one, who will remain anonymous.

You can read more about making water kefir and purchase the grains here. Friends who make water kefir may be happy to give you their extra grains, as they can multiply! Once you have some grains (they don’t seem like grains so much as they seem like little gelatinous blobs), you are set indefinitely if you keep the ferment going. Mine are a few years old.

But Are There Downsides?

Yes, potentially. If you aren’t used to fermented foods or drinks, you might want to start slowly with water kefir. You may be fine, or you may have digestive upset at first, especially if you consume a lot or if your gut health is not great.

Some people with certain, sadly common gut infections may not do well at all with fermented foods and drinks until the infection is resolved. It is always a wise idea to start with small amounts of fermented foods and see how you do, especially if you have not been consuming them habitually.

One might wonder about the alcoholic content of water kefir. Does the fermentation create alcohol? Yes, but just a bit. It doesn’t taste alcoholic to me. I haven’t tested mine in any way, but as far as I could learn by asking Dr. Internet, water kefir contains under 2% alcohol. If any alcohol content is a concern, water kefir might not be the thing for you.

Finally, water kefir isn’t free of sugar. For that reason, it is not a GAPS approved drink. I use about 1/4 cup sugar in a quart of water kefir. That sugar feeds the grains, producing the fermentation, during the first ferment. It doesn’t taste sweet after that. Then I feed it more sugar in some form during the second ferment, when the flavor is added.

Often, I use grape juice for the second ferment, which is packed with natural sugar. For root beer, the sugar in the syrup feeds the second ferment. Again, depending on how long it cultures, some or much of that sugar will be consumed, leaving probiotics, enzymes, and nutrients for you to drink. Some of the sugar will remain, though.

How to Make Root Beer Water Kefir

Once you make the syrup, there is hardly need for a recipe! I love how easy water kefir is to make, once you get the hang of it. I also love how simple and forgiving it is to work with. Nothing needs to be very exact, and it is hard to ruin!

Measure our your herbs.

Simmer them as gently as possible in a quart of water (don’t use water kefir for this part!) for 45 minutes.

Stir in the sugar and molasses and dissolve well. Also add the vanilla now.

Let cool completely with all the herbs and bark still in it, then strain the solids out.

You can use the syrup now or refrigerate.

1. To use: strain the grains out of a quart of water kefir. Pour the water kefir into a clean jar and add root beer syrup. I use a 32 oz. glass bottle that had grape juice in it originally. Pour in the quart of water kefir, then fill the rest of the way with root beer syrup. It takes about 2/3 cup of the syrup.
2. Cover the bottle and leave it to ferment for as long as needed to get to the level of fizziness you prefer. Take the lid off once per day so you don’t get too much pressure building up and potentially explode the bottle! The amount of time for fermentation will vary according to several factors– your taste in fizziness, how warm your location is, how fermented the water kefir was when you used it, etc. I usually do 2-3 days, stopping it when it bubbles up when I remove the lid. We don’t like it super fizzy, and that is about right.
3. Once you think it is fizzy enough, refrigerate. Not only will it taste better chilled, but it is less likely to bubble out all over the place if it is cold!

It really will go everywhere if you ferment too long! Chilling it helps tame this tendency.

Fun Facts About Root Beer

I have noticed that many people I have met from other countries, mainly Europe and Asia, do not like root beer. Many really detest it! It seems to be an acquired taste. While plenty of Americans also dislike it, root beer is quite popular in the United States.

It turns out, many of the old time root beer ingredients are native to North America. As people moved into what eventually became the eastern United States, they learned the medicinal and food values of the plants they found growing there. American colonists then learned how to use those plants from the people living in those colonies where they settled, and made similar use of them for both medicines and… root beer! So, root beer is a very American beverage. Even more American than apple pie! (That came from England.)

While early versions of root beer centered around sassafrass, different formulations included dozens of different ingredients, all the way back to colonial times and maybe even earlier. Much more recently, the controversy over sassafrass has eliminated it from most commercial brews. Of course, many store bought root beers use artificial flavors and all sorts of ingredients the early Americans never heard of, and they are carbonated differently now rather than fermented.

I have left the sassafrass out of my recipe. Actually, I don’t think it is a problem to consume it in the quantities used in making traditional root beer. You could certainly add it in for the health benefits and for the old time, delicious flavor. I left it out mainly just to keep the number of ingredients down!

While I have played around with root beer making in the past, I gave it another go recently after listening to a doctor discuss Lyme disease treatment on a podcast. He mentioned smilax (sarsaparilla) as effective against Lyme and other infections. Those old remedies and tonics weren’t all crazy. Some are making a comeback as modern doctors and scientists “discover” their efficacy.

This recipe would not give anyone enough sarsaparilla to treat any disease, but it makes a good excuse…

Many recipes for root beer call for a dozen or so ingredients not readily available in modern kitchens. Unless you are able to forage many of these ingredients, the root beer project could become expensive! I have tried to keep the odd and expensive ingredients to a minimum here, relying mostly on staples from the grocery store that are reasonably priced and likely to have other culinary uses.

Some ingredients that might be nice to add, and would likely improve this recipe, would be sassafrass, licorice, and wintergreen. I can buy anise stars very inexpensively at my local Sprouts market, so the only thing I actually ordered was the sarsaparilla. A little bit goes a long way, so you can get quite a lot of mileage out of a single bag.

Benefits of Root Beer

What? Root beer has benefits?!

Well, the kind in the cans and bottles and soda fountains is mostly risk (apart from tasting good!) and no (health) reward.

The herbs and barks and such used in real, old fashioned root beer constitute a health tonic in their own right, above and beyond the benefits of water kefir, ginger bug, yeast, or any other fermentation method.

Here are some purported health benefits of the ingredients common in different traditional root beer recipes:

• sarsaparilla— used to treat skin problems, cancer, and arthritis, good for the liver, hormone balance, and coughs, saponins help with infections, synergistic with other herbs and nutrients (helps us absorb and benefit from them better)
• sassafrass— pain relieving, anti-inflammatory, immune boosting, energizing, antiseptic, promotes wound healing, fights cancer, helps digestive troubles,improves blood sugar– restricted in U.S. in recent years and still controversial; you can read more here
• licorice–used to treat ulcers, digestive complaints, menstrual and menopause symptoms, and viruses
• anise— antioxidants and an array of nutrients, used to treat skin problems, infections, respiratory system, digestion, hormone imbalance, and improve sleep and circulation
• ginger— anti-inflammatory and used to treat nausea, digestion, arthritis, viruses, and may improve circulation, heart health, asthma, and blood sugar
• cloves— pain relieving, fights infections, promotes healthy blood sugar and good digestion
• allspice— anti-inflammatory, supports dental, immune, heart, and digestive health
• wintergreen— relieves pain and fever, helps digestive and respiratory issues, anti-inflammatory,
• birch bark— used to relieve pain, promote kidney health, strengthen immune system, natural antihistamine, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidants, relieves anxiety
• dandelion root— rich in phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals, supports metabolic health, detoxification, and hormone balance, improves immune function and skin, lowers cancer risk

Those old folks living in the eastern United States in centuries past might have been onto something!

Does Root Beer Water Kefir Taste Like Commercial Root Beer?

Well, kind of. Not exactly.

If you have been having root beer recently, you will likely notice more of a difference than if you haven’t had it in a long time. You will also notice less difference if you haven’t been consuming much sugar. It is amazing how our tastes can be retrained. My family now perceives foods as very sweet that would not have seemed sweet in years past. Sweets we used to like now taste sickly sweet, or, as my son says, “so sweet you can’t taste it”. Too much!

That retraining isn’t an overnight project, though. If you haven’t been reducing sugars for long, this will not taste very sweet. You could increase the sugar or reduce the fermenting time, or both, at first.

The combination of herbs will affect how it tastes. If you add more of the cloves, or less sarsaparilla, or do something else, the taste will change. You can certainly add some of the other common root beer herbs and that will also change the taste.

Overall, I think you will find this way of making root beer is less sweet, more deeply flavored, and a bit earthy. It isn’t the same. It makes us think of root beer. In a way, it tastes better– more satisfying, but less addictive and less like a dessert. Anytime I make the syrup, someone comes into the kitchen to smell it. It smells like… root beer!

In case you are wondering, yes, it works fine to make a root beer float as well! Try it with my GAPS Vanilla Ice Cream.