(Excerpt taken from the Savannah Morning News; Savannah, GA.)

Making soda is almost as easy as drinking it

Here are some tips:

HOW MUCH TIME

From mixing to bottling, a 4-gallon batch of soda takes approximately 90 minutes to make, said Peter Quails, manager of Beer Essentials, a Lakewood, Wash., store that sells soda-making supplies.

EQUIPMENT

A food-grade bucket for mixing, preferably larger than your batch size. Quails recommends a 6-gallon bucket for a 4-gallon batch. You’ll also need a thermometer, sanitized bottles, a bottlebrush, and bottle caps and capper. Reusable glass bottles are eco-friendly and authentic, but plastic may be a safer bet for first-time soda-makers. Overly carbonated bottles can explode.

Choose thick glass bottles.

STARTS WITH WATER

“We recommend that you use filtered water from the tap or store-bought drinking water,” Quails said. “The reason is that public water has chlorine in it and that may add an adverse flavor to your soda.”

FLAVORS

Many flavors of commercial soda extracts are available at home-brew supply stores and from online vendors, including: cola, root beer, sarsaparilla, ginger ale, birch beer, passion fruit, orange and grape.

SWEETEN UP

Artisan soda makers are sweet on pure cane sugar, but many use honey or a combination of sugar and honey. If you’re trying to cut calories by mixing artificial sweetener with sugar, use enough sugar to carbonate the soda - about a 1-to-1 ratio - as sugar is necessary to feed the yeast, which fuels carbonation.

COOL IT

After heating sugar and water to make syrup, Don Spencer, brewer at Silverdale’s Silver City Restaurant and Brewery, recommends cooling the syrup to room temperature. “If you try to throw ginger extract into something that hot, all the very important essential aromas evaporate off.

“If you can smell ginger, that’s not good because that means all that good stuff is going into the air and not staying in the soda.”

YEAST

Ale and champagne yeast are most often used to carbonate soda, but bread yeast works if you’re not up for a trip to the home-brew supply store.

Nutritional yeast won’t work because its yeast cells are not active. Lager yeast can over-carbonate soda.

ALCOHOL

While soda is a soft drink, yeast fermentation does create alcohol, though negligible. “There’s hardly any alcohol,” said Spencer, the brewer. “There’s just enough for the carbonation to get going.”

SODA SOURCES

One supplier for do-it-yourself brewing is The Beer Essentials (www.thebeeressentials.com) in Lakewood, Wash., which offers soda-making supplies and extracts.

This gives us an idea…

Here’s a scenario: you walk into your grandparent’s barn or spooky ol’ garage and find several old soda bottles partially buried under a pile of odds and sods. What once graced the presence of mom and pop soda machines of yesteryear, and only cost five or ten cents a piece, now has faded into obscurity, complete with muted graphics, dirt clods and cobwebs. I mean, c’mon…let’s face it, it was hidden from view in that barn or garage for many a year. But, does that mean the bottle is worthless because time took over? Absolutely not.

We at The Soda Gallery are all about obtaining and preserving old soda memorabilia of all shapes and sizes, especially those returnable soda bottles that most people probably have burried in the backyard.  Whether it’s faded, full of dirt and spiders, or even in great shape, we want your bottles! If you have Dr Pepper, Big Red, Suncrest, Frostie or any other old fashioned soda bottle, crate, tin sign or other soda ephemera, we’d gladly like to take them off your hands. We’ra also looking for interesting Coca-Cola bottles from around the world, as well, with original soda still in them.

If you think you have something cool and nostalgic we’d be interested in, please email us with your name, contact info and a pic or two of your item(s). We’ll contact you back in a timely manner.

Stay fizzy!

Howdy folks! After many months of preparation, photo taking, editing, etc, etc, The Soda Gallery is happy to finally announce the arrival of our online soda shop, where you can purchase our selection of nearly 200 sodas and have them shipped anywhere in the USA. Whether you are looking for a soda from the good ‘ol days, or something new and unique, let The Soda Gallery be your source for all things soda. We even have different collectables, t-shirts and fine art too! So, check it out, see our selection, and give us your feedback on how we can keep our webstore one step ahead of the other guys.

Happy shopping!