Lemonade and Rootbeer

We just received an entire basket of Meyer Lemons! I squeezed most of them, and froze the juice into ice cubes. It's a great way to store organic lemony goodness when it arrives all at once. Just pop the cubes out of the tray and into a labeled freezer bag. Each cube is about 2 tablespoons. Good for recipes, or mixed with agave to make lemonade. Liquid gold!


The rootbeer is ready. I've tweaked the recipe a couple of times so it's not too sweet and fills six bottles. You'll need clean beer bottles (dark glass, no screw tops), bottle caps and a bottle capper, which you can find at your local home brewing store. That's also where you'll find the extract and champagne yeast.


Smith's Rootbeer

9 cups filtered water
1/2 ounce Zatarains Rootbeer extract
1/2 cup organic brown sugar
1/2 cup organic white sugar
1/2 teaspoon champagne yeast

Mix yeast into a little cup of warm water (I add some sugar too) to dissolve and get it started. In a large glass container (preferably one you can pour from) mix the extract and remaining sugars with lukewarm water. Sterilize six clean bottles with boiling water. I also put the bottle caps in a small dish of the boiled water to soften the seals.

There is a lot of information on the web about sterilization. Use your own intuition to determine how cautious you want to be. The boiling water method works for me...but I always do a squint-check to make sure the inside of each bottle looks pristine before I begin.

Mix all ingredients together including 9 cups of water in all. Using a good funnel, pour into bottles, cap them, and lay them in the sun for two hours. Bring the bottles in and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Refrigerate and enjoy!