Does anyone here make soda at home? My boss (a teetotaler) wants me to make him some cream soda. I'd like to use actually vanilla beans, but not sure how much to use and how to "extract" the flavor best.

Also, is it feasible to pasteurize at home? I'll force carbonate, and then bottle, but I'm worried about the stability of sugar-water in a sanitized, not sterilized bottle. Any suggestions?

I found this thread on another forum. He seemed to have it figured out by the end. Is this as scary as I think it is?

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/results-my-first-bottle-pasteurization-experiment-121101/

I'm not sure it sounds scary. A canning pot with a lid would prevent any shards flying, as well as the towels he describes. If you have a keg force carbing may be your best bet though.

I plan on force carbonating anyway. I do have a beer gun for bottling straight off of the keg. I just want it in bottles, and would like a shelf life of a couple months at least. I might try this soon. I'll update with the results good or bad...

I haven't made any root beer or non alcoholic colas for 35 years but when I did I never had any problems. I'm just thinking I would soak the items like vanilla beans etc. in campden prior to making the soda to insure they are steril. Add the vanilla beans in a gallon of water with any other chemicals with 1 campden tablet and let it set for 24 hours before you add the yeast, sugar etc. I have never had a cleanliness problem in all the time I made wines. Although I think there could be problems I think we all tend to go overboard on the cleanliness side.

I'm on my third keg of soda. My first was rootbeer, second was cream soda, and third was/is raspberry flavor. All were just the extract that you can purchase for $5 and add water, sugar and CO2. So far the best has been the rootbeer although the cream soda was taken to my brothers wedding and went pretty quickly.

I have root beer,cola, ginger ale, and creme soda extracts at the store. I have not made any yet but someday i need to so i know how at least.

The cola was not very good but rootbeer after its 2 weeks old was as good as any I have ever paid for.

If you tweek the extracts they get even better Did a batch of rootbeer that was normal rootbeer flavoring, birch rootbeer flavoring, and used brown sugar instead of table sugar, also tossed in some spices. It tasted amazing.