DIY -- soda pop

Am I kidding? I am not. 

Why would you want to make your own soda pop? 

Well, why would you want to DIY anything?

To stay away from chemicals, for one thing. We all know that there's BPA in soda pop cans, that it affects your body, and in particular if there's citric acid in the pop. 

To get what you think you're paying for, for another. You can google this for yourself: just like Subway "tuna" sandwiches don't have tuna DNA in them, ginger ale may not have ginger in it, just "natural flavorings" whatever that means.

In the case of soda pop, there's a curve ball.

Conflict products.

Look at the ingredients for any soda pop you can think of. You'll find gum arabic. Why? because without it, the flavorings would precipitate out of the carbonated water. And we all know you can't shake up a can of soda pop and then open it without the drink showering all over you.

There's only one source of gum arabic in the world. Sudan. Gum arabic is Sudan's only export product. What do they do with it? Fund their wars. 

Why hasn't Congress banned it? because they admit that the soda pop industry would crash and burn without it.

In the olden days, you didn't need gum arabic. You went to the Soda Shoppe. The guy behind the counter would pump about 3 tablespoons of syrup into a glass and pour in the soda water, stir it up, put in a straw, and that was your soda pop. But a skinflint soda fountain owner could order the soda jerk to put in less syrup to save money. To put a consistent product into everybody's hands -- and sell far away from a central factory -- the drink had to be mixed up at the factory. They had to have something to keep the flavorings in suspension. That was gum arabic.

What do you do?

Well, you can go here and buy syrup for cola and root beer.

https://www.apexflavors.com/index

You can get these syrups at Walmart, but they buy from Apex. 

You don't need to buy the syrup from Apex. Leave the gum arabic out of this recipe (it's listed as optional anyway) and you can make your own cola syrup.

https://www.splendidtable.org/story/2011/07/01/natural-cola

Don't use the Kitchen Bouquet. Use 1/4 cup instant coffee for coloring and also for caffeine. You can also get kola nut powder at Mountain Rose Herbs; use 1/4 tsp in this recipe. 

Here's root beer:

https://honest-food.net/root-beer-syrup-recipe/

You can get sassafrass and burdock at Mountain Rose Herbs. You can also get sarsaparilla to make this:

https://www.seriouseats.com/diy-root-beer-how-to-brew-your-own-root-beer-recipe

But there's lots more to it than that. Here are some other recipes for soda pop.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/articles/50-homemade-sodas

Notice #41. Leave out the citrus flavors and you have ginger ale that actually has ginger in it. Ginger is known for settling the tummy; so is carbonated water. So you get a two-fer making your own ginger ale.

Now look down through and see how many of the recipes have "rose" in their name. You can make those with rosewater -- which you can get from Apex. You can also use it to make sharbat. You can also use it to make old-fashioned baked goods like Regency period rout cakes.

I haven't tried ordering from Apex yet, but they sell rosewater, for example, in 2 ounce bottles, so it ought to be possible, although with shipping fees, the price might double. It did when I ordered flour from a food service company in 2020, after it disappeared from grocery stores at the start of the pandemic cos everybody decided all at once they were stuck home and they might as well do all their own baking. Anyhoo.

Mountain Rose Herbs sells 4 ounces of dried roses for $24 so making your rose sodas out of the petals is going to be expensive anyway. I think 1/4 tsp rosewater (48 batches in a 2 ounce bottle) in your syrup recipe will work fine; that's how much they use in this recipe.

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/raspberry-rose-gin-rickey-359793

Now. One of the things you need to know about Apex products is that they have alcohol for a preservative. Since you have to cook your syrup and bake your goodies, the alcohol will cook off. See this sharbat syrup recipe.

https://www.food.com/recipe/lebanese-rose-drink-sharab-ward-387336

Apex sells a quart of rosewater for $33; this is a good size for making multiple batches of sharbat. 

And just for my Tribe: Apex rosewater is kosher certified. 

Now. We've all been told how high fructose corn syrup is a bad sweetener. But all sweetened drinks, diet versions included, promote diabetes and obesity according to 21st century clinical studies, so you shouldn't be drinking soda pop a lot. Try making your soda pop without a sweetener: go ahead, try it. Personally, I can't stand "fizzy lemonade" without sugar; it's too acid for me. (Come to that, grocery store lemonade also gripes my stomach...) 

So once that experiment has failed, your fall-back position is to use honey. It works in baked goods; if the recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar or less, you can use the same amount of honey. Use this recipe as an example.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/256384/lime-honey-soda/

Personally I don't like honey in coffee, tea, or yerba mate because it does have some flavor of its own. But it's something you can get used to, if you object to refined sugar or chemicals.

Good luck!