When people hear "home brewing," the first thing to come to mind is probably beer — which involves a long and complicated brewing process. However, there is a simpler type of home brewing — albeit less alcoholic — that is far easier, and just as tasty. It's root beer.

Making soda at home is really not all that difficult, and once you get the hang of home brewing, the flavoring possibilities are endless. Root beer is a great soda to make at home because there are lots of different kinds of flavorings you can use.

The basis of any homemade soda is water, yeast and sugar. That's where your carbonation comes from. As the mixture sits, the yeast eats the sugar and produces carbon dioxide, which is what makes your soda bubbly. Most commercial soda is made by dissolving carbon dioxide into the soda, bypassing the yeast-sugar process. If you use yeast in your soda, it will give it a unique flavor that some might find off-putting.

Once you have your yeast and sugar mix down, the next part is the flavoring. The easiest way to flavor your root beer is by purchasing a root beer flavoring mix, which you can find at most grocery stores near the vanilla extract.

On the other hand, if you really want to get into it, you can make your own flavoring with a mix of plants and herbs. Each mix varies from person to person, but common ingredients are birch bark, cinnamon, dried burdock root, wintergreen and dandelion root. The Website www.leeners.com offers a wide variety of herbs, roots and plants for making root beer.

One formerly common ingredient in root beer is sarsaparilla. One of the main components of sarsaparilla, safrole, was found to be a potential carcinogen, which led to the banning of sarsaparilla in the United States.

Although root beer is a very popular drink in the United States, it is not so popular abroad. Many of the flavorings in root beer are also thought to have medicinal benefits, and are used in traditional medicine, so for many people root beer has a very medicinal taste.

When making your own root beer, there are also a few safety precautions you should take. Be sure to use a container that has been sterilized with a chlorine bleach and water solution, and keep your bottles away from things you don't want to get sprayed with root beer just in case your bottles explode (which is unlikely, but a good precaution to take).

— Jeremy Konick

arts@thedaily.washington.edu