Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Dry ice Root Beer a fun and easy Halloween treat!

make some rootbeer with dry ice

One of our most beloved family Halloween traditions is our homemade root beer. When the older siblings grew up in Utah, our elementary school had an amazing Halloween party. The kids would dress up and walk from class to class in their costumes. To this day that elementary school still has the Halloween parade. Another great part of the celebration was a party. The room mothers would always make root beer with dry ice! This is such a fond memory for us. And it couldn't be easier to make! You only need a few ingredients:

  • Water
  • Sugar
  • Dry Ice (This is a little tricky and has to be handled with care, plus you have to be over 18 to buy it)
  • Root Beer Concentrate (which you find at any grocery store)

Anything that comes with a big warning sign is going to provide for some good fun;) Our little disclaimer is that you need to read the warning and take heed of it. When you serve this up, you want to make sure you don’t serve up a piece of dry ice, no matter how fun it seems. No mouth burns for you!

dry ice is bad for you

A hundred years ago, when we were in elementary school we could buy the root beer flavoring in a powder packet right next to the Kool-aid. But now we are only able to find it easily in the baking area as concentrate.

Root beer concentrate

In a large bowl, mix together the water, root beer concentrate and the sugar (there are plenty of recipes online, although you can just add ingredients to taste as well Here is a good resource we found with a recipe) You can use this as an exercise in chemistry if your kids are geeky like ours;)

Add sugar

We mixed our root beer in a large punch bowl. We placed it carefully into a large black cauldron to get a more Halloweeny feel. We had a large chunk of dry ice so we put some bowls in smaller cauldrons with just water in them for the foggy effect.

put the bowl in the cauldron for better effect

Finally just add in the dry ice (while wearing gloves!) And let it bubble and fizz away. You only have to wait a few minutes before you can start serving it up! If you want your root beer more carbonated, you need to use a lid after you put in the dry ice. Be careful not to let the pressure build up too much. Our kids were too excited to wait for it to get very carbonated. We also added a few small pieces of the dry ice to the small containers with water at this point.

carefully add the dry ice

See what I’m talking about? Halloweeny! Enjoy and don’t forget to let us know if you try this yourselves. It really does add that wow factor to parties.

make some rootbeer with dry ice

Erika

13 comments:

Makin' Me Crazy said...

Very cool:)

Jennifer said...

Maybe its a Utah thing, because this brought back a flood of childhood halloween parade memories! THanks for the happiness :)

CitricSugar said...

Do they have other kinds of concentrate - I've never seen this before and I have a bad history with root beer... How cool to make your own pop!

amy @ Life in Pink Hi-Tops said...

I had some root beer flavoring in my hand just yesterday....But I put it down! Drats! This sounds so fun.

the decorated cookie said...

thanks for the link suggestion! I posted today on dry ice root beer (ediblecrafts.craftgossip.com)

Lucky Girl said...

How fun! I'm adding this to my party to-do list!

elspeth said...

Silly question - what store did you find Root Beer Extract at? We've been looking all over to it, and haven't been able to find it.

Stacy said...

We are originally from Louisiana and love Zatarain's root beer liquid concentrate. While visiting Colorado this summer, I bought some. It is located with all the other Zatarain's products: dirty rice, jambalaya mix, and red beans & rice in boxes. See if there is a Cajun section at a local grocer for it. It is so delicious!

Unknown said...

An excellent idea! It's worth pointing out that dry ice is actually carbon dioxide - I'm sure everyone will read the safety instructions and realize that carbon dioxide + poor ventilation would be very bad, but it doesn't hurt to mention it twice :)

RootsAndWingsCo said...

Thanks for all your fun comments everyone!!

Yes! IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO READ THE WARNING CAREFULLY WHEN YOU MAKE THIS.

We get our root beer flavoring right in the baking area of the grovery store where you buy vanilla extract. I've never seen Zatarain's root beer before but that is totally something I want to look for.

I'm sure you could make carbinated anything with this. A google search would show recipes I'm sure;)

Anjeanette

Kelli said...

can you used store bought rootbeer soda?

Unknown said...

I want to make some homemade root beer for my family as a treat one day in the future. I have never done this before and thought I might come here to get a few pointers. I love that you list ever ingredient that you need to make the root beer. Your pictures are also very helpful to someone like me that has never done this before. Love your post, keep it up. http://www.unitedcityicecube.com

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