A new season, and I’ve cleaned out the sticky, dark pulp from the Sparking Blackberry Lemonade in the soda keg. Now on tap for the autumn is a more traditional soda – a cream soda flavored with vanilla, brown sugar, raisins and honey.

Years ago, raisins were the primary way to flavor sodas – and even wine in places in Mongolia. They add not only sweetness, but a fruity tone and if you are naturally carbonating your soda, can be a source for your yeast fermentation, since it is a great food source for yeast. In this recipe, I added honey since it is one of my preferred sweeteners, but I’d modify it next time to shift more of the sweetness to come from white sugar (both honey and brown sugar add flavors along with the sucrose).

Honey Cream Soda

  1. Clean and sterilize your 5 gallon keg. Add 3 – 3.5 gallons clean water and carbonate for 2-3 days.
  2. In a large pot, boil 1 gallon water. Add 0.56 cups chopped raisins, 2 cinnamon sticks, 1.75 cups white sugar, 1.75 cups honey and 6.5 cups brown sugar*.
  3. Let cool. Use ice packs on the side of the pot if you want to (slightly) speed up this process. Once the mixture is close to room temperature, add 1.25 teaspoons cream of tartar and 0.75 cups vanilla. Stir and strain very well to remove all raisin and cinnamon pieces.
  4. Add to the keg and mix with inversion. Add more clean water if needed. Carbonate for one more day.

*Next time, I’ll shift the balance of sugar more to white sugar to allow the other flavors to shine through: perhaps 4 cups sugar, 1.5 cups honey, 4.5 cups brown sugar.

The color is a light brown, just slightly darker than a commercial cream soda. Vegan friends have differed on whether this is a truly vegan recipe – depending on whether they choose to consume honey or not. Be sure to explain your ingredients to people so that they can make their own choices. The flavor is deliciously honeyed and barely spicy, and the raisins add a difficult to identify fruitiness.