This all started when I found some root beer concentrate on the clearance cart at Walmart. It had a recipe for making root beer on the back and I thought that would be fun to do. My son and I whipped it up one afternoon when school was out. The concentrate is clear and he wanted to add some color. I only had green & yellow food coloring at the time, so he chose green. We made up a pitcher of green root beer & it was quite tasty! Since St. Patrick’s Day is Friday, I thought it would be fun to make a green root beer float. This is super easy to do & a fun kitchen project for the kiddos.
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Ingredients
The ingredients for this are very simple & you should be able to find them at the local grocery store. The recipe for the root beer is on the back of the concentrate box. I’m only including amounts for anything I changed since it’s not my recipe. You can also find the original root beer recipe here.
- root beer concentrate ~ I used Watkins brand because that was on clearance. After checking around, I think it’s the only one that’s clear as well.
- sugar ~ The recipe on the back of the box calls for 1 3/4 cups. I’m only using 1 cup because my son & I thought it was too sweet.
- club soda or sparkling water ~ I’m using club soda.
- green food coloring ~ I used about 4 drops. If you want it greener in the end, add more!
- vanilla ice cream ~ I’m using Breyers
- rainbow sprinkles ~ This is totally optional, but why wouldn’t you want rainbow sprinkles in your life?
Now, let’s make some green root beer!
Making the Green Root Beer
The first thing we have to do is make a root beer simple syrup. If you’re doing this with small kids, you may want to do this part ahead of time. It requires waiting, which is not a strong point for most little ones! Just add your water & sugar to a pot.
Bring it to a boil and stir until all the sugar is dissolved. It should be completely clear with no sugar granules visible.
Now, wait for it to cool to room temperature. That’s part of the waiting I mentioned earlier. : ) Once it’s cooled down, add the root beer concentrate.
Even though it’s clear, it becomes cloudy when you add it to the simple syrup mixture.
Just stir it up a little to blend it in. Put it in a jar and stick it in the fridge along with the club soda.
This is the other waiting bit! It’s just better if everything is nice & cold before blending it together. You can add the food coloring at this point or wait until you get ready to mix it.
Making the Float
This is the fun part! You can mix up the root beer simple syrup & the club soda by individual glasses or by the pitcher. We made ours into a whole pitcher the first time, but the fizz didn’t seem to last very long. I’m going to do it individually this time. Then the syrup & soda are separate until ready to drink.
Add the food coloring to the syrup if you haven’t done so already.
Add the ice cream to individual glasses. I’ll let you decide how many scoops you want!
Combine the syrup & club soda in a separate container. The recipe calls for 1/2 to 1/3 cup of syrup to 5 oz of club soda, which is one serving. I would definitely taste it to see if you want to adjust this before adding the ice cream. If you’re making multiple servings, just multiply the measurements by the number of servings needed.
Add the mixture to the ice cream & top with sprinkles!
Such a delicious little treat!
Did you know you can make root beer completely from scratch? It can even be made to have probiotics included! I found this website when doing my “root beer” research for the post. This seems very interesting to me and I’m going to try it out one day! What do y’all think?
