Hello everyone. I am a brewer (beer/ales/lagers) and looking into possibly starting a root beer company. I have several technical production questions if anyone may assist:

1. Regarding the water that would go into a carbonation tank to make a batch of root beer, would the water need to be boiled first for sterilization or would just non-boiled filter watered with sodium benzoate added be OK if the root beer is to be packaged for distribution? Or is there a better method for preparing the water that is to be used root beer?

2. With the root beer flavoring being so strong, if we were to do other flavors of soda, would you recommend having dedicated tanks and bottling equipment for each flavor so that the root beer smell and flavor doesn?t carry over to say a cream soda batch?

3. What dosing amount of sodium benzoate is recommended to add to root beer to help with preservation/shelf stability of the product?

4. When making root beer or any soda, does on need to minimize or eliminate oxidation in the product like one would need to for an alcoholic beer? Or since there?s no fermentation and is force carbonated oxidation is not a concern in root beer production and packaging?

5. Anything else I should be aware of prior to getting into soda production?

Again, I am super appreciative of your time and information that anyone maybe able to provide.

With much gratitude!