You could also mix a diet sweetener with extract and water and carbonate it with a CO2 tube. You can find these systems at many home brewing stores (several online). Another easier option would be to mix extract and diet sweetener with carbonated water.
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Bottoms up!
Kevin Guske

So heres a tribute toast with root beer in hand to you and the many mugs of suds along your happy trails. --Charles Wysocki, artist and root beer fan, 1928-2002

I was just wondering if sucralose found in Splenda would act as food for yeast...

In any case, homemade root beer and other soft drinks are much lower in sugar than commercial drinks. I use about two cups of sugar per gallon. You can also use "healthier" forms of sugar such as brown sugar, honey, mollasses, etc.

I recently used 100% cherry juice from Trader Joes with just a small amount of sugar (and some water since the stuff is pretty dense), and the yeast just loved the stuff. It overcarbonated in just two days. I guess the nutrients in the juice added to its natural sugars to make a great yeast brew. I'm thinking of using some of this juice in a cherry-root beer recipe.

Parsa

parsa - try the root beer - cherry idea. I did that recently and it was great. I didn't want an over tone of the cherry though, so I eased up on it a bit, which I shouldn't have done. I'm not sure if it was something I did or what, but the fermentation seemed to enhance the root-beer flavor making the cherry more subtle. I had hoped for a little stronger cherry, but was still happy with the results.

Tg
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parsa wrote:

I was just wondering if sucralose found in Splenda would act as food for yeast...

I was wondering exactly the same thing, so I did some research.

First off, I went to the Splenda web site, and it didn't help much at all. So I emailed the Splenda people. The response was very slow, and not helpful.

I ended up finding an answer in a winemaking newsletter Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!.

If you don't want to read it, here's a synopsis:

Sucralose is about 400 times sweeter than sugar, so in order to make it more consumer-friendly, they "cut" the sucralose with a bulking agent. In the case of Splenda, it can be either maltodextrin or a combination of dextrose and maltodextrin.

If you buy packets of Splenda, you get both dextrose and maltodextrin with your sucralose. If you buy the bulk "baker's bag" of Splenda, you get just maltodextrin with your sucralose.

Here's the bottom line:
Sucralose - nonfermentable. Just like the human metabolism, the yeast metabolism doesn't recognize it as sugar.
Maltodextrin - about 4% fermentable, so it adds no appreciable "fizz" to your brewed root beer.
Dextrose - over 99% fermentable.

If you are using Splenda to keep your root beer bottles from turning into root beer grenades, the choice would be to sweeten your root beer with the bulk "baker's bag" of Splenda, NOT the Splenda individual serving packets. However, the yeast will still need SOMETHING to metabolize or you will end up with flat root beer.

I would suggest sweetening to taste with the bulk Splenda and then add about 1/2 cup of granulated sugar (or the equivalent amount of other sweetener) per five gallons of root beer. This will give the yeast something to metabolize, but when it's gone, it's gone and the yeast will shut down, stopping the carbonation process. If you used a highly flocculant ale yeast, it will sink to the bottom of your bottles. A week in the refrigerator and you'll get a nicely packed sediment layer on the bottom of the bottle. Pouring carefully will leave most of the yeast in the bottle and less of it in your brew, giving you a less yeasty-tasting root beer.

Right now I have 24 bottles of this exact concoction fermenting away. I made it on Friday night (11/18) and opened one bottle on Sunday (11/20) afternoon. It was pleasantly carbonated, but still a bit on the yeasty side. I hadn't yet given it enough time for the yeast to settle out. I could do with a bit more carbonation. I'll probably try another bottle in a day or two to see if it's more carbonated than it was on Sunday. If I'm right, it'll be a liiiittle bit more carbonated than it was on Sunday, but by now, I'm assuming that the fermentation is more or less done. I'll leave a bottle in a safe place for a couple of months to prove or disprove that theory and report back.

I hope this helps!

Thank you, de_boer_man!

A quick update...

On New Year's Eve, I opened the last bottle of the root beer I made on November 18th. It wasn't any fizzier or yeastier than it was on Thanksgiving Day, so I'm confident that the sugar-free variety of Root Beer I describd in my post above will work exactly like I though it would.

Happy Brew Year everybody!

Thanks for the information on the Sucralose. I am planning to use this in a school project and definately want the byulk bags.

Great info there... thanks for the post.

I stirred up a glass of diet root beer the other day, using Stevia as the sweetener. Dissolved in about a shotglass full of hot water, then cooled with an ice cube. Then I mixed this with 1/8 tsp extract, and filled the glass with a few ice cubes and club soda. worked out great.