Anyone got a decent one?  My kids want to brew something and the last couple we tried were marginal.  The little bottle of awfulness at the brew shop is not worth doing in my opinion.  Plus, I'd like them to get a little involved in an actual process.

Use this:  Root Beer Extract

Easy, only takes a couple of days to carb up, tastes great.  Do some googling and you can find the recipes for doing a single 2L bottle to try it out.  Pick any ale yeast, it doesn't matter much, you are only using it to create carbonation.

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/sprecher-root-beer-1-gallon.html

I like this alot. But you need to be able to keg to use it. although I bet you could prime it with yeast, but ive never tried

+1
I used Zatarain's, water, sugar and lalvin EC-1118 yeast (I had plenty on hand from previous brewings). Put in a 2 liter bottle and place in garage for about 2 days. When the 2 liter bottle is firm, transfer to grolsch bottles. If you want more fizz, let the grolsch bottles sit at room temp or put in fridge to enjoy later.

I have used the same process with ginger ale (shred fresh ginger, add water, sugar and yeast-->ferment) with amazing results.

Good luck OP.

Root beer is hard to do from scratch, as you may have read the sassafras root is considered cancerous by the FDA (debatable weather is actually is).

I think the sprecher is best mix that is easily available.

Did you know an arfcommer runs a root beer plant? Call Jon at imperial flavors tell him JakeThePimp sent you. Their Dang! butterscotch rootbeer is awesome.

If you want to make something from scratch, I've had very good luck with ginger ale.

In a previous brewpub I was at we made root beer.

250lb sugar in 10bbls, sodium benzoate, citric acid, salt and a gallon of Virginia dare root beer extract.

Boil it all sans the extract, pour the extract in the vessel and fill her up. Carb the thing for the whole weekend. Fresh stuff on Monday. Lasted about 2 months.

Had separate serving lines as the extract will leach into other lines unless it's the expensive aluminum foil Barrier line.  The vessel for root beer could be hot caustic'd for days and all the rubber replaced and it still smelled like root beer.