Pine Needle Soda – make natural soda with pine needles (2024)

Did you know that you can make fizzy soda with pine needles? 🎄

This pine needle soda recipe only requires 3 ingredients: pine needles, sugar, and water.

Simply add a few slices of lemon and some ice cubes, you will get a glass of refreshing and natural carbonated soft drink.🍹

How does pine needle soda taste?

Both Mr He and I were shocked by how refreshing my homemade pine needle soda tasted. This could be the most refreshing drink we have ever had!

Paired with some fresh lemon slices, this sweet and fizzy pine needle soda tasted citrusy with undertones of mint. It tasted a little bit like Sprite but with a more natural smell and flavor.

I think most people, even young kids, will really enjoy this taste!

Can you eat pine needles?

Yes, you can. All pine needles are edible!

Pine needles are often used for brewing pine needle tea. It contains large amounts of vitamin C: a cup ofpine needleteacontains5 times the amount ofVitamin Cfound in orange juice.

But DO NOT eat pine needles or pine needle drink if you are pregnant.

There was a study found out that “the ingestion ofpine needlesmay play a role in abortion in Korean native cows”.

Important: Before you shop pine needles at natural foods stores, make sure that you don’t accidently recognize these following trees as pine trees:

• Yew Plum Pine or fern pine(Podocarpus macrophylla)
• Norfolk Pine or Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla)
• Cypress (Cupressus) (More on issues of edibilityhere.)
• Yew (Taxus)

Though some of these trees are referred to as pines, they’re not actually in the same family. You can learn more information about pines from this article.

Leaves from these trees mentioned above are poisonous. So make sure you could confidently identify a tree as a pine tree before eating its needles.

White Pine

Althoughmost pine needles are edible,white pineis considered to be the best tasting one, and it’s very easy to be recognized – the only pine tree that hasfive needles per bundle.

So if you want to make pine needle soda at home, the safest and easiest way is finding a pine tree thathas five needles per bundle.See picture below:

Or you can buy fresh edible pine needles online. Here are somesellers from Etsy.

How does pine needle make soda?

There are wild yeasts living on pine needles. When we feed them sugar, they will consumes it and produces CO2, which can make the water fizzy. So we don’t need to add extra yeasts for making pine needle soda.

To make sure we don’t kill the wild yeasts living on pine needles, we should avoid over washing them or exposing them to extreme heat.

I’d just put the pine needles in a large bowl, fill the bowl with cold water to immerse all the pine needles, and gently rub the pine needles to wash off the dust.

Do not use hot water or boil the pine needles, otherwise the yeasts will die. Repeat for 3 times until there’s no visible dust in the water.

Sunlight Charged Pine Needle Soda

During winter time when it is cold, I like to put the bottle with pine needle soda by a window under sunlight.

According to Times of India, Sunlight charged water is an excellent natural source of Vitamin D. It “has powerful anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-bacterial properties, which is great for the body and skin”.

What’s more, I think that the pine needles could keep breathing and produce more CO2 when they are under sunlight.

But when the weather is too hot, you should give the bottle some indirectlight, whichmeans thatthe sun is not directly hitting the bottle and the water temperature should be lower than 86F°/30C°. Otherwise the yeasts living on pine needles will lose their activation.

Flip Top Glass Bottle

Ideally use aflip top glass bottleor aflip top glass jarfor this recipe. Do not use a plastic bottle, because the sun will cause plastic to leach chemicals into the water.

The glass used in the manufacture of this bottle is very thick, and it would avoid explosion. The cap of this bottle can securely lock the air.

But since the pine needles in this recipe won’t produce a crazy amount of carbon dioxide within 3 days, you may also use ascrew top glass jaror a mason jar.

However, if you use a screw top glass jaror a mason jar, you need to make sure to remember to open the jar on day 3. Otherwise the jar might explode when there’s too much carbon dioxide in the jar.

One last tip before we jump to the recipe!

Do not shake the bottle before you open it!!!

On day 3, I was only able to see some super tiny bubbles in the bottle. I thought there wasn’t too much gas produced. So I gave the bottle a good shake before I opened it.

To my surprise, my homemade pine needle soda made a big explosion at the moment I opened it. That was a big mess!

So, do not shake the bottle even if you can’t observe any bubbles! There should be a great amount of gas dissolved in the water, as long as your bottle is not leaking.

EQUIPMENT you will need:

• Flip TopGlassBottle(1L size)

INGREDIENTSlist:

• 2cuppine needles
• 2½cupwater(use bottled or filtered water)
• 4tbspsugar

Step-by-step INSTRUCTIONS

1. Collect pine needles fromwhite pine trees (*See Note1). Remove woody ends from the pine needles. Put pine needles in a large bowl, immerse them with cold water, wash and drain for 3 times.

2. Spread washed pine needles on awire rack, let dry on your countertop for about 1 hour.

3. Place pine needles and sugar to aflip top glass bottle(*See Note2).

4. Fill the bottle with filtered or bottledwater.

5. Close the lidand give the bottle a goodshake, so that the sugar is distributed evenly.

6. In cold weather, you can put the bottle by a window so that the water is under the sunlight.In hot weather, keep the bottle in a bright room but avoid direct sunlight. (*See Note 3)

7. 3 days later, fill a cup withice cubes and a few slices oflemon. Open the bottle and pour the pine needle soda over the ice cubes. Stir and enjoy.

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