Recipe 8 - Strawberry Rhubarb

This is a recipe that I've wanted to do for quite some time. I finally got my chance when I found some rhubarb at the grocery store by chance. I don't think rhubarb is in season right now, so this probably didn't taste quite as delicious as it could have, but it was a tasty enough brew to warrant a write up. I shared some of this with some friends of mine, and it was very well received. They thought it was commercially viable, but that's not a step I'm ready to take yet.

For One Gallon:
1/2 lb rhubarb
1/2 lb strawberries
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
2 dashes salt
1 gallon carbonated water

Chop the rhubarb and the strawberries and place them in a saucepan with 1 cup of water and 1/8 cup of the lemon juice. Bring this to a boil while stirring. The strawberries and the rhubarb will break down and you'll need to strain the juice through a sieve, jelly bag or cheese cloth. I've found that one round of filtration isn't quite enough. So when filtering my homemade soda,
I put it once through a jelly bag, and once through a coffee filter. The jelly bag removes the large pulp that would quickly clog the coffee filter, and the coffee filter removes most of the finer sediment. What you're left with after the coffee filter is a very fine sediment that takes quite some time to settle out and is imperceptible after a slight shake to the bottle.
The pulp that is left from the jelly bag still has some flavor, put it back in the pot, add the second cup of water, and bring to a boil again, then strain and filter a second time.
Once you have your 2 cups of juice, in a separate pot, add the sugar and heat until dissolved. Remove from heat and add the last of your lemon juice. Now you have a nice tart syrup, top up to 1 gallon with carbonated water.