It’s really hot in London this week and the summer is very enjoyable. For your pleasure I recommend making some ginger ale.

Z okazji nieubłaganie zbliżającego się lata prezentuję piwo imbirowe.

First things first – time for a small coming-out. I suspect it will be a shock to some of you, but I need to confess: I like baking bread. One of the aspects that I find interesting is fermentation – I started with sourdoughs, then I made fermented soup starters for zurek and white borscht, kvass, yeast water. Ginger ale is a next step to me.

We don’t buy carbonated drinks apart from beer or cyder, we avoid sweet drinks. Making my own carbonated drink sounded too intriguing to not try. I would like to thank @amy-goodrich for her recipe. This is my interpretation of it. Have a look at the original post about ginger ale and make sure you follow Amy for her high quality posts.

I did make a fermented drink before – it was Kvass. This time we’re going wild – starting with a ginger bug and ending with a soda itself. The author used a turmeric root which I don’t have good memories with. Also, while I added lemon juice to my drink, I will not do it in the future as after yeast eating through the sugar the ale was just too sour.

WARNING

There is a risk of explosion. The gas buildup could cause a bottle to burst.

Everyone I know who has ever tried fermenting a drink, and many of the sourdough owners, myself included, have some sort of burst story, be it a lid popping off, the jar breaking, or traces of various fancy liquids on the ceiling.

The message I’m trying to deliver is:

Know your risks, be careful, take safety measures.

Use plastic bottles from sodas to store your ginger ale. If you want a pretty glass bottle, make sure it is suitable for sodas and beers. Some only fake it. Jars and many other bottles like passata ones are made to withstand a vacuum, not high pressure. Plastic juice bottles have a bottom that will bend outwards with the pressure buildup and will make it difficult for the bottle to stand.

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I fill the bottles to about three quarters to give the gas more space. I also release the gas from the bottle two or three times a day to check the progress.

Degas your bottle from time to time. I simply release the first buildup of gas and close it again.

Do not ferment in the open living space like the kitchen counter. I keep the bottles in a plastic storage box to contain potential bursts.

After fermenting, store your ginger ale in the fridge till you drink it. If you take it out, the fermentation will start again.

If you don’t want it to, pasteurize your ale. I will describe my process under the recipe.

Ginger bug after three days

Planning

You’ll need about five days to make the bug, then about three days for a complete drink. It’s worth having a room which can get a bit dirty as the bottles can burst. As an alternative, you can use a box with a lid to store the bottles in. Have I mentioned you’ll need bottles? I used plastic ones from a juice, with the whole of about 3 cm in diameter. They coped well although the bottom bent outwards from the pressure. I was afraid to use glass bottles initially, but then I got some bottles for sodas that I could degas every now and then.

Ingredients

Ginger bug

• ginger root (two large ones should be enough)
• sugar (about 250 g)
• water (about half a litre)

The soda

• 500 ml ginger bug

• About two litres water

• About 500 ml orange juice (I pressed it from four oranges); apple juice also works well

• one cup (250 ml) sugar

  

  Ginger ale

Preparation

Ginger bug

1. I added about 100 ml water, 30-50 g grated ginger and about 50 g sugar to a jar. I mixed it well and left it to ferment with a cloth in place of a lid. DO NOT SEAL THE JAR, ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE IS NO JOKE
2. On days 2-5 I kept adding same amounts of ingredients and mixed it. I also mixed it throughout the day if there was too much gas and I was afraid the bug would escape the jar

After three days the bug was pretty much ready. I fed it till day five, but because I had to leave for a week, I put it in a fridge. After returning I fed it once more and since it was very active, I used it.

Ginger bug after five days

Here is a video of degasing the beverage

The activity can be measured by quantity of the gas build-up. The gas is carbon dioxide. I tasted the bug and it was tasty, but very gingery. It’s good that it requires diluting.

The soda

1. Melt the sugar in water and leave it to cool down
2. Add the juice and strained bug
3. Pour into the bottles and close them tightly
4. Keep them in a room temperature for three days and degas regularly – I did it 3-4 times a day so that I don’t end up having to paint the walls. Even though the bottles were stored in a plastic container, I didn’t want to take risks
5. Store the bottles in a fridge to stop the fermentation

Because of the water condensing on a glass I couldn’t make any sharper pictures. I will accept advice from photographers with humility and gratitude.

That’s it, it’s a home made carbonated drink, hardly alcoholic at all – I have no way of measuring but it is very very low if you take into account how much I could drink in one sitting, without the effects . It’s tasty and refreshing.

The longer the soda is kept, the less sweet it becomes, so don’t worry about the amount of sugar in the recipe – the yeast can deal with it. At the same time they don’t produce a lot of alcohol.

I’ve drank three litres of the ginger ale within a week. I’m sure I’ll be making it again.

Pasteurization

If you want to stop the fermentation, you need to kill the yeast.

Take a large pot, add water to it and heat it to about 85 C degrees. Next take it off the heat, put a couple bottles in and leave it there for 10-12 minutes. Take it out, let it cool down. Store it.

I’ve done it once and it worked so I’d like to share a couple observations:

• Check after a while that the fermentation has really stopped
• There is a temporary further increase of the pressure when pasteurizing, so take extra caution. I released a bit of the gas before to reduce the risk
• I think the flavour changed slightly after the process. Not an issue, but I did observe it