I love making homemade ginger ale because I get to control the ginger's strength. I like it strong. I've even found my personal upper-bound. From my kitchen notebook:
2007-07-29
1:5 ratio of freshly made ginger juice to balance of other ingredients roughly following instructions at Homemade ginger ale is too much ginger. One glass made my stomach hurt.
This recipe doesn't make it quite that strong, but you can increase the ginger as much as you want. It is a different take on ginger ale, and uses lacto-bacteria found in whey to carbonate it. You can make fresh whey (and wonderful cream cheese) from yogurt by wrapping yogurt in a cheese cloth or a dish towel and letting the whey drip out over 24 hours -- How to Make Whey Instructable here.
I prefer this version over the yeast-carbonated ginger ale because the lactic acid gives it a slightly sour bite.
1 small piece of ginger about 1 cubic inch, micro-grated
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (juice from one lemon)
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp fresh whey
1 qt. water
Mix everything thoroughly in an air-tight container, and let it sit at room temperature for 3-7 days. You may need to bleed off some CO2 depending on temperature. Refrigerate once it's fully carbonated.
In one batch, after a day at room temperature, I poured the ginger ale into a different container, because I was concerned that the old metal cap on the glass bottle shown in the images would not hold. As it turns out, the plastic cap on the new bottle actually cracked under the pressure! I have since started reusing glass bottles that held carbonated water, which are intended to hold pressure.
2007-07-29
1:5 ratio of freshly made ginger juice to balance of other ingredients roughly following instructions at Homemade ginger ale is too much ginger. One glass made my stomach hurt.
This recipe doesn't make it quite that strong, but you can increase the ginger as much as you want. It is a different take on ginger ale, and uses lacto-bacteria found in whey to carbonate it. You can make fresh whey (and wonderful cream cheese) from yogurt by wrapping yogurt in a cheese cloth or a dish towel and letting the whey drip out over 24 hours -- How to Make Whey Instructable here.
I prefer this version over the yeast-carbonated ginger ale because the lactic acid gives it a slightly sour bite.
1 small piece of ginger about 1 cubic inch, micro-grated
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (juice from one lemon)
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp fresh whey
1 qt. water
Mix everything thoroughly in an air-tight container, and let it sit at room temperature for 3-7 days. You may need to bleed off some CO2 depending on temperature. Refrigerate once it's fully carbonated.
In one batch, after a day at room temperature, I poured the ginger ale into a different container, because I was concerned that the old metal cap on the glass bottle shown in the images would not hold. As it turns out, the plastic cap on the new bottle actually cracked under the pressure! I have since started reusing glass bottles that held carbonated water, which are intended to hold pressure.
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I tried sauerkraut whey and sure enough, no kraut flavor, last week I re-inoculated one batch with whey from pickled hot peppers I was doing. Bad decision. Hot pickled pepper ginger ale!
Some people do put capsicum (the chemical responsible for the heat in peppers) in their ginger beer.
I read that champagne yeast creates more pressure at least than making beer does. Would that be adequate for making the ginger ale according to this recipe? I know that breaking glass or popping lids/corks is a big fear when it comes to this, so I just want to make sure.
Some species of lactobacillus never do (acidophilis), other species always do, and still others will release CO2 only under certain conditions (maybe depending on oxygen levels).
It might be that some brands of yogurt can produce a fizz, others not.
Note: Never try this with containers that aren't meant to hold carbonated beverages! A friend tried heavy duty juice bottles, and one evening ended up with a cap exploding off and going through a ceiling tile during a party. Beautiful 3" hole, and the plastic cap embedded itself in the beam above! Be careful when brewing anything with carbonation!
I'm taking pictures, and will post a full Instructable when I have everything figured out.
Tips:
- Fill them to within about 1" of the top.
- Crank that cap down firmly.
- Let them sit in a warm place.
- As the lactobacilli produce CO2, the bottle will get progressively firmer.
- Refrigerate when the bottles feel hard--when there's only a bit of "give" when you push with your thumb.
- Feel up the bottles at the grocery store (when nobody's looking, of course) to get a sense for how firm they should be.
- If after a couple of days, the bottles are still soft, let them sit overnight in a warm bath.
- If they're still soft after that, open a bottle, and if there's no hiss, re-inoculate.
- If you reuse the bottles, always use them for the same kind of drink. I made Ginger Ale in a bottle I'd previously used for Birch Beer. The result wasn't very pleasant.
- Be sure to keep your ginger ale at refrigerator temperature at least 24 hours (so I've heard) to let the cold drink absorb as much CO2 as possible. Cold water can hold much more gas than room temperature, but once it's cold, it takes awhile to diffuse in.
I'm going to try using lactobacillus to make root beer, instead of using yeast.
I attempted this for the first time last week. It was a disaster LOL! I made it with dried yeast and decided to only put in a couple of table spoons of sugar and left it for a couple of days. I opened the bottle slowly at first to let some of the gas out, then the top burst open and my whole kitchen was under bad ginger beer! I saved half a cup that didn’t go down very well and tasted of yeast.
I’m very keen to try out the whey option now. Do you have any tips on opening the end result in a safer manner?
Thanks!!