Lacto-fermented sodas + ginger beer

Lacto-fermented sodas are both fun and easy to make. And the possible flavor combinations are endless! More natural and less sugary, too. Below I will share a basic recipe for (non-alcoholic) ginger beer plus tips for sucessful fermentation, substitutions, and the best of my forays into experimental soda flavors.

The photo above was my very first batch of ginger beer, made almost two years ago. As you can see, I used an old plastic soda bottle. I now only brew in glass vessels but plastic is still a good and safe bet for beginners or those who live in warm climates. So what's in that little covered jar? Why, it's a ginger bug.

Making a ginger bug is very easy:

First you will need organic or non-irradiated ginger. A lot of ginger sold at big stores is irradiated before shipping to kill surface yeast and bacteria which are crucial to successful natural lacto-fermenation.

To make the bug, grate a piece of ginger the size of your thumb (skin and all) into a small glass cup or an old jar. Add a little bit of water and generously sprinkle the ginger with sugar. Cover your glass or jar with a small breathable cloth or paper towel and let it sit in a sunny place. Check on your bug each day and contiue to feed it sugar until it starts actively bubbling. Bubbling = success!

If several days go by and your bug is not bubbling, your ginger may be irradiated. That's okay because you can help the fermentation along by adding a little sprinkle of dry yeast. Either proper brewing or baking will work just fine, more on that later.

This exact same process can also be done with fresh turmeric if you are feeling adventerous.

For comparison: lemon, ginger, and turmeric. Sodas fermented with turmeric instead of ginger will naturally get an almost neon orange color. It's also supposed to be very good for your brain and is pleasantly spicy.

Once you have a bubbling ginger bug, you'll need to prepare a ginger syrup. A more detailed post on syrups is here but basically all you need to do is slightly reduce a mixture of sugar, ginger, and water in a pot on the stove.

Let's say you want to make 2 liters of finished ginger beer in an old soda bottle. You'll specifically want to make your syrup using 1 cup of white sugar and a piece of ginger like the one pictured above.

When you make the syrup, make sure to peel the ginger root. You can either slice it up with a knife or grate it; grating will yield a stronger taste. If you have it, adding citrus peel when making the syrup will add a bright note to the finished ginger beer. Remember: this syrup should be sweet, much sweeter than you want your final ginger beer to be! Both because you will water it down and because the yeast will ferment most of the sugar away and convert it into carbon dioxide.

Once the ginger syrup cools, strain using a small mesh strainer and pour directly into your fermentation vessel / bottle. Add a spoonful of bubbling ginger bug, the juice of one lemon (strained) and any additional spices. A tiny pinch of salt or cayenne pepper are favorites. Fill the rest of the bottle up with water, leaving about an inch of space at the top before capping.

Let your proto-brew sit out in room temperature and check daily until the desired carbonation is reached. When fermenting in plastic you won't even need to remove the cap to tell if it's done - just squeeze the bottle itself. When it's rigid, your brew should be moved to the refrigerator. Try squeezing a bottle of commercial soda so you get an idea of how rigid it should feel. When fermenting in glass, you'll be able to see how active the bubbles are if you hold your bottles up to the light. When first opening your brew be very careful and slow. Lacto-fermenting can produce many more bubbles than sodas one finds at the store. Depending on the temperature, the ginger beer should be bubbly enough in just 1-3 days.

Once you've mastered the ginger bug, you can use it to lacto-ferment almost anything. The cucumber and rosehip sodas (below) were made exactly the same way as ginger beer except instead of making a ginger syrup, I used simple syrup and cucumber juice / rosehip syrup.



Some tips:

If you are feeling lazy or don't like ginger, you can skip the ginger bug step entirely and just add a little pitched yeast directly to your soda base. Let's say a spoonful. Pitched yeast is dry yeast that has first been activated with a little warm water and perhaps sugar to help it along.

Even if you don't want your soda to be sweet, there is such a thing as not having enough sugar. If there isn't enough sugar, your yeast will not have anything to eat and carbonation will suffer.

The juice of a lemon can also be replaced with any other citrus on-hand in a pinch.

If you are using yeast, the type won't really make that big of difference because you're only using a tiny amount. Very tiny, there is such a thing as adding too much yeast. Though if you want to get an extra "ginger beer" taste, I recommend ale yeast.

I've also had success reusing residual yeast from other home brewing projects to ferment sodas. Last week I did an experiment using residual yeast from homemade chestnut beer. In the first few days of fermenting the nutty taste was clearly present in the sodas, but seemed to mellow out within the week.

Popular flavors:

Cucumber and mint
Rosehip and lemon
Turmeric and orange
Gooseberry and mint