Fermentation Adventures: Ginger Beer Success!

lily-da-vine (73)in #food • 7 years ago

I've got ginger beer guys and it's good. And interesting and startlingly close to ginger ale in many ways, with a fermented tang. I used a lemonade base for the first batch shown in the picture above and it was good enough to where John encouraged me to make more, so I did.

This batch albeit dated incorrectly (I rarely know what day it is let alone the date) it's a lemon lime batch featuring a fresh lime from our key lime tree. I tasted and bottled it today and it's pretty tasty, but different from the first batch.

As my ginger bug bubbles along it changes in flavor and aroma. I read somewhere that Verner from Verner's Ginger Ale had his ginger bug going for four years before he was truly satisfied with it. I've found as I've had it longer it needs less, so I don't have to feed it every day like I did when I started it which is nice. It gets fed every few days now although I can feed it more if I want. The smell is maturing and I'm liking where it's going.

It's a spicy, slightly sweet and naturally fizzy beverage that I can see sticking around my house for awhile.

This is a shot of the batch I harvested today just before I did it. Harvesting just consists of straining out the ginger pulp and putting it into a pressure rated bottle so it can build carbonation for a few days, up to a week. This is an active ferment though, so I have to watch it and burp it to avoid explosions.

You can see the fermented ginger bug in the bottom, on day two of the ferment you can see it suspended in the middle of the jar moving around from the ferment, how cool.

I've used my ginger bug in my kombucha as a flavoring in the second ferment before (although I'd never advise adding it to the first one, different bugs, literally). I'll admit, I'm a fan of the taste of the fresh ginger more myself and I think I'll keep the ginger bug to the ginger beer unless someone requests it. It's not bad, just different in a way I'm not a fan of and it's extra work to do it that way, so I'll stick with fresh.

My favorite part about this ferment no joke is the bug. For whatever reason, I get fascinated by it. I stirred it and fed it earlier when I made a new batch of lemon ginger beer and when I looked at it an hour later the ginger and water had already separated signaling it's active. Two hours later and small bubbles had grown into giant ones. It's very active, very tasty smelling and pretty fun to work with.