Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Chickened Out on Ginger Beer

I am looking for a drink that is refreshing after a long day working on the farm.  Something that doesn't taste like water and can help replenish electrolytes without being sweet.  Something more affordable than mineral water.

Home brew ginger beer might just fit the bill.

Instead of using commercial made yeasts, I decided to capture my own yeast using a ginger bug.  You put sugar and ginger in a jar, adding more each day and stirring it vigorously.  After a few days to a week, it gets lovely and bubbly.  It's like a sourdough starter in that it captures wild yeast, but it's for making ginger beer, it's called a bug.

Down to Earth Blog has a couple of recipes for Ginger Beer, this one looks the best.  Of course, being the crazy Pastafarian that I am, I decided to adjust the recipe a little... a little too much as it turns out.


I used honey instead of sugar, and being told by many people about how easy it is to have this drink explode, I opened them up several times a day to see if they were fizzy yet.

The flavour did start to transform from sweet to tangy, but developed these weird storm clouds.


It looked really gross, so I chickened out and tossed the whole batch.

Next time (yep, I already started a new bug with the leas from the old one) I will use sugar instead of honey. I figure that I should learn how it is suppose to act before I start changing up the recipe too much.

Anyone else out there made ginger beer?  Got any tips for me?

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