Fizzy, Bubbly, & Fresh! If you are a soda lover, then this is for you!
We love DIY fermented fizzy drinks. They are delicious and packed with health-promoting nutrients, beneficial enzymes, and probiotics or friendly gut bacteria to keep sickness at bay.
A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that you can treat and even prevent some of our modern illnesses with foods and drinks that contain certain kinds of live bacteria.
Healthy belly, happy YOU!
How to make a ginger bug
Before I’m going to show you how to make my favorite homemade soda, you need to learn how to make a ginger bug. A ginger bug is a culture of friendly bacteria who live from ginger and sugar.
It is used as a base for ginger ale or other natural sodas or tonics. It is actually quite similar to the mother of raw apple cider vinegar, the scoby of kombucha or the sourdough starter for bread.
And what’s cool, it lives its own life on your countertop or in the fridge. It can be kept “alive” for ages. As with any living thing just do not forget to feed it!
Ingredients
- 1-2 fresh ginger roots
- ½ cup white or unrefined sugar (honey, stevia, agave, maple, molasses or other sweeteners will NOT work)
- 2 cups filtered water (chlorine-free, chlorine can harm the culture)
FYI: the friendly bacteria feed on the sugar. So no worries about drinking heaps of sugar, all the sugar will be converted, and your drink will not be sugary at all.
How To…
- Grate or finely chop 3 tablespoons of ginger and place in a quart size jar (you can add fresh turmeric root too).
- Add 3 tablespoons of sugar and 2 cups of water.
- Stir with a spoon and lightly cover with a coffee filter or cheesecloth and rubber band.
- For the next 3 to 5 days (it may take 7 or 8 days depending on the temperature, but no longer): stir the mixture at least once a day and feed it 1 tablespoon grated ginger and 1 tablespoon sugar.
- An active culture will form bubbles, become cloudy, smell yeasty, and fizz when stirred. If mold appears, scrape it off. When too much mold appears or the process takes longer than 7 to 8 days, start over.
- Keep away from other cultures like scoby or sauerkraut to avoid contamination.
- When the culture is alive and bubbling, you could keep it on the countertop and feed it daily with one teaspoon sugar and one teaspoon grated ginger or let it rest in the fridge. When resting in the fridge don’t forget to feed it every week, 1 tablespoon sugar and one tablespoon grated ginger.
- To reactivate the culture, bring it back to room temperature and daily feed it again.
This one is almost ready to go, one day more!
Depending on the temperature, more bubbles may appear when you stir the bug. The more it bubbles, the faster the soda-making process will go.
This ginger bug can now be used to create fermented fizzy sodas or tonics. Use a ¼ cup ginger bug per 1 quart sweetened herbal mixtures or fruit juices.
Turmeric-Ginger Ale Soda, The Recipe
This is definitely one of our favorites. Feel free to experiment with the other flavors you love.
Ingredients
- ½ gallon (or about 2 liters) filtered water
- ⅓ cup fresh turmeric root (or more), grated
- 1 cup sugar (white or raw palm sugar, sweeteners like honey or agave won’t work)
- About 2 cups ginger bug (we used nearly all the bug we had)
- 2-3 oranges (or grapefruit or pomelo), juice only
- 4 limes (or lemons), juice only
- Pinch of freshly ground black pepper (to improve the bio-availability of turmeric's active compound curcumin)
FYI: again the bacteria will feed on most of the sugar.
See how much fizz you get in there? Amazing isn't it?
How to....
- First things first, make a healthy, bubbling ginger bug or starter culture. See above.
- In a pot, bring water, turmeric, and sugar to a boil. Boil for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
- Once the mixture has cooled down, add the ginger bug, black pepper, orange juice, and lemon juice. Stir well.
- Strain the liquid through a fine mesh sieve to remove turmeric and ginger bug debris.
- Pour the mixture into soda bottles that have swing tops or tight fitting screw top lids. Allow the bottles to sit for 2 to 3 days at room temperature. This will depend on the temperature. We live in the tropics so for us, it takes only 1 to 2 days to get a nice fizz into the drink.
- Once a day open up the cap and they should make a fizzy sound. When you put the cap back on the carbonation will build up again. Regularly check the bottles by giving them a squeeze, they will get hard while the fizz or carbonation builds up. If not checking them regularly they can explode, and you won’t like the yellow turmeric staining your kitchen walls. When you notice they get too hard, open the cap and allow to burb.
- Once you get a decent amount of fizz in them, refrigerate to stop the process.
- Once they are cold, they are ready to drink. You can store them in the fridge for up to a week or even 2 weeks. But our bottles never last longer than a week, though… it’s too delicious to keep them in the fridge.
Once you get used to making your own fizzy drinks, you can start to experiment with adding more turmeric, ginger or use other fresh fruit juices instead. Watermelon is very delicious, just use your blender to make fresh juice out of the fruit and strain to remove seeds.
Berries are very delicious too. Or add tea leaves to the boiling water. As you see your options of adding flavor are endless.
Happy fermenting!