Make Your Own Soda Pop in 12 Hours? Tiny House Cooking - Ginger Ale

Do you call that stuff soda? Pop? Soda pop? I've heard and lived in areas where each was commonly used. Anyway as we are probably all well aware by now, when you buy and consume a bottle of whatever you call it, you are not building your health at all. With massive sugar loads, increasing incidences of everything from diabetes and heart disease to gout and dementia, to obesity and cancer risks tied to soda consumption, clearly none of us benefit from drinking them. But, some of us really, really, REALLY, like them. 

I can't say I do personally, though I have good friends and family members who crave soda at an addiction level. I'm very thankful to have grown up in a house where soda was just something that was not normally present or an option, and I never really developed much of a taste for them. Now something like gummy candies, that's a whole 'nother topic for me! I might even do a whole post just about that sometime.... But back to soda. The only thing in that family that I have ever truly enjoyed is

Reed's Ginger Brew. If you have never had this stuff, and if you don't totally hate the flavor of ginger, you should try it! Think plain old fake ginger ale, but so much better, more flavorful, intense, and rich. I could drink a bottle or two every day. Unfortunately, it's both kind of pricy, and my local grocer can't seem to keep it in stock. You would think if they are always sold out they would figure out that there is a demand to stock more, but no, it's spot on the shelf is empty about four out of five times I'm in the store. So I must not be the only person in the world who loves the stuff.

Generally I have a policy against purchasing things to drink. Most drinks that can be purchased are full of junk, bad for my health, and expensive. I am fortunate to have access to great clean well water for free, lots of tasty herbs and "weeds" that I dry to make teas from for free, and even wild berries most years that I make juice from for free. Obviously all of those things involve time, but since things like berry picking are quite fun, I quite enjoy the time spent and they don't cost money. So I find it hard to justify spending anything to purchase drinks. But that Reed's Ginger Brew is the one I'd love to drink a lot of!

The ingredients are: "Sparkling Filtered Water, Cane Sugar, Pineapple Juice from Concentrate, Honey, Ginger Root, Lemon and Lime Juices from Concentrate, Spices" That doesn't seem too complicated, so I'm not sure why I never tried this years ago, but this winter I thought, surely I can make something similar at home right? I've brewed my own kombucha for years, surely I can learn to make a soda I figured.

So I started searching for a recipe. I found lots of discussion of and ways to brew alcoholic ginger beers. That isn't what I was looking for though. While I do have an alcoholic drink on occasion, I have noticed I don't tend to sleep well after a drink, I know alcohol isn't great for human health either, and there's that fact that there are a whole lot of things I like doing with my money more than drinking it, so this is only a few times a year thing for me. It took a lot of searching to find anyone making what I was looking for, a home brewed ginger ale that wasn't a beer.

 In fact the only one I could find that sounded like what I wanted was this post - https://www.foodiewithfamily.com/papas-homemade-hooch-the-worlds-best-and-easiest-homemade-ginger-ale/   But that seemed like a good start. Pretty close to what I wanted and not very complicated sounding at all. While her recipe used sugar, and the yeast needs something to eat, I thought if the Reed's stuff can get it's sweetening from pineapple juice, why not try that?

 After playing around with a bunch of batches in the past few months, and enjoying every single one, here's what I personally like best. And it's way simpler to make than I ever dreamed before I tried it! 

A two liter bottle like most sodas are sold in works well for this. I generally try to use glass not plastic when working with food, but there is at least a small chance of a bottle over-carbonating and exploding. So... I'd rather clean up some liquid than have a glass bomb go off in my house. While you could give it a try, I personally would be too nervous to put this in a glass bottle. If you or anyone you know drinks big bottles of soda, you can probably beg an empty bottle or two from them. And it can be reused many many times, with one provision. When you empty it, rinse it out right away. Immediately! If you don't, you get nasty little things stuck on the bottom growing gross fuzzies. And with their very narrow necks, a soda bottle like this is virtually impossible to clean if that happens. But if you rinse it out well right away, preferably with hot water, this is not an issue.

So, for a two liter batch, I use about the amount of ginger pictured above. I like it with a really strong ginger flavor, so if you don't enjoy that as much, go a little lighter. I wash it well, then slice into thinnish disks like below. You could peel it if you prefer, but I'm way too lazy to do so and see no need to.

These I put in a blender with just a little pineapple juice (or water if you are just using sugar as a sweetener) and puree into little pieces. The smaller the better for getting the flavor and nutrients to leach into the drink.

Something that looks about like this seems to work quite well. 

Now it's way easier to get things into that skinny bottle neck if you have a narrow funnel or messes will probably ensue. 😉 The next thing you need is 1/4 teaspoon of yeast. I use the same plain yeast I use for baking bread, though some people like champagne yeast for brewing stuff. I got a little packet and tried it for several batches. It was fine too, but I couldn't tell the result was any better or different than my regular yeast, so I've just stuck with that since. If you add the yeast to the bottle first, any little grains that stick to the funnel get washed in as you add everything else. 

Next in goes my ginger/pineapple juice puree. Then I use more juice to wash all the other little bits of ginger out of the blender and into the bottle too. 

I did some math with the help of some online reference to figure out how much pineapple juice would give my yeast about the same number of grams of sugar to eat as the original recipe I was referencing. There's about 200 grams of sugar in a cup so I was looking for 100 grams to equal half a cup of sugar. Since the jar of real pineapple juice that's not from concentrate says there are 26 grams of sugar in a one cup serving, I needed a little under 4 cups of pineapple juice to give me the same amount of sugar. That's what I started with for the first batch, but it was a little too sweet for me. I found I really like the taste with just over 3 cups of pineapple juice for a batch. 

So after making sure I've rinsed all the ginger bits into the bottle, I add how ever much of that three cups of juice is left. And add a splash of lemon and/or lime juice. Then fill the bottle almost to the top with water, leaving a little air space just under the lid. It should look something like the below photo, except with less bubbles, at least right away. Put the lid on snugly and give it a few good shakes to be sure the yeast is dissolved and not just stuck to the bottom. 

All together for easy reference, what I like best is:

For a 2 Liter batch of Ginger Ale

2-3 inches of ginger as pictured above

1/4 teaspoon yeast

3 cups of pineapple juice

Splash of lemon and/or lime juice

Water to fill bottle

Now just let it sit somewhere at room temperature for 12-48 hours. Feel the bottle right after you put the lid on. You should be able to flex the bottle gently inwards with your thumb. Remember how that feels. As the yeast starts to wake up and get all excited about eating the sugars in the juice, they will start to make bubbles. I think of it as yeast farts. 😋 The same thing that makes many breads rise and get light and fluffy instead of just being a hard cracker. Anyway, those bubbles start to create pressure in the bottle, creating that carbonation many of us enjoy. Check regularly, and once the bottle feels firm and you can no longer flex it inwards with your thumb, refrigerate the bottle. The cooler temp almost stops the yeast's action, keeping it from exploding. 

The blog I got the ideas from said it usually took 24-48 hours to get bubbly. So the first time I made a batch I was trying to be patient, but I checked it after 12 hours and was glad I did! The bottle was so tight I thought it might explode. It is probably not a bad idea to actually leave a towel over/around the bottle as it ferments just in case this happens to contain any mess. And gets back to why I wouldn't try this in glass. But don't forget to check on it! For every batch I've made, mine has been well fermented, bubbly, and near exploding after about 12 hours so I never got close to waiting two days. Your times may vary with the kind of sugar or yeast used and temps in your home, but do check it regularly! 

And bubbly it is! When I want to have a drink, I usually have to set it in the sink to catch any overflow and slowly start "burping" the lid. If you don't do this slowly and only crack the lid open a little at a time, you may well be cleaning ginger ale off your ceiling! The first time I open a new batch, it can take 15 minutes or more of doing this to be able to actually remove the lid without it boiling over, and pour a glass. 

I usually pour it through a little strainer like this as there is a lot of ginger fiber in there. But if you don't mind the texture, you could certainly just drink it with the pulp. Then enjoy in any way you like ginger ale! I love just drinking a glass. If you like it cold, add ice. It's also wonderful with a little fruit or berry juice added for different flavors. 

I've never really found out how long this would keep in the fridge, since I tend to drink through a batch in a few days. But I know you can at least keep it in there for a few days after taking it off the counter. And after opening and starting to drink, I've kept it for about a week at the longest before it was all gone. Since it was wonderful, I'm pretty sure it would still be good for some time after that. One of the really neat things about this compared to a store bought soda is that the yeast continues fermenting slowly in the fridge. So if you open it and have a glass one day, and then don't touch it for another day or two, instead of going flat, it recreates new bubbles. Though after the initial opening, it's usually not so prone to boiling out all over when you remove the lid. 

A funny side story, my mother who gave birth to 7 children, always seemed to be morning sick for something like 24 hours a day, for approximately 9 months of each pregnancy. Maybe she doesn't remember it quite like that, I've never asked her since, but as the oldest, that's how I remember my younger siblings coming into the world. Ginger is well known for helping to settle upset stomachs and carbonation seems to help at times as well. So there would usually be some of that Reed's Ginger Brew around. Being a little child who generally wanted to do whatever the adults were doing, I always wanted some. But the stuff is kind of pricy as I mentioned, and so the answer was always, "No, that's not for you. That is Mama's belly juice." So for many years, and I guess a little bit to this day, I still think of ginger ale as "belly juice." 😁

I think it's a fun sciency project that most children would probably enjoy as well. Not to mention a really tasty drink that even surpasses that original Reed's flavor I was going for. And with lots of ginger, well known for boosting immune health etc., and pineapple juice, which seems to reduce inflammation among other benefits, it's actually good for you!

And there you have it. A delicious, healthy, bubbly drink that you might just find totally satisfies any craving you have for less healthy sodas. Give it a try and tell me what you think! Or I'd love to hear about other home brew drinks you already enjoy making.