Updated recipe for Ginger Beer

Folks - I was surprised that I could not directly find a Ginger Beer recipe on my site. I also added there far too much citric acid and far too less sugar. With time comes wisdom I guess. I was inspired by Liz the Chef - I have checked the traffic sources of my blog - and just found out, a lot of traffic came from her website. Thank you.

Anyways - she posted a Meyer Lemon Dark and Stormy (and yes, the post is several years old). But what did I needed to see? Store-bought Ginger Beer. This isn't great!

The problem with store-bought ginger beer is, that it is a) pasteurized and b) it is made with ginger extract (which I guess comes from dried ginger). Hygiene-wise it makes perfectly sense. Ginger has a lot of microorganisms (a lot of good ones)... yeast and lactobacteria. The best way to get 100% rid of it (because you don't want to have a commercial ginger beer bottles, which are exploding due to rogue fermentation) is to use dehydrated ginger. No water - no (live) microorganisms.
The problem is, that dried ginger taste completely different than fresh ginger beer - and while it is great in some recipes (think pumpkin spice) it is not. the aroma you like in ginger beer.

At home we don't have to care so much - because our couple of bottles of ginger beer will anyway not last longer than a couple of days (except our bottle of rum or vodka finished before and due to the pandemic we don't have an immediate replacement).

The recipe: Ginger Beer

We make here a simple ginger soda. No fermentation (to be honest, I don't really appreciate fermented ginger beer - it taste a bit "of": too fermented) - and this time no beer... (but hey you can mix it afterwards with beer).

120g sugar (use white or organic light)
1l water
2.4g citric acid
50g fresh ginger

The amount of ginger as aroma (as in all sodas) is not significant here. Use more and it will be much spicier - use less and it will be lighter. The important ratio is though sugar to citric acid; and sugar to water.

Peel (optional - but it makes the ginger beer look better) and grate ginger and squeeze the grated ginger to get the juice (discard the grated solids or add them to your stir-fry). Dissolve the sugar and the citric acid in the water (the blender works great - don't heat it up - you will just invert the sugar and end up with an inconsistent result) add the ginger juice.

Carbonate the resulting liquid (I use my Soda plus, but you can use your iSi Twist & Sparkle) and BAM! you have got your amazing tasting (far better than Fevertree or any other "artisan") ginger beer.

Obviously you like to keep your ginger beer refrigerated, keep it in a pressure-save bottle and consume it via 2-3 days. I am not kidding - ginger is in my experience the most active breeding source of yeast and lactobacteria. And while these "bugs" are not bad for your health, an exploding bottle (due to rogue-fermentation) cannot be so good for your health either.

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