Ginger Beer

He Says:
   
   After some trial and error, I think that I’ve perfected the ginger beer method.  For my first batches I was using yeast to ferment the beverage, but it was giving me some strange results.  Sometimes it would be delicious, other times it would be insipid.  I think those hungry little yeasts were devouring every single thing they could--which included all the flavor compounds.  Plus, whenever I had made it previously, I bottled it in old Canada Dry bottles which never really held the carbonation that well.  So what I was left with was a bland, flat drink most of the time.

   After reading a book called Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats (a pretty hefty title, huh?) I became turned onto the idea of using whey to ferment beverages.  Since we make tons of yogurt in our house, we had a source of whey.  This new change allowed most of the flavor compounds to stay in the ginger beer, so now all of the batches turn out tasting great.  Plus the whey adds a pleasing sour note to the drink.

   To fix the carbonation (or lack thereof) problems I started using standard beer bottles and capping them with bottle caps.  This turned out to be a mistake--and a rather messy one.  Since I had no previous experience using whey, I wanted to bottle it with enough time left while it was actively fermenting so it would produce a good amount of fizz.  Once I capped the first set I let them sit out for 24 hours.  I inspected them regularly and could see the bubbles rising and just knew that this plan was going to work.  What a fool I was.

   When it came time to taste the first bottle, I opened it and within a second the contents sprayed out of the top all over the kitchen.  I stood there dumbfounded and sticky.  There wasn’t a drop left in the bottle.  Looking back, it was unfortunate and messy, but at least the bottles didn’t explode.  For the rest of the over-carbonated bottles I enlisted Abby’s help.  She held a jar over the bottles while I opened them in the sink so that the spray was captured. 

   Learning from my mistake, we purchased plastic soda bottles at the store so that I could feel when the bottle expanded and became firm, which shows when the proper carbonation is achieved – no more messy guesswork.  Plus Abby got to have Dr. Pepper on our calzone nights.  Everyone was happy!

Now that I have the technique down it’s just tweaking to find the recipe perfectly suited to my tastes, and maybe Abby’s if she ever realizes how delicious this stuff is.