Make Your Own Soda at Home With This Starter!

By
Mona R
-
Photo by Lauren Bow on Unsplash

Making soda is easy when you have a ginger bug starter. This liquid is the carbonated component of homemade soda that is totally crucial, and makes your drinks super delicious and still healthy!

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On the fence about making ginger beer? You need only three ingredients to make superb ginger beer—ginger, sugar and water. . To make ginger beer, you first need to make a ginger bug—a starter for natural sodas. To do that, stir together about 1-1/4 cups water, 1 tablespoon chopped organic ginger and 1 tablespoon sugar in a clean (not sterilized) jar. Add 1 tablespoon chopped organic ginger and 1 tablespoon sugar every day. . After 5 days, the ginger bug should be ready to make ginger beer. At that point, it should taste sweet and sour and some of the ginger bits will have floated to the top. The telltale sign of brewing readiness is the white yeast that settles on the bottom of the jar. . Use organic ginger for this. Non-organic ginger may undergo irradiation, which kills the naturally occurring bacteria and yeast on the ginger that ferment the ginger bug. The only ferment I have ever made that failed to bubble to life was an attempt at a ginger pickle. Every ferment may not have tasted amazing but they always bubble up. The ginger pickle sat in its jar lifeless for a few weeks until I finally laid it to rest on the compost heap. I hadn’t known about the ginger issue at the time. Learn from my mistake and enjoy some delicious ginger beer! . Link in profile for the ginger beer recipe.

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Ingredients

  • 5 tablespoons of grated organic ginger, divided
  • 5 tablespoons of sugar, divided
  • 1 1/2 cups of water
  • Liquid desired to make the soda out of

Recipe

  1. Combine the ginger, sugar, and water into a jar and stir well.
  2. Leave it out on the counter for 5 days.
  3. Every day, add 1 more tablespoon of sugar and ginger each and stir well.
  4. After 5 days, you should have a bubbly, yeast-smelling liquid.
  5. This liquid will be the starter to your soda. You can then transfer it to your fridge and feed it 1 tablespoon of sugar and ginger each just once a week. Before you feed it, make sure it comes to room temperature and let it sit out for a few hours before you return it to the fridge.
  6. To use, feed it, and then mix it around so all the bottom yeast bits float around. Use 1/4 a cup of the mixture and add it to your favorite liquids, juices, etc, in a flip-top bottle and let it sit at room temperature for 3 days and you’ll have soda!
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