It’s a hot summer afternoon. I’m sitting down on a hot afternoon, with a burger, and a cold beer.
What I’m looking for is something to replace that cold beer with. I want it to be crisp and fresh, but also not sweet. I love tart and bitter flavours. Unfortunately, my options are either cold and sweet, cold and alcoholic or hot and non sweet.
So threadiverse, what alternatives am I missing?
Tereré is great, but it’s a bit of a pain to source in Australia. What else is there?
Our parents used to make ginger beer when I was a kid. There was a “starter”, some kind of yeast? Then a raisin or two in each bottle, and of course ginger. Every now and then you’d hear one of the bottles explode. The surviving bottles were delicious, effervescent and spicy, not too sweet.
The best starter for ginger beer is “ginger bug”
Start with 2 big spoonfuls each of (grated) ginger and sugar in 2 cups of water. Stir it twice daily and feed it once a day, alternating
Day 1, spoonful of sugar
Day 2, spoonful of sugar and spoonful of grated ginger.
Here it gets active in a couple of days but better to keep feeding and stirring for a week. Use a cup of the liquid to ferment a gallon of ginger beer and save another cup tightly covered in a refrigerator to start your next batch, so it will go faster.
You can make it with yeast but it doesn’t taste as good and is fussier.
Thank you!! I might try that one day…
Oh, a note - in the US I have to use organic ginger for ginger beer, all the rest of it must have been irradiated or had some hotshot anti-everything spray because only organic ferments.
Not for any other ferment I make is this true, only ginger. Tepache, fruit kvass, sourdough, I use conventionally grown stuff. I’m not sure this holds true everywhere but if it doesn’t work, get organic ginger.