With summer heat upon us, we may find ourselves craving a cool, bubbly soda. Instead of reaching for a conventional soda — likely full of artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives, in a single use container, we can instead make our own soda with just a few ingredients and a little time.
There are a few ways to make a homemade soda — one is to add a syrup to sparkling water. To make your soda healthier though, ferment it.
The first step in making fermented soda is to make a ginger bug.
To make a ginger bug, you will need:
- organic ginger
- sweetener
- water
- jar which seals
Warm two cups of non-chlorinated water on the stove and stir in two teaspoons of sugar until it dissolves. You can also use honey, raw sugars or maple syrup. Avoid sweeteners without calories, such as stevia — a ginger bug is created by yeast consuming calories from sugar.
Finely chop an ounce of fresh organic ginger root, unpeeled. You can also shred or mince the ginger, but chopping it into small pieces is easier initially and later to strain.
Add the ginger to a jar, which can hold a bit more than two cups.
Once the water and sugar have cooled, add the liquid to the jar with the chopped ginger. Put the lid on the jar, and leave it on your counter for 24 hours.
The next day, add five teaspoons sugar and two and a half ounces of chopped ginger. Repeat for four to six days, until the contents of the jar smells yeasty — like bread or beer.
When it is bubbly and smells yeasty, your ginger bug is ready to make your own fermented soda.
To use and make soda, strain half a cup of the ginger bug and mix it with seven and a half cups of natural juice or sweetened (with calorific sweetener) herbal tea. You can also make your own juice with fresh fruit, or by making a fruit based syrup and adding it to water.
Pour the mix into jars (swing top jars work well for this), and let sit at room temperature for about three days.
Each day, make sure to open the lid to your soda, so the fermentation doesn’t build up too much. Over-carbonated beverages can explode, either breaking the glass bottle or spewing the beverage all over you and your kitchen when finally opened. Releasing carbonation daily will avoid such catastrophes.
Once your soda is ready, enjoy or store in the fridge (cool temperatures slows fermentation down) for a few weeks.
