home made ginger ale

[KnottedYet]

I've only brewed beer, and it took weeks for the stuff to become carbonated.

[OakLeaf]

No idea ...

but here I am on the other side of the hummus thread.* Reed's Extra has 28 g fresh ginger root per 12 oz (355 ml) bottle.

Homemade sounds delicious! but you don't have to make it if the only reason you're doing it is a stronger flavor. It is sweeter though, with 37.4g sugars per bottle.

*At least Reed's comes in recyclable glass bottles.

[Owlie]

Maybe the yeast was old?

Knot, you need to keep the "fermentation" relatively short or you'll end up with alcoholic ginger ale!

I'm going to have to try Reed's ginger ale. I love their root beer and cream soda...

[aquamoose32]

wow fun! I'm gonna try. I brew kombucha and like that carbonation too. My understanding of Carbonation is that something eats the sugar and releases CO2 and thats how you get it fizzy. However, I've made batches of kombucha every two weeks for a year now and sometimes it is fizzy sometimes it is not. I give it about a week to work its bubble magic once I cap the bottles. Maybe it had to do with bakers yeast and not brewers yeast? I am beginning to wonder now if it has something to do with the amounts of sugar per kombucha culture. Maybe you didnt have enough sugar to naturally make it as bubbly as you wanted? Dont have an answer, but I'll let you know how my batch turns out. Have you tried root beer?

[limewave]

How long did you let it sit? It seems like you are supposed to let it sit for a few days for the carbonation to build.

[badger]

I love the alcoholic ginger beer I was having in England. It's got a very strong ginger taste, and it's really nice as a night cap.

I would be inclined to make the syrup and just add carbonated water, too. Actually, I'll probably just put hot water in with the syrup and have ginger tea!

[smilingcat]

The concoction did generate plenty of carbon dioxide. The problem is that it didn't dissolve into the water. So I looked up a table on carbon dioxide solubility of in water and in water with different salinity.

I do remember that sugar solubility increases tremendously, non-linearly, with increase in temperature while salt an inorganic ionic compound increases more or less linearly with temperature. Gasses on the other hand will decrease in solubility with temperature.

My hypothesis is that carbon dioxide bubble was compressed so small that it clinged to the ground ginger, lemon rind and didn't dissolve into the liquid.

Next round will be to shake the bottle after refrigerating to release carbon dioxide from the ginger and help get it into the water. Also I need to look into the effect of pH of the water. dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid... Try more lemon juice to reduce pH.

Lemon juice was used not only for flavoring but to help invert regular sugar so that the yeast would have much easier time metabolizing sugar into carbon dioxide.

so too much chemistry for some. Try again today and wait another 24 to 48 hours.
BTW, I modified recipes found in the internet. Alton Brown's ginger ale, and few others.

Once I get it right, I'll try flavoring with mint from our yard, raspberry, marion berries...

[Owlie]

Mmm, chemistry. Tasty, tasty chemistry.