Dirt Simple Ginger Ale

Your first fermentation

If you have never fermented anything before, this is as simple as it gets. This article is intended to take a brewing novice from total cluelessnes to complete carbonation wizardry.

Your friends will think you have magic powers when you show them what you can do with water, a spoon, and a bucket.

Prepare to be astonished!

Now, I'm not even sure that you can really call this a Ginger Ale. It's more of a sparkling sugar drink. In any case it's a fun and simple introduction to the magic of fermentation.

You don't need to go to a Homebrewing supplies shop for this, just a grocery store.

Here is a list of things you will need:

• 1 stock pot large enough to boil 12 Litres of water
• 1 large plastic funnel
• 1 large plastic spoon
• 1 bag of brown sugar
• 1 big fresh ginger root
• 1 packet of baker's yeast
• 12 1 Liter plastic water bottles
• 1 bottle of cheap bleach
• 1 plastic bucket
• 1 plastic strainer
• 1 measuring cup

The first step is to sanitize the bottles, their caps, and the plastic funnel. Make sure that your bleach is unscented cheap stuff. Cheap bleach is actually better than name brand bleach because it's usually more concentrated. Go ahead and splurge on a new bottle because bleach has a finite shelf life. Fresh bleach is essential.

Fill your plastic bucket up with cold water, but be aware of how much water your using. If you use 23 Litres of water, add half a cup of bleach to it. If your using 12 Litres of water add a quarter cup.

A good trick to test your bleach concentration is to stick your hand in the water. If your skin feels slimy afterwards then it's probably OK.

Immerse the plastic funnel, the plastic strainer, the caps for the bottles and the bottles themselves in the bleach. Let them sit in there for 20 Minutes or so. Less soaking time would probably be adequate, but there's no harm in playing it safe.

The reason you're going to all this hassle before the brewing has even begun is to kill any microbes that are living in the bottles or on the funnel, and strainer. There is a way to avoid sanitizing the plastic bottles if you're willing to spend the extra cash.

Just buy twelve NEW bottles of water! Empty the water from the bottles right into the stock pot, then recap them, and set them aside. The benefit of doing this is that the water that comes from the bottles might be preferable in taste to your tap water. It's possible that there may be some living microbes in those bottles, but I doubt there will be enough of them to effect the flavor of the finished Ginger Ale.

At whatever point you remove the funnel, caps, bottles, and the strainer from the bucket, be sure to give them a good rinse with cold water to get the bleach off. For rinsing a bottle out, I find that filling it three times with water and dumping out is usually enough.

NOW, onto the brew.

So you have your stock pot on the stove full of water, and it's slowly coming to a boil. DON'T put the lid on. Remember that this is Brewing not cooking. For a visual explanation, take a look at THIS.

Besides the horror of a boil over, keeping the pot covered can impart a vegetable flavor to brews known as DMS. That's fine for soup, but remember that we are trying to create a beverage here.

Anyway, while your pot is heating up you can prepare your ginger. Make sure it's fresh. You want a nice big shiny ginger root, not some shriveled up left over. Peal the ginger, and slice it carefully. Each piece should be the thickness of a couple stacked coins. Make sure there are no loose bits, and don't grate the ginger. I'll explain that precaution in a moment.

When the pot is at a rolling boil carefully add 1 and 1/2 cups of brown sugar; Stir it up good; Let this boil for 10 Minutes; Then add the ginger root slices, and let them boil for 5 Minutes to 10 Minutes before turning off the heat and placing the lid on the pot.

Place your pot in the sink and fill the sink with cold water. Add ice if you want, but change out the water as it warms. The aim of this is to cool the pot, and it's contents down to room temperature.

While you're waiting for the pot to cool stick the measuring cup, and your plastic spoon in the bleach solution. After 10 Minutes or so, take the measuring cup out and rinse it off with cold water.

Fill it with one cup of room temperature water. Not too cold; Not too hot. Dump the bakers yeast into the cup, and cover the cup with a clean dry cloth.

This isn't really a yeast starter, you're just rehydrating the yeast so that you can dump it into the pot when it's cooled off.

Now, I fully admit that the finished beverage would taste a million times better if you went to a Homevintnering, or Homebrewing shop, and grabbed a packet of champagne yeast. Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you not to do it... I'm not saying that it's wrong... I'm just trying to offer the simplest possible way for a person to experience fermentation for the first time... Just keeping it simple... Bakers yeast.

Powdered beer and wine yeast is dirt cheap by the way. Less than $2.

Anyway, so your pot is room temperature, and your yeast has turned into moist sludge. Dump the yeast into the now cooled pot of boiled ginger juice, then stir it with the plastic spoon to mix it evenly. When that's done there is nothing to do but bottle. This is where you might want to enlist the help of a friend.

Place the bottles on the floor. Now place the funnel in the neck of one of the bottles, and place the strainer in the funnel. Your friend can hold the bottle, and the funnel/strainer assembly in place, while you pour the ginger juice from the pot into the bottle. Make sure your friend keeps the funnel slightly above the lip of the bottle, or at least half cocked so that air can pass out of the bottle as the liquid pours in.

Repeat this until all of your bottles are filled up to just bellow the neckline. Screw all the caps on, then clean up the mess.

Due to evaporation during the boil, you will probably be a bottle or so short of a full dozen, but that doesn't mater. Remember you're doing this for fun, not filling a quota.

So that was the brew. Now it's ferment time.

Take all the bottles and put them in a dark warm place. By warm, I mean something reasonable like 20° Celsius. Leave them there for five to seven days.

After that long wait, it's almost drinking time. Place them in the fridge and wait until the next day. This has nothing to do with having a preference for cold drinks. I'll explain in a moment.

Now, the following day take out a bottle; Get a nice big glass; Unscrew the cap with a quick twist, and pour carefully. You will notice that there is a layer of white sludge on the bottom of the bottle. This is sediment. Mostly dormant yeast which has settled down. If you can pour without getting any of that stuff in your glass, then your well on your way to becoming a Homebrewer.

There you have it. A crisp sparkling drink which tastes of ginger. Enjoy!... Now, why the hell did you have to wait a week , then throw the bottles in the fridge?

While the bottles sat, the yeast cells inside were busy at work, eating the sugar and producing two by-products. Alcohol, and Co2. With such a small amount of sugar to work with the alcohol in this brew will be negligible, however the Co2 works wonders. At first it collects in the neck of the bottle, but as time passes it becomes redissolved into the liquid. Putting the bottles into the fridge for a day enhances this process since a liquid resting at a lower energy state permits more gas to dissolve into it.

Just imagine trying to get into a crowded buss when it's full of hyperactive idiots throwing there back packs around and slamming into each other. It's a lot easier to negotiate a crowded space when everyone stays relatively still.

This is known as bottle conditioning, or priming. It's a form of fermentation used to carbonate inside a bottle.

Now, consider this. If you had used 20 Pounds of brown sugar instead of a cup and a half. You would have produced enough Co2 to split the bottles wide open, but that liquid spilling all over the floor would have been decidedly alcoholic.

That's why Brewers and Vintners, do primary and secondary fermentations with air locks that let most of the Co2 escape into the atmosphere, then they bottle or keg.

You will notice that though you used a fair amount of sugar for a preboil volume of 12 Litres, this beverage is quite dry tasting, not overly sweet. This is another magic trick of fermentation. A mixture that is decidedly undrinkable can be gradually transformed into a complex and exciting beverage.

You can apply the same basic principles used in this exercise to making beer or wine, there are just a few additional steps, and a near infinity of possibilities.

Now that I've told you what to do, let me take a moment to explain what NOT to do.

Earlier I said that you should not grate the ginger, or let any little chunks find their way into the brew. The reason for this is that solids, especially something with as rough a surface as a chunk of vegetable mater can cause problems when you uncap the bottle.

Chunks of ginger will probably settle on the bottom of the bottle over time. They will mix with the yeast bed (sediment) and when you uncap, the pressure of the bottle suddenly drops, allowing Co2 to snap back into gas form. Basically the Co2 collects into bubbles, and becomes buoyant. Physical imperfections in the landscape, such as scratches in the surface of the bottle or chunks of ginger provide perfect anchors for Co2 bubbles to form. In the case of a bottle imperfection, no big deal. The bubbles will form, and when they become to large to stay anchored they will drift upwards.

This is why pubs frequently replace there glassware. The glass eventually becomes so scratched, pitted, and greasy that it decarbonates the beer too pervasively to maintain a good looking head.

In the case of free solids like bits of ginger, there is nothing to hold the solid down, so it will float upwards along with the Co2 bubbles, rather like a basket at the bottom of a hot air balloon. This will drag yeast with it, and create a nasty sludge at the top of the bottle. It won't hurt you, it will just taste bad, and possibly alleviate constipation the next day.

DON'T USE GLASS BOTTLES!

If you brew this recipe a few times, you might try adding more or less sugar to suit your taste for carbonation. The worst that will happen will be a plastic bottle splitting in two and soaking your floor. More likely the seals on the caps will go, and you will hear a constant hissing from the bottles as they vent. In that case I advise you to just partially unscrew the cap to release the pressure, then screw the cap back down tight. Repeat this once a day until the bottle doesn't hiss anymore.

If you were using glass bottles however, the results could be life threatening if you got it wrong.

In short, do not fuck with glass unless you know what you are doing. I can not over dramatize this.

I used to work in a U/Brew, or "Brew on Premises" where the bottling was done by machine. Basically the customer would load one bottle at a time into the alcove, close the Plexiglas safety door, press a button, and down would come the bottling head. The bottle was pre-pressurized, or "counter pressured" so that the pressurized beer leaving the keg would remain in liquid form.

A normal bottle with no structural flaws can withstand 35 psi or more. If a bottle that's being pressurized under normal conditions has a flaw, such as a hair line fracture, it will explode. I have rinsed blood out of a bottling machine. I've administered first aid to people who would have otherwise come out unscathed if they had only remembered to secure the safety door DOWN before they hit the fill button. A simple, yet painful mistake.

There were some idiots who used to use pennies to jam the doors wide open. They couldn't be bothered to lift and close the door between bottles. I discouraged this behavior as diplomatically as I could using the analogy of a land mine made out of glass.

Make no mistake, an exploding glass bottle can kill you. If glass shards hit your hand you will probably need stitches. If they hit your neck, or face, you might be permanently blinded, or you might bleed to death.

While machine driven counter pressure is almost instantaneous, and only destroys flawed bottles, over dosing a bottle with priming sugar, or bottling a brew to early, can turn even the most robust bottle into a ticking time bomb.

Now that I've done my best to scare you, enjoy using plastic bottles! :D

Seriously, if you become a Homebrewer, you will eventually get a handle on terminal gravity, and bottle priming. Lots of people bottle with glass and have nothing to fear, and Homevintners can confidently bottle a wine with no risk of carbonation at all. It just takes some basic science, a little experience, and some modest research.

Remember, the universe is not out to hurt you. It's indifferent. As long as you take the time to understand the basic rules, you are free to act as you will. There are so few limitations on human accomplishment that I think -- in the big picture -- we have had a relatively easy ride. The only thing we have to fear is ignorance.

If you're new to fermentation, conduct this recipe exactly without worry. As you learn more, develop your own variations. Try adding lemon, or cinnamon sticks to the boil. Try reducing or increasing the amount of sugar. Or, consider graduating to the next level.

Whether you choose Beer, or Wine, or both, when you understand the rules, It's all the same. What ever our discipline of preference, we are all siblings. Brewers and Vintners share a common bond.

Zymurgy is like an excellent movie, or a good book. It's an adventure that you can have within the comfort of your own home. Like all good adventures, it will reward you far beyond your expectations. All it asks of you is a little effort, and a lot of courage.