Ongoing projects: Ginger Ale

So this past week I found a nice 2 litre plastic bottle and made some ginger ale. I found the recipe on wikihow (I am starting to love this website it has all the answers and from some real fun click the random article it is worth a laugh or two). 

The ingredients are very straight forward

sugar (1 cup)
freshly grated ginger root (1 1/2-2 tablespoons). Use only fresh ginger root.
juice of one lemon
fresh granular baker's yeast (1/4 teaspoon)
cold fresh pure water 


Add the sugar and the yeast to the bottle. Shake to mix thoroughly. 

Add the grated ginger and lemon juice to a measure cup. I cut the ginger and I think that was the wrong thing to do. Stir until mixed well. 


Add this to the bottle with the sugar and the yeast. Clean out the measure cup with some water to get all of the gingery goodness out. Add this to the bottle as well, cap and shake. Reopen bottle and fill until there is about 1 inch of head space. Seal the cap tightly shale some more to make sure all the sugar is dissolved. Place bottle in a warm location until the carbonation is complete. The bottle should be firm to a tight squeeze. It should take 24-48 hours. Once the bottle has firmed up place in the fridge for 24 hours to cool and enjoy.




Mark's thoughts: I was pretty happy with my first batch. Next time I will reduce the amount of sugar and lemon and I will grate the ginger. I found it too sweet and lemony and thought it could be more gingery.



Jamie's thoughts: She liked the lemony flavour but also thought it was too sweet and could use more ginger. 

The ginger ale just after mixing (left) and just before drinking (right).