The Soda Project - Part 1: Ginger Ale

I know that sugary (or high-fructose corn syrupy) drinks are evil these days. I get that a can of Coke has something like 7 teaspoons of sweetener, and agree that's ridiculous.  I get that it has a ton of empty calories, and I'm fairly conscious of nutrition and what I eat. And yet I confess...I really like sugary drinks sometimes.

I'm not advocating habitual consumption (though I was once a habitual consumer), but the occasional Coke really is (to quote one of the company's earliest slogans) delicious and refreshing. A corned beef sandwich in a Detroit-area deli doesn't taste the same without a Faygo Red Pop (note how they don't even attempt to associate it with a real food or flavor; merely redness), as I've had in that setting for as long as I can remember.

When I swore off sugary drinks for a couple years about a decade ago, I missed them a little. Beyond nostalgia, there are also some outstanding lesser-known sodas out there: Blenheim's ginger ale (sold at Zingerman's, where the staff inevitably warn you at the cash register about how spicy it is), Virgil's root beer, and others. 

I've thought for a while about making my own sodas, and hearing about the Homemade Soda cookbook (from which some of you may recall that I used a recipe for tonic a few weeks ago) put me over the edge. It's a fascinating book -- filled with historic sodas you mostly hear about in songs, old movies, or just never hear about at all (sarsparilla, anyone? how about a chocolate egg cream? did you even know that shrubs were a beverage?).

The author helpfully includes recipes for carbonating simply by mixing with seltzer water, using a soda siphon, or carbonating 'naturally' via champagne yeast fermentation. This latter technique was rather too intriguing to pass up. I decided to start with ginger-szechuan peppercorn ale, which sounded right up my alley (in that I love both of those tastes). 

And so I then ventured to a winemaking shop the other day to pick up a couple packets of EC118 yeast, and then to Chinatown for ginger and szechuan peppercorns.

I should also now mention the generosity of my colleagues and students in providing a bunch of empty plastic soda bottles that I sanitized for re-use. After brewing the ginger (1/4 lb, chopped) and szechuan peppercorns (1 TBSP) with some rice vinegar (not sure why) in a sugar (a POUND of sugar for a gallon of ginger ale...) solution for an hour or so, I stirred in the yeast and filled the bottles.

At first I was worried that they might not be fermenting. Since then, the bottles have gotten progressively firmer. I don't know the chemistry (anyone?) here, but the book says that means they're fermenting. Once fermentation is complete, I have to refrigerate for a week (!) to taste it.

I'll post more when I've tried it. Stay tuned!