How to make a ginger bug (and ginger beer)! Don’t get me wrong, I love a Fentimanns moment sometimes at the pub, but in this case, homemade is definitely cheaper (and better)! Ginger bugs can be used to make all kinds of sodas, not just ginger beer, and I use mine all the time for wild sodas (try adding some chopped wintergreen and sassafras root, thank me later). #wildfood #gingerbug #gingerbeer #wildsoda #fermenting

Something you should never buy is ginger beer because it's stupid easy to make at home. First you're gonna need to make a ginger bug. Now what is a ginger bug? Well it's basically the same idea as a sourdough starter or like a kombucha scoby. My ginger bug has been around for a while and it's actually pretty low maintenance. She doesn't ask for much, just a little bit of sugar and ginger every now and again. So let's make one. Ginger root with the skin on, about an equal amount of sugar and some filtered water. Start by chopping up your ginger root into small pieces. You can also use a blender but I didn't feel like doing more dishes today. That looks pretty good. Grab a mason jar, add your ginger, then add your sugar, and then your water. Now we stir it up. Beautiful. Cover it with something breathable like a paper towel and secure it with a band. For the next three or four days add about a tablespoon of chopped ginger and a tablespoon of sugar. Once your starter is bubbly you can use it to make ginger beer, and this is easily accomplished by making a simple syrup. I'm gonna need more sugar than that. So basically the same ingredients we had before. We're gonna add some brown sugar to fill it out. Oh yeah we're gonna boil over if I'm not careful. In general with ginger the longer you steep it the stronger the flavor will get. If you want it more spicy boil your syrup for longer. If you want it not as spicy don't put as much ginger in and don't boil it for as long. Really simple. We're gonna let that cool and strain out the ginger. Bonus points if you make a huge mess. Get yourself a bottle, use a funnel, add as much syrup as you like. I always eyeball it. Add in some of your fizzy ginger bug and then top it all off with filtered water. When you're fermenting you have to use filtered water because stuff like chlorine can really mess up your ferment and it can kill your yeast so you know it's important. Fill it up to about there. I'm gonna give it just a little one of these to incorporate the ingredients and then this goes in a warm place. Burp it once a day which just means let the CO2 out because if you don't do that it will explode all over your kitchen don't ask me how I know. After a few days you'll end up with something fizzy and delicious. Now just for fun I haven't burped this for the last three days so let's go take it outside. Three, two, one. I should have angled the camera differently because it went into my neighbor's yard. Don't buy ginger beer, just make it. It's so much tastier and you can control the amount of sugar if that's something you care about. Life is too expensive so find fun ways to make it cheaper.