Ingredients:
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 3-6 tbsp. freshly grated ginger, depending on how gingery you like your ginger ale
- 1 cup of sugar
- ¼ teaspoon Champagne yeast
- One empty 2-litre soda bottle (you can also use three 20 oz. soda bottles, but make sure to scale the sugar back a tad)
Process:
- Boil 1 ½ cups of water and then add sugar. Boil for 15 minutes then cool to ~80* F.
- As the sugar water is cooling, grate the ginger and then add the ginger directly into the 2-liter bottle.
- Once the sugar water has cooled to around 80*F, carefully pour it into the 2-liter bottle. Aerate the mixture well by shaking it vigorously.
- Rehydrate your yeast per the directions on the yeast package. Once it is ready, add it to the bottle(s).
- Fill any the bottle 3/4 of the way with cool water, then shake the bottle vigorously to aerate the mixture. Then fill the bottle the rest of the way with cool water.
- Store for 24-48 hours at room temperature. You will know the soda is ready when the bottle is very hard. Do not allow the soda to sit at room temperature for more than 48 hours, or they could explode! Once the soda bottles are hard, refrigerate them immediately.
- As soon as the soda is nice and cold (~45*F), its ready to enjoy (and delicious to boot)!
For a Kegged (force carbonated) 5 Gallon Batch:
- Ingredients:
- Juice of 9.5 lemons (or 1.75 cups of bottled lemon juice)
- 1 1/3 lbs of grated ginger (use less if you want less ginger flavor)
- 8 cups of sugar (slightly less than 4 lbs)
- Campden tablets
- Process:
- Dissolve the sugar in 8 cups of boiled water, add 10 tablespoons of grated ginger. Hold at a light simmer for 15 minutes, then remove from heat. Allow to the mixture to cool to ~80*F.
- Put the rest of the grated ginger into a sanitized fermenter bucket or carboy (I personally think buckets are a little easier for this process).
- Crush 5 campden tablets and add to fermenter bucket or carboy
- Pour sugar/water mixture into bucket
- Add lemon juice
- Add enough water to make 5 gallons
- Stir the ingredients together very well
- Seal fermenter bucket or carboy an airlock
- Allow to sit for one week at room temperature, rack into keg, then carbonate to desired carbonation level
