IT IS HERE! My review of Joshua Weissman’s ginger beer recipe.
Okay, so first thing I want to say is I love Joshua Weissman’s YouTube channel. I’ve watched nearly every one of his videos and I can’t get enough! He’s so entertaining (but not in a “I’M HERE TO ENTERTAIN YOU” kind of way), he teaches you how to make things in such simple, easy to understand terms and all the things he makes are actually things you might not know how to make and many are things you never knew you wanted to learn how to make. I have found that many YouTube cooking channels are a variety of videos about things you might already know how to make or are just basic things like cakes or brownies or cookies etc. etc. I can’t watch many of them because I find them too boring. If you are past the basics, I honestly cannot recommend this YouTube channel enough. It has opened my eyes to a whole new world of home cooking possibilities!
Now to the actual recipe.
Have you ever used a sourdough starter? Basically, you combine flour and water in a jar and keep adding flour over and over and over. This “feeding” of your flour/water mixture creates natural yeast and will last until the end of time if you keep up with it. You can use some of it to create amazing breads, pizza doughs etc.
Why do I bring this up?
Because brewing your own ginger beer is very similar. You feed what is called a “ginger bug” with sugar and ginger over and over and over to create natural carbonation. It’s pretty cool when you see it start to fizz! I got really excited! Like in making a bread with a sourdough starter, to make ginger beer you use some of the ginger bug to create ginger beer by adding it to what is essentially a sweetened ginger tea.
This recipe is fairly simple, it just takes solid dedication. Your ginger bug will need to be fed for at least three days but even up to past a week, and then once fizzing, once a week for the rest of time. (That is, unless you decide ginger beer brewing isn’t for you…but it probably will be so don’t plan on axing that ginger bug!)
The results are well worth the effort! Once that ginger bug was going it was so simple to make ginger beer! And it was DELISH! (probably half of how I feel about the flavor is me just being happy it fizzed up after I bottled it let’s be honest!) It’s super refreshing and you don’t feel like a million chemicals are being pumped into your body like store bought sodas.
I’m excited to make this again and try different variations of it too! I love it!