Problems With Homemade Ginger Ale or Orange Cream Soda? Let's Talk!

Image: Paige Green for Ten Speed Press/True Brews

Have you tried making the ginger ale or the orange cream soda from True Brews and are puzzled about why it won't fully carbonate? You're not alone! I've received a few emails over the past several months with questions about this, and after puzzling over it myself, I finally figured it out: it's not you, it's your water.

The chlorine in tap water can make life difficult for yeast and can interfere with fermentation. Most sodas are made with a large percentage of fruit juice, so the chlorine in the added tap water is rarely an issue. The ginger ale and the orange cream soda aren't so lucky — since they're made with mostly water, chlorine can become an annoyance. (If you've made either of these sodas and didn't have a problem, that's likely because your tap water is low in chlorine. This is the case with my own tap water and why I didn't catch the problem in testing — my sincere apologies on that!)

The solution is to use filtered water in these brews or dechlorinate your water before beginning (see page 14 in True Brews for info on dechlorinating water).

Thanks to everyone who emailed me about this and brought the issue to my attention! I'll be adding a note about using filtered or dechlorinated water for these two recipes in the next printing of True Brews. Happy brewing!

Summer Homebrew Recipe: Strawberry Kombucha

If I have one regret in writing True Brews, it's that I didn't discover the magical duo of ripe summer strawberries + kombucha until it was too late in the game to add it to the book. This combination is like kismet — it's just meant to be. It's fizzy and tart and sweet and juicy all at the same time. This is drink that (I'm convinced) will make kombucha drinkers out of the kombucha dubious.

Ever since strawberries started showing up again at our markets here in Northern California (the real ones), I've been making batches of strawberry kombucha nonstop. It's the perfect thing to do with those few over-ripe or slightly squished strawberries that inevitably come with every pint basket. Kombucha doesn't care if the strawberries aren't the prettiest in the bunch, and once you take a sip, you won't either.

Kombucha and ginger are old bffs, so I throw some into the jar when I have it. The ginger adds a warm, spicy note that, if possible, makes the strawberries shine even more. Try it both ways and see which you like better.

Also, I don't know how the weather is where you are, but my scobys are loving the warm weather — which at least makes one of us. I can see streams of bubbles filtering up through the layers of scoby and the sweet/tart/fruity flavor is spot on. My bottled kombucha is also fizzy to the max. Love.

Strawberry Kombucha
Makes 1 gallon

3 1/2 quarts water
1 cup white granulated sugar
4 bags black tea (or 1 tablespoons loose tea)
4 bags green tea (or 1 tablespoon loose tea)
2 cups starter tea from last batch of kombucha
1 scoby
1 pint strawberries, hulled and roughly chopped (about 2 cups)
2 tablespoons minced ginger (optional)

Bring the water to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar to dissolve. Drop in the tea and allow it to steep until the water has cooled.

Remove the tea bags or strain out the loose tea. Stir in the starter tea. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon glass jar and gently place the scoby on top. Cover the mouth of the jar with a few layers of cheesecloth or paper towels secured with a rubber band.

Keep the jar at room temperature, out of direct sunlight, and where it won’t get jostled. Ferment for 7 to 10 days. Check the kombucha and the scoby periodically.

After seven days, begin tasting the kombucha. When it reaches a balance of sweetness and tartness that is pleasant to you, the kombucha is ready to bottle.

With clean hands, gently lift the scoby out of the kombucha and set it on a clean plate. Measure out your starter tea from this batch of kombucha and set it aside for your next.

Combine the fermented kombucha, diced strawberries, and ginger (if using) in a clean 1-gallon jar (or divide among smaller jars). Cover the mouth of the jar with a few layers of cheese cloth or paper towels secured with a rubber band. Keep the jar at room temperature out of direct sunlight for two days. Strain the strawberries and ginger from the kombucha and bottle. Leave about a half inch of head room in the bottles.

Store the bottled kombucha at room-temperature out of direct sunlight and allow 1 to 3 days for the kombucha to carbonate. Refrigerate to stop carbonation and then consume within a month.

True Brews: Your Questions, Answered!

Hello! Welcome to this handy FAQ page regarding the new (and fabulous!) homebrewing book, True Brews. Wondering what this book is all about? Curious if it's the right book to adorn your shelf and/or coffee table? Live in Nowheresville and want to know where to find brewing supplies? You've come to the right place.

Is this book just about beer brewing?

Nope! We have eight whole chapters with eight entirely different fermented beverages going on in here: soda pop, kombucha, kefir (both milk and water kefir), hard cider, beer, mead, sake, and fruit wine. Each chapter starts with a master recipe that will walk you through the particular quirks and techniques for that particular beverage, and is followed by a whole bunch of recipes you can make at home.

My apartment is tiny. Can I still make these brews?

Definitely. All of the recipes in this book are scaled to 1-gallon batches or smaller. This means smaller equipment (and less of it) and less space needed to store all your goods.

Wait, 1-gallon batches? Why so small?

Aside from taking up less space,  I think 1-gallon batches are ideal for beginners just learning how to brew things like beer and mead. It's easier to keep track of all the various steps and avoid mistakes when you're working with a gallon or smaller. Plus, smaller batches means you'll drink through them more quickly, which means you get to brew another batch of something else! Also if something does go wrong, it's a lot less painful to pour 1 gallon down the drain than 5 gallons or more. Trust me on that one.

Once you master the 1-gallon batch, it's an easy step up to larger batches. The process is basically the same (using bigger pots and bigger carboys) and all the recipes can be scaled up.

How many bottles can you get out of a gallon?

About 10 bottles.

I've already been brewing beer [or mead, wine, etc.]. Will this book still have something for me?

I hope so! Part of the reason I wrote True Brews was because I wanted to try brewing all these different kinds of beverages — beer was my gateway into homebrewing, and it just made me all the more curious about brewing soda pop...and then mead...and eventually all the rest of them. I think that if you're already knee-deep into brewing one kind of homebrew, chances are good that there's another project in this book that's going to spark your interest.

If I'm brewing all these things, will I need to buy a lot of equipment?

Nah! All the recipes use the same basic brew kit, so you won't find yourself constantly buying new tools just for one project. A lot of the equipment will be things you probably already have in your kitchen, like soup pots and canning jars. The few truly brewing-specific tools, like carboys and racking canes, can easily be found at your local homebrew shop (and since this is the Age of the Hipster, I am willing to bet that you have a local homebrew shop somewhere closeby).

Not me! I live in Nowheresville and there's not a single homebrew shop to be found. Where can I pick up all the special equipment and ingredients I need to make these awesome brews?

The internet is your friend! Here are my favorite sources for homebrewing equipment and supplies:

* MoreBeer - soda, beer, cider, mead, wine
* Northern Brewer - soda, beer, cider, mead, sake, wine
* Cultures for Health - kombucha and kefir

Hopefully this little FAQ takes care of your most burning questions! Wondering about something that I don't mention here? Leave a comment!

Photo Credit: Paige Green (c) 2013 for True Brews

Upcoming True Brews Events!

MAY 2013:

5/21 - Omnivore Books, 6-7pm, 3885a Cesar Chavez Street, San Francisco, CA 94131

JUNE 2013:

6/8 - Homebrewing 101 Lecture at the Brisbane Public Library, 2-4pm, 250 Visitacion Ave, Brisbane, CA 94005

6/17 - Homebrewing 101 Lecture at the Foster City Library, 7-9pm, 1000 E Hillsdale Blvd, Foster City, CA 94404

AUGUST 2013:

8/18 - Farm to Fermentation Festival, Santa Rosa, CA

This page will be updated as new events are added.

(Image: Paige Green (c) 2013)

True Brews Is Out May 14! Here's a Sneak Peak...

Woah, dudes. True Brews is about to be a Real Thing in the Real World. After spending so much time with it alone here in my little apartment, I am so giddy with giddiness that it will soon be going out to bookstore shelves and mailboxes and libraries all over. Also a little terrified...but mostly excited, I swear! Maybe 85% excited and 15% terrified. Let's go with that.

Mostly, I just really hope that you all like it. Here's a little peak at the goods:

If you do so choose to get yourself a copy, there are some links to some places where you can buy it on over there on the upper-right. No pressure. Libraries are also my friend. However you get your hands on a copy, please do report back on your brewing adventures. I'd love to clink virtual glasses and hear all about it.

True Brews: The Cover!

Aaaaand...KA-POW! Just like that, True Brews feels like something real. It's a good feeling, folks.

So...what do you think?!

From left to right: mocha stout, watermelon-mint soda, hard lemonade (or ginger ale? I can't remember which one we ended up using, honestly), IPA, blueberry-pomegranate wine


More on True Brews:

• It's Officially Official: True Brews Is Going To Be A Book!
• True Brews! Behind the Scene at the Photoshoot
• Against the Grain

True Brews! Behind the Scenes at the Photoshoot

Paige - Photographer Extraordinaire (with her Assistant Extraodinaire, Morgan)

The photoshoot was awesome. Cold and chilly up there in Petaluma, CA, as evidenced by all our scarves and parkas, but awesome none the less. All the photos for True Brews were shot in three days, which at first seemed like an exceedingly generous amount of time to dedicate to my wee little book. But once I saw how much styling, prepping, staging, switching, and general futzing go into each shot, I understood how three days is actually barely enough time to squeeze it all in.

Prop Table 

Esther - Props Stylist to the Stars (and obviously a joker after my own heart)

Karen - Food Styling Magician

Paige, Lisa (my editor at Ten Speed), Betsy in the background (Art Director from Ten Speed), and Esther checking out the shot.

Where the food styling happens

Setting up for a shot

Serious discussions about the cover image

Paige getting her photo mojo on.

I can't even totally explain how incredible it was to see this all come together. I've been working away at these recipes all by my lonesome for the past year, and suddenly, here were all these people who took my humble homebrews and made them look like rock stars. When we got the styling for the cover image just right and Betsy, the art director from Ten Speed, cropped it to cover-size on the computer, I actually got a little teary-eyed. You would have too. The cover is going to be beautiful.

A shout-out to all the folks who made this happen:

• Paige Green, Photographer - Your photos are stunning. Thank you for somehow telepathically receiving my vision for the book and transforming it into something even better.
• Karen Shinto, Food Stylist - Thank you for taking on the challenge of these crazy, wacky homebrews and making them shine. I'm also glad that no lambs, or yourself, were injured in the Great Watermelon Soda Geyser of 2012.
• Esther Feinman, Prop Stylist - You're a hoot! Thank you for making me laugh all day long and for so tirelessly swapping glasses for bottles for bowls — magically finding the perfect one every time. I bow down before your tableware collection.
• Lisa Westmoreland, Ten Speed Editor - Our work together has really only begun and I am already grateful for your keen eye and ability to spot (and subsequently thwart) potential problems from a mile away.
• Betsy Stromberg, Ten Speed Art Director - I know True Brews will be in good hands with you and the rest of the design crew at Ten Speed. I can't wait to see what you do with the book.

You were such a fantastic team of creative minds that I'm sad we don't get to do this all the time. But apparently some of us have manuscripts that are due in a month and can't just go frolicking about wearing pretty aprons and cracking jokes about homebrewing all day. Back to the computer cave for me.

Seven Snaps(x2)! 3/31/12 - 4/6/12

SO HUNGRY! Feed me. (Meow)

One more month until the book is due, folks. I can't quite believe it's been a full year since I first started getting geeky about making things like beers and wines and kombucha and put together a book proposal to give myself an excuse to make all of them. I'm feeling fairly calm about the deadline, actually. The recipes are in good shape (...ok, more or less), a good chunk of the manuscript is done, and I'm feeling eager to jump into the rest of it. Still...it will be a relief to hit "save" one last time and send it off to the publisher. Until then, nose = to the grindstone.

We took a mini-vacation to Seattle and Portland last week, hence my lack of posting last week and the bounty of Seattle and Portland pics in this week's round-up. It was a good trip and a much-needed break before diving back into work craziness. It's been almost 10 years since Scott and I moved from Portland. Crazy how little and how much it's changed since then. Love that town. Lots more pictures from this trip to share, but here are the first handful.

The requisite Space Needle picture

Near Pike's Place Market

Laughing Planet Cafe in Portland - an old favorite

Settled in at Stumptown Coffee

My friend Rick does the best pirate impression

RAWR!

More Stumptown.

Voodoo Doughnuts! Scott wanted to get a dozen. I talked him down to six (one maple bacon doughnut was harmed in the making of this picture). Counterclockwise: maple bacon, Captain Crunch (aka Oh Captain My Captain), Oreo (aka Dirt Doughnut), Mango-Filled (aka Mango Tango), and Butterfinger in the middle (aka Butterfingering)

This guy totally knew I was trying to take a picture of him. He was a good sport. His beard was magnificent.

They haven't moved the furniture at Pied Cow for at least 13 years.

Cheese-tastic gougeres in progress!

I made this! And then I drank it. (P.S. An IPA, one of my favorite recipes from the book)

This shot was an accident, but then I kinda liked it.

Things About Which I Am Currently Feeling Anxious

Because I have a tendency to see the world in black-and-white extremes, anxiety has a direct relationship with certainty of impending doom. Others may call it paranoia. Or perhaps, "nothing to worry about." But in my head, the sky is falling.

I like to make lists. They make the world feel neat and orderly and less likely to fall apart.

Herewith is a list of the things, great and small, that I am feeling particularly anxious/doomsday about at the moment:

• Fleas. Both on my cats and in my blankets. Ew.
• The pain in my ankle that won't go away. Which is probably a stress fracture. (But is more likely a simple strain from over-use, because due to my own pigheadedness, I'm still going running even though my ankle hurts.)
• Gaining weight. Or possibly having already gained weight.
• The fact that gaining weight bothers me so much.
• An unexpected and major financial catastrophe coming hot on the heels of finally reaching a place of relative financial stability.
• My teeth. A recurring anxiety that would probably be greatly alleviated by making a dentist appointment.
• The photoshoot for my book. I mean, what if all my brews look like sludge? Or don't sparkle when they need to be sparkly? Or the bottles shatter on my way to the photoshoot? Oh dear, I just realized that I'm having performance anxiety for my homebrew.

I think that's it. That's enough, right? Interestingly enough, I'm not all that anxious about finishing my cookbook. Maybe because that's actually something that I feel like I have control over. Possibly, I have control issues and the reason that all the things on this list are making me so anxious is because I feel like I don't really have control over any of them.

There is the crux of the issue: not feeling in control. Not being able to control the outcome. Feeling helpless and at the mercy of something I don't understand. Some of these things (my ankle, my teeth) can probably be remedied by just going to see someone, finding out what to do, and taking care of it. Done. Other things are more complicated and require a certain level of living with the uncomfortableness of not knowing. Which is hard.

Incidentally, the weight gain issue falls somewhere in between and is a whole different barrel of psychological monkeys. We can save that for another rainy day.

But never fear. The sun will rise (probably). The sky will (most likely) not fall. The photoshoot will come to pass (eventually) and four months of flea meds will (hopefully) exorcise my home of pin-sized demons. Meanwhile, you can find me hiding under the desk with some gummy bears and a few jugs of homebrew.

The State of Kombucha Address

When last we spoke on this subject, I believe my kombucha was looking rather primordial. As you can see, things have improved.

For starters, I'm actually making kombucha. Like for-reals, drinkable, I-can't-believe-it's-not-storebought kombucha. It's tangy and fizzy, a bit spicy and a bit sweet. Guys, this stuff is tasty!

Even the scoby isn't too scary anymore. After the first few rounds, my two guys filmed over with this solid creamy-white layer that really looks and feels a lot like a thick piece of rubber. Totally not scary at all, cross my heart.

Every new batch of kombucha creates a new layer on top of the scoby. Scobys do wear out after a little while, so I've started peeling off the bottom-most layer every few batches.

I think the balance between the bacteria and the yeast has also evened out. At first, the bacteria was totally ruling the roost, but now the yeast seems to have elbowed in for some playtime of its own. It's pretty cool to see little bubbles fizzing up from the scoby when I check on it at night. The kombucha that I'm bottling is also getting very nicely carbonated, which didn't happen for the first few batches.

Man, I love this stuff. Not only the kombucha itself, but the whole process of making it. I wish I had a microscope so I could zoom in and see what all the little yeasties and bacterias were up to in there. I imagine them bustling around, excited to find new bits of sugar to eat and new flavors to create. I'm sure that's exactly what's happening.

Looks like Muney the Cat is also curious about what's going on in these jars. Or at least what could possibly be so fascinating that he's not getting any love right now. I'm thinking I'd better go take care of that, pronto.

State of the Kombucha: Thumbs up!

Hooked on the 'Buch

That would be 'buch as in "kombucha." Which is a fizzy, tart, mildly-fermented tea that was all the rage in China and Eastern Europe for centuries before landing squarely with the natural foodists and hipsters in the last few decades. What, you haven't heard of it? Trust me, you will.

People can get pretty evangelical about kombucha. They'll tell you that it strengthens your immune system, aids digestion, cures the common cold, makes your hair shinier, and graces you with feelings of bliss and tenderness toward your fellow human beings. They'll encourage you to drink it at least once a day for maximum benefit, and then they'll pour you a glass right then and there.

That may all very well be true, but I just think it tastes good. To me, it has the tart freshness of good apple cider with an edge of mild sweetness and an underbelly of earthier spice flavors. The actual tea-flavor fades into the background, and the fizziness makes it seem more like drinking very tasty soda or mild-flavored beer. It actually reminds me a lot of a Belgian lambic or gueuze, minus the alcohol. (Though, yes, kombucha does have a wee drop of alcohol after it's done fermenting. Shhh!)

My market research for the kombucha chapter in my brewing book has rapidly taken on a life of its own, such that I have moved up the schedule on developing those recipes so as to curb the constant flow of pennies from my pocket to GT's Synergy Kombucha HQ.

Kombucha Mothering

Step #1 has been to grow my kombucha mother, or SCOBY (short for "Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast." Poetic, right?). The mother is responsible for making the magic happen in that bottle of kombucha, kind of a like a sourdough starter for sourdough bread. It looks like a wobbly flat pancake and has the consistency of fresh squid. Yum!

You can order fully-formed kombucha mothers online or beg them from a kombucha-brewing friend, but it's also pretty straight-forward to grow your own. You just need one last $3.50 bottle of GT's Synergy Kombucha and a batch of extra-sweet tea. GT's is a raw kombucha, which means that it still contains the live bacteria and yeasts used for brewing the kombucha (you can actually see them in the form of that little blobby thing awkwardly hanging out in the bottom of the bottle). With new food in the form of sugar, those bacteria and yeasts will gradually come together in a new SCOBY.

For the first few days, nothing happened. The jars of sweet tea sitting on my counter looked like...jars of sweet tea. Because I am a worrier, I worried. I fretted. I hovered. I had the following conversation with a kombucha-brewing friend over Facebook:

Me: So I'm in the middle of Day 3 of starting my own kombucha mother and don't see anything happening yet. Do you think I did something wrong? Or should I just sit tight and stop being so impatient?
Her: You need to give it somewhere between 7-14 days for the scoby to form. Cover it with a breathable cloth and put it out of your sight (and the light :).
Me: Yup, it's covered with a cloth and out of the light. So...I guess what you're saying is....I just need to sit tight and stop hovering.

And then, right around Day #6, it started doing stuff! And y'all....I'm not going to lie...it's "stuff" looks pretty gross. Like a primordial swamp in my Mason jar. Take a look at this thing around Day #8:

Who would ever think this could make delicious brews? Not me.

But I have faith. Faith that this swamp of bacteria and yeast will come together into a squid-textured pancake that will mother my sweet tea into tasty bliss-gracing kombucha. Will it work? Will Emma finally kick the GT habit and successfully complete a chapter of her book? Who knows what evil lurks in the jars of brewed teas? The Shadow knows... [cue music...fade to black...and end scene.]