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Yeast Diary - April 28, 2020
Apr. 28th, 2020 09:32 pmFinally, I can unveil Experiment Number Two:
Naturally carbonated ginger beer made with wild yeast!
And what an ordeal it was! Or rather...what a test of patience. The actual making of the ginger beer itself went along just fine, Shredding the ginger was fun because it's the first time I've used the grater attachment on my food processor. Worked pretty well, although I had to stop and pull fibres out of the grater every now and then. But generally speaking, it worked out pretty well. Then it was just dump in the sugar, spices and water, and simmer for a while. Then turn it off and wait for it to come to room temperature.
And that's where things went wrong. I waited. And waited. And waited. And I kept checking the temperature, only for it to only go down a little each time. Until it's nine hours later and I'm still at almost 30C. Ridiculous!
That's when I realized that my kitchen thermometer may not be the most reliable thing in the world. After I took it out of the liquid, it insisted that my kitchen was only 17C. Which it obviously wasn't, and if I turned it off for a bit and turned it on again, it read the true temperature, almost six degrees higher. So I checked the temperature the old fashioned way, by trying some, and it was stone cold. Absolutely the same as air temperature, no question.
So I said screw it, pitched the yeast culture I've been growing into the bowl, and bottled that sucker!
Now I'm the proud owner of eight 500 ml bottles of not yet fermented ginger beer, and hopefully in only a couple of days it'll be ready to drink. I'll report back on the results.
Probably nothing to report tomorrow. The yeast starter is now living in the fridge (it got really enthusiastic today, so I know it's a good, strong culture) where I'll be feeding it once a week unless I decide to do something fun with it. But for the moment I'm pretty much covered as far as drinkables go so I'm inclined to just stick with what I got until this batch runs out.
If something interesting happens to the cranberry bottle I'll fill you in, but I'm not expecting much quite yet. Apparently even commercial yeast takes a day or two to get going.
Here's the photo of my yield over on Instagram.
Naturally carbonated ginger beer made with wild yeast!
And what an ordeal it was! Or rather...what a test of patience. The actual making of the ginger beer itself went along just fine, Shredding the ginger was fun because it's the first time I've used the grater attachment on my food processor. Worked pretty well, although I had to stop and pull fibres out of the grater every now and then. But generally speaking, it worked out pretty well. Then it was just dump in the sugar, spices and water, and simmer for a while. Then turn it off and wait for it to come to room temperature.
And that's where things went wrong. I waited. And waited. And waited. And I kept checking the temperature, only for it to only go down a little each time. Until it's nine hours later and I'm still at almost 30C. Ridiculous!
That's when I realized that my kitchen thermometer may not be the most reliable thing in the world. After I took it out of the liquid, it insisted that my kitchen was only 17C. Which it obviously wasn't, and if I turned it off for a bit and turned it on again, it read the true temperature, almost six degrees higher. So I checked the temperature the old fashioned way, by trying some, and it was stone cold. Absolutely the same as air temperature, no question.
So I said screw it, pitched the yeast culture I've been growing into the bowl, and bottled that sucker!
Now I'm the proud owner of eight 500 ml bottles of not yet fermented ginger beer, and hopefully in only a couple of days it'll be ready to drink. I'll report back on the results.
Probably nothing to report tomorrow. The yeast starter is now living in the fridge (it got really enthusiastic today, so I know it's a good, strong culture) where I'll be feeding it once a week unless I decide to do something fun with it. But for the moment I'm pretty much covered as far as drinkables go so I'm inclined to just stick with what I got until this batch runs out.
If something interesting happens to the cranberry bottle I'll fill you in, but I'm not expecting much quite yet. Apparently even commercial yeast takes a day or two to get going.
Here's the photo of my yield over on Instagram.
