S6 E22: Fermentation Experiment - Making a Ginger Bug

This week on Three Kitchens, Erin shares her excitement about attempting a ginger bug -- a fermentation recipe, which can be used to make homemade ginger beer or ginger ale. 

Erin explains the science behind fermentation, introducing the term "zymology" and discussing the role of microorganisms in the process. We also ponder the origins of the term "ginger bug" and its significance in the fermentation process. The episode is filled with light-hearted banter, personal anecdotes, and a shared enthusiasm for cooking and experimenting in the kitchen.

Erin walks us through how to make the ginger bug and then turn that into ginger beer. It's fairly simple and the results were fantastic! It's a cool kitchen experiment and we hope you'll be inspired to give it a try.  

Make your own ginger bug with this recipe: https://www.threekitchenspodcast.com/post/ginger-bug-ginger-beer

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Transcript

Erin W (00:13)
I am going to attempt a fermentation recipe.

I am going to make, a ginger bug

This is highly edited content. The stuff that regularly comes out of her mouth is garbage. ⁓ We must be.

Heather (00:28)
We must be edited in everything we say every day

of our lives.

Erin W (00:35)
Yeah, exactly.

And if you're wondering who those edited voices are, my name's Erin. Joining me is Heather. Hi, Heather. And we are Three Kitchens podcast. And we have a recipe for you. Surprise, surprise.

Heather (00:43)
Hello there.

The best kind of episodes. Well, no, guests are also fun, but I always like these when it's just us gabbing about recipes.

Erin W (01:02)
Yeah, I know we've

gotten into a good little groove, right? All right, I am going to finally, after all of the years we've talked about it, I am going to attempt a fermentation recipe.

Heather (01:17)
okay.

Erin W (01:17)
I am going to make, or attempt to make anyway, a ginger bug is what it's called.

So this ginger bug can then be used to make a ginger beer soda or a ginger ale soda,

Heather (01:24)
Yes.

Erin W (01:33)
which I love having in my life because I generally don't drink any alcoholic beverages when I go out or I get myself something.

for a treat I usually get myself some ginger beer. And it started popping up on my Instagram feed that I could be making this ginger bug at home. And that through the process of making this ginger bug I should be able to make my own carbonated drink using this fermented ginger.

Heather (01:51)
Mm, yummy.

Yes. I have heard of it. I'm acting all like, yeah, ginger bug. Like I know so much about it. I don't.

Erin W (02:12)
Apparently.

Okay, I was like, Heather

knows a lot about this. I can tell she's just going to jump right in and educate me.

Heather (02:22)
I'm nodding and I'm like, ⁓ yes.

No, I don't. I just have heard of it and I've been tempted to try it at different times. And I know we've talked about it in the past, but I've never attempted or looked really into it. So I'm super excited for this.

Erin W (02:37)
Yeah, so the first thing that is gonna take some time because I think we both know that fermentation is sort of a, is it gonna work process? I don't know, it seems kind of like kitchen witchery, it seems a little bit magic. You put these things together in a jar and suddenly you've got this fermented thing that you can eat or use or I don't know.

Heather (02:50)
Mm-hmm.

Erin W (03:01)
The magic happens in that jar. So it's going to take, says three to four days to ferment.

Heather (03:06)
that's actually faster than some things.

Erin W (03:07)
Which...

Which is pretty quick, but I'm not expecting to be successful the first time, just because, you know... I'm always anxious about fermenting.

Heather (03:21)
This reminds me of like when we made sourdough bread and my sourdough starter was a complete non-starter. Like it didn't even get, it didn't even like attempt. Yeah. It was just the big, and I think I tried it twice and failed both times. Like, I don't know why, but I just completely bombed the starter. So I hope you don't have to do it twice, but you might.

Erin W (03:28)
It was the sourdough non-starter.

hope

not, but my goal is to make two of them so that you can have a bug of your own. ⁓ But then ⁓ after I have made my ginger bug, I'm then going to make ⁓ the syrup that I'm going to use to make my ginger beer.

So it's kind of a two-step process. It might take me some time to get my ducks in a row to get it right. But everybody that I'm seeing online is making it look really easy. So I know.

Heather (04:20)
They have a way of doing that,

Magic of editing or maybe they've actually done it like so many times. They just make it look like, I'm gonna give this a try. it works so great. And really they've been doing it for 20 years and they just didn't tell you.

Erin W (04:25)
Yeah, exactly.

it's nothing.

Yeah, so I'm going to go down this path. I have never experimented this side of things at all. The only things I have successfully fermented were my my sourdough starter was a starter. I've I'm on what Joe the third now or something so.

Heather (04:55)
It needs a new name.

Erin W (04:56)
Heather doesn't like my... So my sourdough was a go. I've tried some cabbage before but I've never super... I've never been like really happy with it and maybe it's just because I'm so used to what I get in the store that the real deal is take some time to figure out.

Heather (04:56)
I a new name. I've heard some really good ones. Now, of course, I can't think of them, but I've heard some great ones. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that can sometimes happen, right? It's like, because we're used to a processed product, when you make it yourself and it tastes different, it probably actually tastes the way it's supposed to, but we're not used to it and so it's an adjustment.

Erin W (05:22)
I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so that I've never felt 100 % about that. And then do our salted lemons. I mean, it's a preserve, but I don't know if it's really fermenting.

Heather (05:47)
I don't think it

ferments, but what about a shrub? Does that ferment? Does it? Okay. I don't know if I exactly know the definition of fermentation.

Erin W (05:50)
⁓ okay. I think so. I'm gonna say yes.

Yeah, okay, so...

Since you bring that up, why don't we bring up the Wikipedia page that I looked at to be like, what is fermentation? in food processing specifically, fermentation is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohol or organic acids using microorganisms.

Heather (06:19)
Okay, so in that definite, I don't think a shrub counts, right?

Erin W (06:22)
So maybe not, although there's

sugars in there that are getting altered.

⁓ and so fun nerd word, nerd word of the episode is the science of fermentation is known as zymology.

Heather (06:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm, so good, I need to make one.

Zymology.

Erin W (06:43)
So

come figure out this zymological process with us. Ooh.

Heather (06:49)
Good. Good

use of the word. ⁓ Am I able to ask at this point why it's called a bug? Do know that?

Erin W (06:58)
I'm gonna guess that it's called a bug because I don't know for sure, but because it's your, it's like your starter, because it's your living organism. It's the thing, it's the thing that you're keeping alive in order to make a product with it. So from what I understand, once you make your ginger bug, it is much like a sourdough starter in that we're going to be feeding it sugar and ginger.

Heather (07:09)
It's like the base.

Okay.

Erin W (07:25)
periodically throughout time to keep it alive once we've got it going. And then when I go to make this ginger beer, I'm using a very little amount of this bug in there.

And so you can go further, like you can use it to kind of grow your next culture.

Yeah. Does that sound like a good enough reason? I'm gonna go with that.

Heather (07:49)
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I was thinking. I just didn't know if there was another reason why it was called

the bug. I kind of thought of the living... because it's a living thing and it's kind of a cute name even though you don't want to think of an insect. So, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, this sounds exciting. I love ginger beer. Spicier the better.

Erin W (07:57)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, something like that maybe.

Erin W (08:36)
Well, we're going to talk about how to make a ginger bug and then how to use that to make some ginger beer.

Heather (08:45)
Bug. Every time we say bug, it's just so weird.

Erin W (08:45)
Bug.

so all of the process of doing this was fairly simple, pretty easy to do. It just took some patience and faith.

before I started any of this, because we are making a live culture, we want to use water that doesn't have chlorine

we want unchlorinated water. So what I did to remove chlorine from the water was just ran my tap and filled up a jug and just left it uncovered on my counter overnight so that when I was ready to go make my ginger bug I had this ready to go. So they say you can use filtered water for this. I'm not going to go out and buy

filtered water, you can just do this at home. It's a step that's going to save you money. It takes a little bit of time, but easy. And then you want to use filtered water all the way or this dechlorinated water all the way through this so that you don't go and kill that nice little bacterial culture you have created that you want to work with. All right. So now when you start making your ginger bug,

which is kind of your, think of it like your starter, you would in sourdough bread. You want to take equal amounts of ginger, sugar and water and combine them. So wash your ginger, keep the skin on, chop it up like fairly fine, but just, you know, nothing special or fancy. And I just kind of eyeballed this in my jar.

I was like, okay, so here's about half a cup of ginger. So I added in half a cup of sugar and then I just topped it up with the filtered water. That's your bug. That's all you're doing to it. So again, this is a living thing. So you don't want to put it in a sealed jar or else you're going to end up with probably something you don't want.

if you're not giving it oxygen to live on. So a piece of paper towel on top of your jar and then like the screw top will just keep it sealed so you don't get dust or crumbs or whatever falling in there and contaminating your bug. And then I just popped it in my pantry in the dark and waited.

Heather (10:46)
Okay.

Erin W (11:01)
and waited.

Heather (11:01)
So

what makes it what makes ginger? ⁓

Like what, I'm trying to figure out,

Erin W (11:09)
Why ginger?

Heather (11:10)
Yeah, yeah.

Erin W (11:11)
the right bacteria that we want to do this just happens to live.

on the skin and happily with the ginger because it's a root.

It's creating the right environment for this type of bacteria to grow in,

Heather (11:26)
It's kitchen witchery. Let's just call it magic.

Erin W (11:28)
It's Kitchen Witchery, yes.

Heather (11:31)
happy with it just to be magic. I don't need more, I guess.

Erin W (11:36)
the process was, every day I was supposed to, and I did, feed my brand new starter one tablespoon of fresh chopped up ginger and one tablespoon of sugar. So to start it out, I was feeding it three days in a row.

Once you've done that three days of feeding.

sit back and wait for the magic to happen.

Heather (12:04)
Just wait and see what happens. You were like, I don't know if anything's happening. It'd be like a couple days and I get a text. Not sure if something's going on in there or not.

Erin W (12:12)
Not... not much

happening. Still not much to report. ⁓ shit, I think this is a failure. I'm not getting what I expect. It said like within five days you should have this ginger bug ready to go. But considering the things that we know about our kitchens, we live in this nice cold climate, our kitchens tend to be a pretty cool place in our houses and you know, maybe that doesn't... ⁓

give you the best culture speed. So this took just over a week. I'm gonna say it was between seven and ten days before I noticed that

My ginger, which was kind of floating up on top in my jar, had little bubbles dispersed all through it. All of a sudden there were all these little bubbles and I was like, ⁓ that's a good sign. Because what I want to happen is I want these little bacterias to go and start eating the sugar and producing the CO2 gas. I want to build up a really rich culture of bacteria and

Heather (13:08)
things going.

Erin W (13:23)
my liquid in my jar became a lot cloudier and kind of like darker colored. So I was like, okay, the signs are there, things are starting to happen.

So then.

I had to go and make.

the ingredients for our ginger beer. was like, all right, I'm ready to go. I've got my culture. So the suggestion was to make a simple syrup that had ginger in it, let it boil for a while to extract all that gingery flavor. ⁓ strain it.

You put your syrup, you put your bug, or you put your syrup, put an amount of your bug in there, and then you top it up with filtered water again. And then by the next morning, I've got ginger beer.

So when I did this and made this for you, my simple syrup that I made with my ginger, so it was half a cup of sugar, half a cup of water, and then I'm gonna say maybe half a cup of ginger that I had like dice cut up and roughly chopped up, just like I did for the bug that I made. I popped that on a saucepan and I let it boil for 30 minutes.

I put in, so the half a cup of simple syrup, once it cooled down, I put it into ⁓ my bottle. I decided to add half a cup of ginger bug that I had strained so that the little pieces of ginger and whatnot didn't go into my drink, so I didn't have to chew on that. And then just topped it up with water. It wasn't super gingery. I was somewhat disappointed because it wasn't like the

smack in the face ginger beer that I want. And so I was like, next time I do this, I'm going to town with the ginger. So I got my bottle back from you

Heather (15:05)
Mmm.

Erin W (15:09)
it's got one of those tops that you can pop off. So I'll actually bring it in here and gas it this morning for all of us in a second. But so last night I did the same sort of simple syrup with half a cup of water, half a cup of sugar. And then I took a hunk of ginger root, a really good sized one, and I graded it on my box grater because it really like

macerates the ginger and really like bursts the cell walls and like gets all that juice out. And I popped it in the pot and I boiled it for 30 minutes again. Then I let it cool down. Oh my God, is this ginger beer ever spicy this time? It is. It's perfect. I'm so happy with it. It's way stronger. So I think it's just perfecting the level of ginger that you want in there with the amount of sugar.

finding out how that extracts best. And then, like I have a really happy active ginger bug it seems right now. So maybe I don't need the full half a cup of ginger bug to go in there.

Again, some of the people that I was following on this, were just like, ⁓ here's some syrup. here's some bug. ⁓ fill it up with water. And I was like, whoa, there are no measurements here. So I tried to give what I thought were the measurements that they were going with. And that's where I landed. But I'm sure I can adjust those around and make it a little bit different.

Heather (16:30)
Yeah.

Erin W (16:31)
but now I

have fermentation fun in my house.

Heather (16:34)
And you gave me the ginger bug as well, so I can try making it too. I can't wait. I've been waiting for these instructions for the ginger beer, because I want to do that. So I felt the same way about the initial ginger beer that you gave me. It was tasty, but not like ginger beer. It was more like a ginger beer's paler, shy cousin, like a little sad cousin in the corner. ⁓

Erin W (16:38)
Yes.

⁓

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

was like, hmm, there's

some flavor of ginger in there, but it, we like a smack you in the face ginger beer. So yeah.

Heather (17:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but it was still tasty. ⁓ And I actually used a little bit of it to mix up a cocktail that I found in ⁓ the cocktail book, Beautiful Booze by Natalie Migliorini, who was our guest on the podcast a while back, three years ago, I want to say. ⁓ Yeah, a while ago. ⁓

Erin W (17:31)
A while ago.

Heather (17:34)
And I found a few recipes for drinks in her book using ginger beer. So I'm going to try them. I'm going to try more when I, when I make some, this one had vodka, lime juice, blueberry syrup and ginger beer. And it was very tasty. And it's a beautiful, bright pink color because of the blueberry syrup, which is like purple was really good. And the ginger beer, it's like you,

Erin W (17:44)
Mm-hmm.

that, yeah.

Heather (18:02)
Mix up your drink, you put it over ice, and then you pour your ginger beer on top. So your first sip, you get hit with the ginger, and it's just a great like combination. Highly recommend. And I just liked it on its own, even though I knew it wasn't quite spicy enough, but I still thought it was really tasty,

Erin W (18:06)
⁓

Heather (18:20)
it wasn't overly fizzy.

Erin W (18:22)
I would say it's going to keep carbonating because they say you gotta burp it, which sounds gross. So I say you gotta pop it. So you wanna pop it every day or the amount of CO2 that builds up in there, like it's incredible. I'm popping mine like twice a day because I'm slightly terrified of it. Okay, I have to run and grab it.

Heather (18:27)
Yeah.

Yeah,

Erin W (18:41)
Okay, let's hope this doesn't like explode all over the computer when I do this, right?

God, I'm terrified every time I do this. I kind of love this.

Heather (18:52)
Totally, yeah that was a big pu-

Erin W (18:55)
so cool stuff. I now really love that I'm playing with it and it's this whole new fun thing and I felt like it almost tasted slightly alcoholic

When I was drinking it, was like, this almost tastes like it has like an alcoholic flavor to it. Am I making alcohol? And apparently, depending on how long your little bug sits and how much sugar you've got in there and blah, blah, blah, blah,

Heather (19:18)
Okay.

Erin W (19:21)
I guess it can make anywhere between one to 2 % alcohol in your overall pop. So it will make a bit of an alcohol while it's fermenting and I, it, I couldn't really find any good explanations as to how you would test that. I think you can get like test strips.

Heather (19:27)
⁓

Erin W (19:38)
to test to see if you've got, but they said like, you should never be worried about it becoming too alcoholic

Heather (19:39)
yeah.

Erin W (19:44)
But I thought that was kind of because...

Heather (19:46)
Yeah, I didn't get that flavor off it, but hang on. This dog, it's not really conducive to podcasting having a dog in your lap.

Erin W (19:54)
yeah. And so I did some, little bit of research into, cause this kind of goes along the line of like this healthy gut bacteria type of thing. If you're going to be making your own carbonated drinks like this or doing your fermentation stuff. And I kind of went down a very interesting rabbit hole

I stumbled across some articles that were talking about your appendix and the importance it plays in gut health and how our view of it as this vech... It's not vegetable. Vestigial organ. Or like... It means like this left behind thing that hasn't been removed from our bodies. No purpose kind of...

Heather (20:34)
even know that means.

⁓ with no purpose. Right, right. Okay.

Okay.

Erin W (20:44)
So I guess our understanding of that isn't as thorough as we may have thought. And so there is some research that I came across talking about how that actually might be the area where our gut bacteria and the population of that and like the diversity of that is really important in our digestion and our overall body health.

And so they were comparing people who had had their appendix removed with people who hadn't and what their gut health was like. And so people without the appendix were a lot more prone to having Crohn's disease and other GI tract issues that had to do with their gut bacteria.

And the thing that I found really interesting is that appendix lives where your small intestine meets your large intestine. So it's right where bacteria, new bacteria get introduced into your digestive tract. So it's really interesting that this maybe plays a role in like maintaining your gut health and sort of people who eat more fermented foods.

have a more diverse and rich gut health, and apparently their appendix functions better because I guess it does have a function.

Heather (22:03)
Well...

Erin W (22:04)
I'm sorry. Yeah.

Heather (22:04)
It's interesting.

⁓

I have my appendix so maybe it's doing me some good.

you

Well, this has been a very interesting episode.

this is fun. I'm glad you tried it because I've been hearing about ginger bugs for years and didn't really know. I also I didn't really know what you do with it after and that's why I had asked you the other day. Can you do anything else with it besides make ginger beer? And you're like, don't know. So I guess that's further research for everyone to do once you've got yourself a bug and go see if there's anything else you can do with it. I bet.

Erin W (22:21)
Yes.

I dunno.

Yeah.

Heather (22:40)
I bet in a certain dose you could take that, you could just take the bug as part of your gut health routine, I would think in a certain amount of it, depending on your situation. But why not make the beer? The ginger beer is so tasty.

Erin W (22:47)
Hmm.

Yeah, maybe.

And honestly, it just, you know how when you don't feel good, I don't know if this is in your house, but like the first thing my kids or I want if my stomach's off is ginger ale or a ginger, something with ginger in it, right? Like it's something that I gravitate to when I don't feel good. So now like having a little bit of this after dinner every night just feels good.

Heather (23:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Erin W (23:19)
I don't know, it's become- is that the little aperitivo? Nightcap? It's my nightcap.

Heather (23:24)
nightcap. don't know if I think a nightcap is just supposed to help you It's I think it's a digestif digestif perhaps.

Erin W (23:28)
digestive tummy. there we go. Yeah.

Heather (23:33)
Love it, love it. She's having some right now you guys. She's drinking ginger beer.

Erin W (23:37)
gonna have a little.

yeah, this one's way more ginger-y. It's much better.

Heather (23:44)
I can't wait to make some.

Ha

Erin W (23:45)
Fermenting

is frickin nerve-wracking and man it is so hard to be patient when you ferment anything. I tell ya.

Heather (23:48)
Yeah.

husband was like, what's in this jar over here? And I'm like, it's a bug. He's like, what? It's a bug.

Erin W (24:21)
My husband mistrusts

any jars in the fridge on the counter.

Heather (24:26)
Yeah.

Something's fermenting.

Erin W (24:28)
What's