Practical guide for brewing fizzy drinks.

A bottle of kombucha 0,7l costs 5€. A 6-pack of ginger beer costs about ten. I drink beer too, but sometimes I just want something without alcohol. It's a shame they do not sell more of it in the bars and restaurants here. Anyway, I picked up a bottle of kombucha from the store, used half of it to inoculate my sweetened black tea, waited about a week and bam! I had made kombucha. If you want more bubbles and different flavours, you need to bottle it, add a little sugar, seal the bottles and wait another 2-3 days, and voila! Serve it cold, with a leaf of mint, basil, lemon or orange. I forgot to mention that before bottling your batch, you should save the scooby - the thing that floats on the surface of your brewing container along with some liquid. You can use it to make more kombucha next time.

Making ginger beer is even easier. You only need three ingredients: Ginger, water and sugar. First you need to prepare the ginger bug. To do this, simply grate 70-80 g of ginger, put it in a glass jar, add 4 tablespoons of sugar and fill it halfway with filtered water. Cover the jar with a cotton cloth and leave it at room temperature for 4-5 days. You can stir it every 2 days, but it's not necessary. You will notice that it starts to bubble after a day. This is the CO2 produced by the yeast eating the sugar and producing alcohol. The second step is the ginger tea inoculation. Grate some more ginger, as much as you like, put it in a large pot, add water and boil for about 4 minutes. Add the sugar, 2-3 tablespoons per litre, stir well and let it cool down to room temperature. Now take the ginger bug jar and pour half of the liquid into the sweet ginger tea you just made. Filter it and pour it into self-sealing beer bottles. If you leave the bottles at room temperature, it will take about 2-3 days for the yeast to work its magic and give you a great tasting ginger beer. You can test a bottle after 2 days, one after 3, one after 4, and another after 5 to figure out how much fermentation is best for your taste. Cold temperatures slow the fermentation process considerably, so if you put it in the fridge, it will stay that way for a while. If you try it, let me know how it turned out.

And btw, both ginger beer and kombucha have trace amounts of alcohol, < 1 up to 2%. With a bit of skill you can reduce that but, I didn't bother because it's ok, I can handle it :)