How to Make Ginger Ale

With the arrival of hot summer months, many of us are busy searching for healthy summertime drinks. One of the tasty beverages that you can easily prepare at home is ginger ale. Basically it is a mildly sweet, carbonated drink with ginger imparting the main flavor.

In commercial ginger ale products, manufacturers use corn syrup (high fructose type) for cutting down the cost of production. Instead of purchasing this beverage from the market, you can try making it at home with easily available ingredients.

The typical ingredients of ginger ale are ginger root, sweetening agent (table sugar, cane sugar or honey) and sparkling water. To increase flavor, juices of lime, lemon and pineapple along with culinary spices are added in specific quantities. These supplementary ingredients improve the palatability of ginger flavored beverage with a fruity taste. In the commercial preparation of ginger ale, a special equipment is used to infuse carbon dioxide directly for making this carbonated drink.

While making ginger ale at home, you can add fresh lemon juice to impart a refreshing flavor. Also, some people use orange juice and juice of other citrus fruits for preparing a tasty concoction. The choice of adding or not adding complementary fruit juices is up to you.

Lastly, yeast extract is used in homemade ginger ale to initiate fermentation and give bubbles. Over here, sugar present in the liquid concoction is fermented by yeast to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol. The following are tips on how to prepare ginger ale at home.

Required Ingredients
First of all, gather the ingredients for ginger ale recipe. For making 1 liter ginger ale, you will need -

• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• ½ lemon
• ½ cup cane sugar
• ⅛ teaspoon granular active baker's yeast
• 1 liter cold water

Method of Preparation

• Keep all the ingredients listed above in a handy place. To make sugar dissolve faster and carry out fermentation, you can make use of a 1 liter bottle. With the help of a clean funnel, add cane sugar in the bottle. If you don't have cane sugar, replace it with regular table sugar.

• Using the same funnel, add yeast carefully. Shake bottle for combining sugar and yeast. Hoping that you have finely grated ginger root, add it in a bowl and squeeze juice out of the half lemon into the bowl.

• With the help of a spoon, mix lemon juice and grated ginger to make a slurry like base. Add this into the bottle containing sugar and yeast mixture. Pour some water to the bowl to rinse off ginger traces from the sides, and then add this rinsed portion into the bottle.

• Place a cap to secure it tightly. Shake the bottle vigorously for 2-3 minutes for combining the ingredients. Then, fill half of the bottle with cold water, cover lid and shake again to dissolve the sugar-yeast mixture.

• Finish making ginger ale by filling the bottle with cold water, preferably till its neck. Tighten cap and place bottle in a warm place for 2-3 days. By this time, you will notice bubble formation due to fermentation activity.

• Strain ginger ale to remove ginger pieces and chill it in the refrigerator before serving. One word of caution is, not to keep the bottle in warm temperature for long hours. Otherwise, excess gas production may cause the bottle to explode, which you don't want at any cost.

So, this was all about how to make ginger ale at home. For quick preparation, boil water with grated ginger and sugar. Strain and allow it to cool down. Mix club soda with the liquid, add some ice cubes to it and enjoy an instant drink.

Also, you can make alterations in the homemade recipe ingredients, to suit your health objectives. What's more, this ginger drink blends with almost all kinds of hard or soft drink. So, you can enjoy cocktails using this healthy drink as one of the ingredients.