For the sake of posterity...

[bjornwilde]

 Ingredients:
4oz of fresh ginger root. (4oz was the weight before I removed the skin)
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons lemon juice (this is more to kill unwanted bacteria than flavor)
1/4 teaspoon yeast (generic baker's in this case.)
Filtered water (enough to ultimately fill a 2 liter bottle to within half an inch of the top)
2 liter bottle (plastic)

Method:
1-Skin ginger and cut into discs of about 1/8 inch thickness. Drop into a cup of water in a sauce pan and bring to boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer for one hour.

2-Once the hour is done, remove discs of ginger, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Add lemon juice and stir.

3-Pour yeast into the 2 liter bottle. Make sure the bottle is clean and rinsed.

4-Pour ginger/sugar/lemon juice mixture into 2 liter bottle.

5-Fill rest of bottle with filtered water to within half an inch of top. Screw cap on tightly and lightly shake to mix yeast with ginger mixture.

6-Set in warm place for at least 24 hours. Check pressure of bottle after 24 hours by poking or squeezing. If it dimples then more time is needed. If the plastic is hard, you are good to go. Open slowly as contents are under pressure.

At this point (8 hours?) the bottle dimples a little but not as much as when I first screwed on the cap. I am reducing the amount of sugar compared to recipes I have found as I'm not looking for a sweet soda. I also boiled the ginger instead of grating it to remove any grit in the final product.

I will post with how it tastes tomorrow. 

Comments

[camwyn]

Ooh, good luck. I need to round up my bottles and clean them out and do another batch of root beer- I think I have enough sassafras bark on hand to do another batch without having to go out to Cambridge again.

[bjornwilde]

The bootle looked pretty good this morning. The pressure was good and the liquid level had reduced some, maybe as much as half an inch. I recycled a bottle of club soda for this experiment and I am looking forward to trying it tonight. I am a little worried that I didn't use enough ginger but I'll see.

Did you use plastic bottles for you root beer or glass?

[camwyn]

Glass, with plastic lids rather than clamp-on metal lids. Small bottles, though- they held eight ounces each rather than twelve. I left 1.5 to 2 inches of space in each bottle for the gases.

Probably should've bought plastic bottles, just because there's less danger if the bottle explodes, plus you can tell when there's too much gas inside with a plastic bottle. The glass bottles were easier to carry home from the Homebrew Emporium, that's the only reason I bought them.

[bjornwilde]

Cool. I can imagine the glass bottles will last longer too.