3 Ingredient Homemade Fermented Ginger Beer

Hey guys I must have forgotten to mention in the video. In order to keep your ginger bug alive you just continue to feed it the same proportion of sugar and ginger. Once it get’s too full or it won’t dissolve anymore sugar: just pour out about half of the liquid (leaving half behind) and adding some fresh water, and then go back to replenishing with the same amount of JUST ginger and sugar. Rinse and repeat to keep it alive forever! Also, once it’s active you can place it in the fridge and feed it once a week. Hope this helps! :)

In South Africa we like to make ginger beer but we add a few raisins in the bottles which sink to the bottom and once the raisins are raising you know its ready.

just want to say i appericiate you using grams also ! makes everything much easier to follow

i have fond childhood memories of bottles of ginger beer exploding in our pantry when my mum & dad used to make it in the 70's

Tip, put a couple of sultanas or raisins in the bug to seed it with some yeast to get it started.

Discovered after failing the first time that much of the ginger grown in the United States is irradiated after harvest. Of course, this kills the yeast we're trying to cultivate. Made it the second time with organic ginger, and WHAM! :) Thanks, Joshua! Love your stuff!

Awesome recipe, and as usual super well explained and entertaining. I would suggest to freely adjust the amount of ginger to your taste. For me 10% of the water weight is good, it depends how gingery you like it. Also, if you have a juicer, I’d juice the ginger first, reserve the ginger juice to add at the end, together with the lemons, so you don’t loose any of the ginger flavors and aromas, and cook the pulp to extract the remaining flavor from it. In my opinion, using fresh ginger juice makes the final result a bit richter.

I used help make this with my mum when I was a kid 2 dozen bottles at a time, never had one explode (constantly burped them) but 24 bottles never lasted more than 2 days Lol. One of the best memories of my childhood.

I started the bug 3 days ago and opened it this morning and it was fizzy!! Such a cool feeling to see it all working. Like a delicious science experiment

Hey all, user report here: I have been making this ginger beer weekly for about 6 months. I love it. I have gone through a few ginger bugs and have since created a 'super-bug'. With this bug my ginger beer is ready in less than 24hours! As Josh mentions, you need to feed your ginger bug daily whilst it is at room temp, and weekly once in the fridge. i found that the older the bug gets, the more culture it is producing (experiencing?), the faster the ginger beer is created. I started a new bug and fed daily for 3-4weeks at room temperature. Replace 70-80% of the water every 5 days (approximately). I used it for many bacthes of delicious ginger fizz during this period. First batches were taking 5 days, and now as mentioned it is making sizzling soda in less than 24 hours. I tend to keep my bottles close to a wall radiator which is on a low setting, or atop the fridge. Also for about 3.5L of liquid I add only 3-4 tablespoons of sugar and I'd say this is about the minimum necessary for a tasty batch. Other flavour options is to steep a herb into the tea once you have turned off the heat. Sometimes I like to use pine needles instead of lemon as a vitamin C boost and subtle flavour. Thanks so much to you Josh Weissman for this recipe. It is a great gift and I will forever share this video. P.S. He's not joking about explosions. Burp your bottles or else you'll be cleaning the walls and ceiling...

Simple and direct. This is the best ginger beer recipe ever. I grew up on this stuff and I love playing around with it. IN the Caribbean we also add pineapple to the second ferment and you get a very lovely refreshing drink.

Josh, thank you for the guidelines! I halved the sugar and it came out perfectly in between ginger ale and ginger beer. I used mature ginger for the whole process as I read there's higher potential for yeast colonization. My next try I might use young ginger for the boil as the bite is quite strong. I love it but others may not as much. Again, thank you. This opened my eyes to natural carbonated beverages!

I've mad a LOT of ginger beer. I highly recommend only using 2 Tbsp of ginger bug per gallon of water. Yes, that's right, 2 Tbsp. Anything more than this is unnecessary for carbonation, and will leave you with an overly-yeasty final product (IMO). As a result, you can also maintain a smaller volume of ginger bug. Additionally, it is possible to have a ginger bug that's too sugary. If I notice my ginger bug becoming sluggish, I'll often adjust with more/less sugar, based on how it smells/tastes. Give it a taste in the evening! If it's overly sweet and fermentation seems dead, just feed it with some ginger only for a day or two. When bottling, I find it helpful to bottle a single plastic water bottle, in addition to the other glass bottles. This "tester" bottle will make it easy to know when the batch is done. If it's rock hard, put them all in the fridge. No guess work! For me, this is 2-3 days with an active starter (and, yes, with only 2 Tbsp ginger bug / gallon of water). Finally, try squeezing in a lemon and/or lime, and tossing in the peels after the boil is done. I don't always do it, but it adds a depth of flavor that is often refreshing.

Dude, flawless victory on this. I just changed the normal sugar to brown and it added more depth, but the first two batches with normal sugar were also amazing. Thanks for sharing! :D

When you take a chance on the first video that comes up and it ends up being everything you need to know. Thank you! My 9yo son and I watched this yesterday and started our ginger bug last night. We are very excited! Also, thank you for bleeping out the expletive when it exploded ;)

Getting ready to start my first batch. I LOVE ginger beer, so being able to make it at home is going to be awesome. Can't wait.

This formula is very good because he kept it simple. Im a retired baker and all the very best recipes are always the basic simple ones. I highly recommend this version over the convoluted ones. Keep it simple, you can't beat success.

I just made an easy bread using the ginger bug as yeast, and it turned out amazing, highly recommended!

So easy!! I will be getting started next weekend! Thank you joshua :) you are amazing for these video’s don’t you ever stop please

Thanks for this! My absolute favorite cocktail is a huckleberry moscow mule made with fresh huckleberries of course, and now I can make it with real home made ginger beer as well! I CAN'T WAIT!!!!