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Caught a ginger bug (Read 2401 times)
perpetualstudent
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Caught a ginger bug
Jul 15th, 2016 at 2:58pm
 
No, nothing to do with Pokemon Go.

A ginger bug is like a sourdough starter only for brewing ginger beer (soft or hard). To start with you need to get organic ginger, regular ginger has been irradiated which kills the yeast you're trying to catch. Then grate a bit of ginger into water and add some sugar and some water. Add a bit more ginger and a bit more sugar every day until it's all bubbly.

Then you use the starter instead of yeast while brewing. I brewed my first batch of ginger beer with it. It's a bit more viscous than I'd expect. But not bad. A little rum in it and it was lovely. I'm letting the other half of the batch go hard so I'll try that in another couple of days.

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Arcane Tinker
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #1 - Jul 20th, 2016 at 11:04pm
 
I thought a ginger bug was the name for having a thing for redheads Grin.
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #2 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 7:04am
 
Quote:
I brewed my first batch of ginger beer with it. It's a bit more viscous than I'd expect.


viscous ginger beer - you're not exactly selling it lol

And the ginger starter would work just as well with irradiated ginger.

What's actually happening is you are using natural yeasts. Which are pretty much just floating around in the air and are about as ubiquitious as anything can be. So as soon as ginger is irradiated, natural yeasts will settle on it anyway.

Guarentee it won't make any difference what ginger you use.
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perpetualstudent
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #3 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 8:46am
 
Well I was gone a couple of days and it died on me.

I'll try it with the bit of regular ginger I have. I'm not hopeful but I'll be happy to be wrong.

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walter
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #4 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 8:58am
 
We used free airborne bacteria to make yogurt.  Smiley
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #5 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 11:55am
 
things like ginger starters and sourdough starters just use natural free floating yeasts. Honest Smiley

far as yoghurt goes I believe the anerobic bacteria that creates the lactic acid which in turn makes the milk proteins coagulate, is naturally present in milk anyway.  They probably have a digestive purpose in one of the cow's stomachs and get into the milk by some sort of internal process. 
I suppose there could be spores floating around, but by their very nature anerobic bacteria are killed by exposure to oxygen. So no free floating ones. 

You'll probably struggle to make yoghurt from uht treated milk without adding a culture. Non heat treated milk will curdle all by itself, quite quickly.
Good experiment to try Smiley

But simply adding a small amount of natural yoghurt to uht milk will give it all the bacteria it needs to turn.

It is a fascinating idea that we can preserve foods and make them tastier by helping them to rot.

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walter
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #6 - Jul 21st, 2016 at 1:05pm
 
I'm using anerobic bacteria to ret yucca leaves. Once the first batch got going good, I snagged a bucket full of that water to start the next so there isn't a four day delay.
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perpetualstudent
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #7 - Jul 26th, 2016 at 10:08am
 
Sourdough starters tend to use Potato though, some yeast like roots making it a little easier to select for your own colony. My wife just got one of those working and that's working fine.

Sadly the attempt with regular ginger failed. One day it seemed to be working but the next day it turned sour. So by all means if you're interested in trying it, try with regular first but I wound up buying organic (which I hate doing) so I can get it started again.
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #8 - Jul 27th, 2016 at 12:07pm
 
the whole 'viscous' thing put me off Smiley

You could always use brewers yeast. cheap and available lots of places.
Definitely cheaper than buying  organic ginger Smiley
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #9 - Jul 29th, 2016 at 9:11pm
 
Viscous can be great. If we are talking about maple syrup and honey.  But what sort of viscosity are we talking about here? I am envisioning a glass of v8.
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perpetualstudent
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #10 - Jul 29th, 2016 at 11:36pm
 
Well the first batch was somewhere between beer and maple syrup. The second batch was more like beer. The second batch also fermented much faster so the colony might just have been a bit small for the first batch.

We'll see how the second starter goes. The organic ginger is like 4 bucks? So not great but I'm willing to buy it mainly as a starter. For each actual batch I use a decent amount of regular ginger.  I've made ginger beer with bread yeast before and I have a couple packets of brewer's yeast I just hate to waste them when I haven't settled on a good recipe yet.

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perpetualstudent
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #11 - Aug 3rd, 2016 at 12:26pm
 
This one doesn't seem to be starting. The successful ginger bug I had going I think I had the windows open most of the time.

So I'll try regular ginger again but make sure it has time outside. It might just be that filtered AC in a shut up house doesn't have enough airborne yeast.
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"Facts stand wholly outside our gates; they are what they are, and no more;they know nothing about themselves and they pass no judgement upon themselves. What is it, then, that pronounces the judgement? Our own guide and ruler, Reason."
 
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #12 - Aug 5th, 2016 at 5:35am
 
    I  thought the same thing Arcane did.  I caught that version of the ginger bug a long time ago. Red heads rock!!!
    Interesting post. I never knew ginger beer needed it's own special yeast.
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perpetualstudent
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #13 - Aug 16th, 2016 at 9:31am
 
It's more like sourdough- you don't need a speciall version but you can have one.

I'm trying to get it going again, regular ginger this time. Only I'm placing it outside with a coffee filter on it in the morning and bringing it in at night. It's started getting frothy and so I'm hopeful that I'll have my starter up and running again in another couple of days.
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Steven
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Re: Caught a ginger bug
Reply #14 - Aug 18th, 2016 at 4:24pm
 
Tried ginger beer for first time Shocked can't believe people drink that stuff on purpose.  Tongue
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