The best guests bring ginger beer! (posted by Amber)

[elephantkitty]

hooray! my esophogas is slowly getting better, i ate a bit of (well-chewed) naan tonight, the most solid food i've had in a week. tonight i also got to enjoy home-brewed ginger beer. so refreshingly delicious in the s. asian summer heat. and i *never* knew how easy it was to make! i've been craving ginger ale for ages, and usually end up

Comments

[jonathannil]

I tried to make ginger beer last summer, but it came out... weird. I think maybe I used too much yeast for fear of not using enough yeast. It tasted very yeasty, like bad beer.

Do you use just bread yeast, or brewer's yeast, or what? I just used bread yeast cause the recipe I found said it was fine, but now I wonder.

I'm going to try again---this time root beer, with some local sasafras! Maybe sasafras and ginger I'm thinking.

[jonathannil]

Huh, look at that, wikipedia says:

"Root beer extract may contain a variety of flavors. Bark from the roots of the sassafras tree was the typical flavor in root beer historically, and is the primary flavor most individuals associate with the beverage. Sassafras bark was banned by the FDA due to the carcinogenic properties of its constituent chemical safrole in 1960."

Alls I know is somebody's selling sassafras root at the farmer's market, with bark, and another friend of mine forages it herself, and I"m making it into some rootbeer FDA or no FDA.

[jonathannil]

PPS: (You have no idea how much I love soda pop, it's my favorite. This topic gets me all excited) You should try putting a pinch or two of cardamon in your ginger beer. Mm.

[dtto]

That's a great idea, we'll have to give that a try. :)

[angiereedgarner]

Ah! I think maybe we saw Martin walking past the Y-block market a few days ago? He did stand out, and we both tried to imagine how a backpacker found his way here. :) Please tell them welcome!

[dtto]

Oh cool. They are pretty amazing folks. 35,000 km and counting.

[lisajoyce]

Oh no! Did your 30D get stolen?

yup...

[dtto]

No more pictures for me. I only got 7,000 frames out of it before it was stolen. *sigh* Can't replace it until I get a job. The 40D looks like, but so does the Nikon D300. Both are only vague dreams until I have some steady income. :(

[jonathannil]

Do you ever get a sulphur smell from yours?

My root beer has ended up tasting pretty good, if you drink it through a straw. But from the glass has a sulphury smell.

[dtto]

Weird. No, I think that must be something specific to root beer. Maybe the sassafras? Ours sometimes was a bit yeasty, but otherwise delicious. :)