Brewing Up Deliciousness

*B* and I are brewing machines!  While he's got beer and wine covered, I've been brewing up some non-alcoholic refreshments for us.  I got my water kefir grains in the end of April, and I've been brewing up a storm.  The first four batches were like the water kefir I used to brew:  too sweet, a little strange, and not something I was terribly interested in drinking.  But I've been keeping a journal of everything I've done.  The only thing that wasn't to-the-letter was the bit about not having chlorine in the water.  I put the water through a filter, but the filter was SUPER old.

 Water kefir grains doing their thing

 

Water kefir grains in a brewing bag.  It's my new experiment to minimize time for bottling.

I changed my water filter and the water kefir changed completely.  When I opened the bottles, it sounded like champagne.  Our glasses fizzed up like Sprite does.  It was brilliant.

Since the lemon soda was going well, I decided to try my hand at ginger beer.  I used Rhonda's recipe found at Down to Earth. 

 

I made it with maple syrup instead of sugar for the daily process, but I used sugar at the end. We popped one open, and it immediately fizzed.  It was exactly like the ginger beer you get in the store.  A chunk of ginger, maple syrup, sugar, and water made 5 liters of soda.  A very rough estimation puts the whole recipe at $4.  The equivalent amount of soda in Reed's Ginger Beer would be over $35!