Ginger Snaps Back: A Girl and her Gingerbug

I'm sure your first question is, What on earth is a ginger bug?  It's just a culture of beneficial bacteria, similar to a sourdough starter, except instead of using it to make bread, you use it to make lacto-fermented soda (so much better than what it sounds). 

For a long time, I have dreamed of making my own rootbeer.  I love soda, that is real soda without high fructose corn syrup, or aspartame, or artificial flavoring.  I want the real McCoy. One particular pet peeve of mine is root beer marketed as"Old Fashioned" that contains HFC or artificial flavors.

True old fashioned root beer was lacto fermented.  There appears to be several ways to do this, using whey (that liquid leftover when you strain yogurt), a kefir culture, or using a ginger bug.  

I decided against the kefir as it seemed to require a significant initial investment (spending  $27 plus shipping) on the kefir starter packets.  Why I didn't try the whey method first, I don't know.  Maybe I wanted someone to keep Captain Trips (my sourdough starter) company on the counter.  Of the three methods, creating a Ginger Bug requires the highest level of patience and initial time investment.

I've seen numerous recipes for how to make a ginger bug with varying instructions on the amount of ginger, sugar, and water to add.  I don't think the amount of water matters very much.  What I decided on was 1 tablespoon each water, sugar, and finely chopped ginger added each day.

After 1 day it smells like ginger and sugar.

After 2 days still smells mostly like ginger, but starting to get a faint alcoholic smell with a sort of lemony undertone.

After 3 days the alcoholic smell has intensified a bit.

After 4 days smells like lemony ginger hooch.  No bubbles.  No sound.

By the end of day 5 the smell is the same, but if I look closely, I see some small bubbles.  Still don't hear anything though.

Day 6.   Still smells like ginger hooch, there are a lot of bubbles and the ginger bug snaps and hisses at me.  I think it is ready for soda making.

I'm pretty certain I have a successful ginger bug starter.  So I should have some posts pretty soon on my experimentations with lacto-fermented beverages.  I plan on making a stab at Ginger Beer first to make sure ginger bug actually works, as Root Beer requires finding and buying a bunch of obscure herbs.

Matsoni - A Mesophilic Yogurt

Inspired by some delicious homemade yogurt at a friend's house warming and my New Year's resolution to consume less processed foods and more natural ones, I set off on a mission to make my own yogurt again.

I have made yogurt in the past a few times, but have never kept with it because my end product has always been a little disappointing.  A major problem has been that I have frequently ended up with a grainy texture.  So this time I wanted to do a little research before starting.  That's when I learned about Mesophilic yogurts.

Unlike the thermophilic yogurts that you buy at the store, Mesophilic yogurts do not require an elevated temperature to culture milk.  Instead, they culture at room temperature or between 70 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit.  Also they do not require you to heat your milk first.  Making Mesophilic yogurt is as easy as dumping milk in a jar adding in some yogurt starter and letting it sit on the counter for 12-48 hours.  Nice!  Why had no one told me about Mesophilic yogurt before?

I selected Matsoni as the Mesophilic yogurt that I would try.  I ordered from Cultures for Health, which I highly recommend.  My order came a day early and their customer support has been truly awesome.

I was so excited, I filled a quart mason jar with some organic whole milk and stirred in my freeze dried yogurt packet and even stuck the jar in an insulated cooler with a hot water bottle incase the nightime temperatures fell into the 60s.  After a day, nothing had happened.  I took comfort that at least it still smelled like milk and not rotten.  After 34 hours it looked like it might actually be starting to change into yogurt, but it was still pretty sloppy.  It most certainly was not pulling neatly away from the edge of the jar when tilted like in the video.  It was also starting to smell like a pungent sheep cheese.  I was a little alarmed.  I contacted customer support through their live chat option and described the situation.  

The chat representative said that the Matsoni culture could smell a little strong at first.  She then asked me what milk I used.  I told her whole organic, and she asked whether it was ultra-pasturized.  I checked, and sure enough it was ultra-pasturized. She explained that ultra-pasturized milk was so "dead" that one would not be able to make yogurt with it, and if it actually did make yogurt that I should switch to just pasturized milk right away.

I hoped against hope that my yogurt would turn out.  It did look kind of "yogurty".  Maybe this would be a rare instance where it worked.  I waited until it had been out 48 hours.  It hadn't firmed up much in the 14 ensuing hours.  I tasted it.  It tasted like a mixture between strong sheep cheese and an old shoe.  I put it in the fridge.  The directions had recommended cooling in the fridge for 6 hours once the yogurt had set.  I had no idea how it would work, but somehow I was hoping cooling in the fridge would improve the taste.  I tried it again after it had been in the fridge a while.  It still tasted like strong cheese and an old shoe and the texture was very clumpy.  I decided I would strain it, now it was thick clumpy cheesy shoe yogurt - still not edible though.   I stashed it in the fridge,  just in case I  could use it to culture new milk.

Luckily, they provide two packets of freeze-dried yogurt culture in each order, so I didn't have to resort to trying to use the cheesy shoe yogurt yet, but I was down to my last packet.  I had to get things right this time, so I was back to customer support running my game plan by them.  I would use organic whole pasturized milk, heat the milk to 165 degrees first, after it cooled to room temperature
I would add my starter packet and hope for the best.  I also only used 2 cups of milk this time, in case things didn't work out.

This time, after 22.5 hours, I had yogurt.  It pulled neatly away from the sides and didn't taste or smell at all like a shoe.  This mother batch was still a bit cheesy tasting to me, and if you are expecting it to be exactly like the store bought yogurt, you will be disappointed.  It is more mild tasting, lacking that characteristic sourness, and the texture is more loose and watery.

The Gen 1 batches which I made from my first batch tasted less cheesy, perhaps due to the shorter
culturing time.  They only took 15 hours to set.  Next, I am experimenting with using half whole milk and half cream.  I also want to experiment with heating the milk for the future batches and see if this will affect the thickness.

I don't think this will be a good substitute for the yogurt we use in Indian recipes, but I have been making 2 cups of Matsoni daily and am enjoying the very simple process of filling my pint mason jar with milk, stirring in a couple tablespoons of yogurt, setting the jar on top of the refrigerator, and letting the magic happen.

I Actually Read a Book

***spoiler alert***

Reading is one of my favorite ways to relax and unwind.  However, since the birth of my daughter, I have not actually finished reading anything.  I did start the Steve Jobs biography, but I only made it half way through.

Well, as of yesterday that finally changed: I finished Chivalry is Undead (Just Another Zombie Love Story). It was far from great writing, but it was a somewhat entertaining and quick read.  I don't feel it's deserving of its five star review on Amazon,  but I would give it a solid three.

I used Amazon Prime's lending service, so it was actually free, which is good, as I would not deem it buying worthy.  The characters were pretty flat and uninteresting.  There wasn't much plot and very little conflict.  I know, the Zombie Survival genre isn't known for it's compelling plots - it's pretty much avoid getting eaten.  The protagonist, Stephen, saves a local bar maid, Jessica, and then they both go on a trip from San Antonio to Houston to pick up his friend Paul, his wife and two kids.  Along the way he saves a few other people and they all decide to shack up in this farm house.  Jessica, Stephen's love interest just about falls into the his lap and there is tons of cheesy "I am yours" dialogue.

This novel landed on my radar due to the advertisements on my podcast: "We're Alive: A Story of Survival", which is actually a really awesome radio drama.  I was hoping "Chivalry is Undead" would surprise me like "We're Alive" had, but it was amusing and it gave me the thrill of actually finishing reading something.