Ginger Bug – Dehydrated Soda Starter
$20.00
Live Cultures!
Make your own fizzy, probiotic-rich, fermented soda at home with our dehydrated Ginger Bug soda starter. Our powerful living culture is dehydrated at its peak—so you can start brewing soda in days, not weeks.
Includes: Ginger Bug Starter, Instructions, Root Beer + Ginger Beer Soda Recipes
Visit our shop for Soda Spice Flavors.
Made with with all organic ingredients.
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Description
Did you know that you can make your own soda at home--without a carbonation machine?
Our Dehydrated Ginger Bug Soda Starter is a living culture made from ginger root that is used to create fizzy, delicious, probiotic-rich sodas at home.
Simply rehydrate our Ginger Bug starter and you'll be ready to make authentic sodas like root beer, ginger beer, cream soda, and cola from your own kitchen.
What's a Ginger Bug?
Much like a sourdough starter, a Ginger Bug is a concentrated culture of beneficial bacteria and wild yeasts ("bugs") used to kickstart the fermentation process. When a Ginger Bug is added to a soda mixture, the bugs get to work converting the sugar from the mixture into alcohol and lactic acid. This process also produces carbon dioxide which naturally "carbonates" our mixture.
The best part? Homebrewed sodas do not taste like other fermented drinks such as kombucha. They taste like the authentic, real, refreshing, sweet sodas that we all know and love--only brewed at home! That's because soda is only allowed to ferment for 24-48 hours compared to 10 days or more for kombucha.
The result? All the fizz and probiotic goodness without the fermented taste.
The feeling of making your own soda from scratch can be compared to that of making bread from your own sourdough starter. It's an incredible feeling of accomplishment and self-reliance that you'll immediately want to share with your friends.
How To Rehydrate Our Ginger Bug
We dehydrate our Ginger Bug to put it into a dormant state for better storage. To wake her up, all you have to do is follow the included instruction card and feed with fresh ginger, sugar, and water every day. You'll know that your Ginger Bug is ready for soda-making when it is bubbly, fizzy, and has a nice layer of floating ginger on top (as little as 3 days!).
How to Make Homemade Soda with a Ginger Bug
This is a basic overview of the soda making process. Don't worry though: your Ginger Bug Soda Kit already includes detailed recipes for making classic soda flavors at home. This is just to give you an idea of how easy it is to make soda at home. You can also check out our Homestead Blog for more recipe inspiration.
Step One: Create Your Soda Flavor
The first step is to make a soda flavor base. For a half gallon of soda, start with 8 cups of water. You can make your flavor base by simply adding juices or teas directly to the water. Alternatively, you can steep fresh herbs or dried roots to create an infusion. For example, to make Ginger Beer, 3/4 cup fresh grated ginger and spices are steeped in boiling hot water for 30 minutes to create our flavor base. Once you have a good flavor base, add about 1 cup of sugar for every 8 cups of water (or more if you like it sweeter) and mix to dissolve.
Step Two: Add Your Ginger Bug & Ferment
For every 1/2 gallon of soda flavor, add 1/2 cup of strained, rehydrated, active Ginger Bug Soda Starter and mix well. Cover your container with a cloth and set in a dark, warm, dry location for 24 hours. Within 24 hours, you should see a good bit of bubbles on the surface of your soda mix.
Step Three: Bottle Your Soda
Fill 4x 16oz glass swing-top homebrewing soda bottles with your soda mixture and allow to ferment in the same dark location for 12-24 hours. This step is crucial to get a good fizz and a fun "soda pop." Do not ferment for longer than 24 hours without "burping" (releasing pressure) from the bottles each day.
Step 4: Refrigerate & Enjoy
Place your soda bottles into the refrigerator to cool. Your soda is ready to enjoy once completely chilled. That's it!
5 Reasons to Try Our Ginger Bug
- Makes Soda Fast! Making your own ginger bug from scratch can take weeks (or longer). With our Live Dehydrated Ginger Bug starter, you'll have an active starter that's potent enough for soda-making in just 3 days.
- Easy to Use: Kit includes easy-to-follow instructions on how to rehydrate your Ginger Bug as well as two foolproof classic soda recipes. New to homebrewing? A Ginger Bug is by far the easiest way to get started. DIY sodas are much simpler than homebrewed kombucha or sourdough.
- No Soda/Carbonation Machine Required: Create deliciously refreshing sodas at home that fizz and foam without the use of soda machines or carbonation devices.
- Delicious Recipes Included: This kit includes recipes for classic soda flavors that you won't find online. Relentlessly tested and fine tuned to taste like authentic soda. I can't wait for you to try them!
- Handmade Small Batches & Quality Ingredients: Our Ginger Bug is fed, dehydrated, and packaged on our homestead in small batches with love. From the very beginning, our Ginger Bug was fed only organic ginger root, organic raw sugar, and filtered mountain well water.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Ginger Bug works exactly like a sourdough starter in almost every way.
Our Dehydrated Ginger Bug starter is made by taking our family's active, bubbly Ginger Bug ferment and dehydrating it at very low temperatures.
Our Ginger Bug is fed a completely organic diet of organic ginger root, organic raw sugar, and filtered water.
By definition, alcohol is a by product of the soda fermentation process. However, homebrewed sodas undergo a short fermentation period (24-48 hours) which produces significantly less alcohol than that of kombucha or longer fermented drinks.
Our kit includes 1 packet (4g) of Dehydrated Ginger Bug starter.
Our Dehydrated Ginger Bug kit comes with detailed instructions on how to rehydrate and maintain your starter. Rehydration involves feeding your Ginger Bug some ginger, sugar, and water each day until it is and active happy bug.
Yes! A Ginger Bug starter is very similar to a sourdough starter. Both are concentrated lactobacillus ferments which must be fed routinely and can be used to make larger ferments.
Making homebrewed couldn't be easier. The basic process goes like this:
- Step 1- Create a soda syrup by combining sugar, water, and flavor from fruit juice, teas, roots, herbs, etc.
- Step 2 - Combine 1 cup of strained Ginger Bug starter per 1 Gallon of soda syrup in a glass jar.
- Step 3 - Cover jar and set in a dark location to ferment for 24 hours.
- Step 4 - After 24 hours, bottle your soda into glass swing-top homebrew bottles (like these) to capture the bubbles. Let ferment for another 12-24 hours before refrigerating. Enjoy cold!
Some sodas can take a little more time to ferment depending on ingredients and fermenting environment.
You can enjoy homebrewed soda in as little as 48 hours from start to finish.
Yes, to make homebrewed soda you'll need a few glass swing-top bottles (like these).
Your Dehydrated Ginger Bug Starter can be stored at room temperature or in the refrigerator until ready to use.
An active Ginger Bug can be stored at room temperature with daily feedings or in the refrigerator with weekly feedings.
Shipping is Free for US customers.
Due to the nature of the product, we cannot accept returns or exchanges. All sales are final.
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