Okay so none of my mom’s cooking genes got passed on to me. Fact is, I’m no more of a foodie than I am a competitive sports person. I love Ginger Ale, though. Love Ginger Ale so, so, sooo, much yet I rarely have the opportunity to drink anything other than the processed fructose/gluctose supermarket crap. Alas!
Time to does something about. The results of my research are as follows:
NY Times Ginger Ale Recipe
My boyfriend, who is about as culinarily inept as I am, is now offering to try and figure out how to create this concoction on my behalf. He explains to me that the sublimation would be a good way to go about making Ginger Ale. Sublimation being “the state change from solid to gas that skips liquid”
“Hannah’s Ginger Ale” photo by Marcelo Teson
He says that adding dry ice to water and ginger extract might be a good way to make Ginger Ale because this is how Root Beer is made.
He also says he’s not really sure whether or not this is actually how Ginger Ale is made. None of the recipes I’ve found online seem to advocate the use of dry ice to make Ginger Ale. But still like the idea. Hmm…
Your home made ginger ale sounds good to me. I like the idea of breathing it. Hannah’s mom told me the dangers of drinking corn syrup……it seems to have gasoline in it because of a new chemical used to fertilize corn. I guess this syrup was an invention to use up the corn over production resulting from this poisonous fertilizer.
When do you return to S. California? I will be there June 4 to 15 and will have a picnic-cook out with your dad near Neptunes’ Net on June 7. I return to Maine with Hannah on June 15 to take her on a special trip to NYC and DC with her cousin Morgan who will also be celebrating her 10th birthday! Ciao! Happy summer! Sounds good to enjoy it in the mountains near Aspen.bup
Guess my reply was too long and was cancelled. I went off the track. Hope you are able to stay in the mountains near Aspen for the summer!
Re Ginger ale. I like the idea of sublimating it! If you drink that high fructose corn syrup, my daughter Jennifer says you are ingesting poison from the gasoline-based fertilizer used for corn over production.
Hannah’s recipe for the ginger ale involved infusing simple syrup (water and sugar) with fresh crushed ginger and then combining that with club soda. No tricky sublimation technique or anything. We’re looking for the recipe right now(it’s on Hannah’s defunct vegan blog whose URL we don’t remember). People really liked it when we made it for parties back in the day.
I do like the easy way of making ginger ale, though I remember getting either a comment or an email about my recipe in which the reader expressed the idea that ginger ale should be fermented, as it is an “ale”. That seems like an awful lot of work to me to just make a simple drink that actually tastes pretty darn good the unfermented way. No idea about the “sublimation”, but perhaps the results will be sublime?
Hi Susanna, funny you should talk about his because my husband’s former college roommate, Chris Reed, happens to make an excellent ginger ale, called Ginger Brew, yes, brewed the old fashioned way the way your and my grandmothers did before ginger ale was even available in a supermarket. His is the only one that uses fresh ginger (yes, fresh!) and honey as a sweetener, no fructose. It is potent, but comes in different strengths so you can work your way up to Premium if you like. You can buy it at Whole Foods, Costco on the West Coast and many other natural and other food stores. (Maybe even the supermarket out there, I’m not sure.) He also happens to own the Virgil’s brand of root beer also, and also excellent. Chris trained as a chemical engineer at RPI, and arrived at the current recipe with much trail and error, and attention to the process at every stage. Let me know what you think!