Ginger Beer #1

I really like a spicy ginger beer, not the alcoholic one, the soda. Most are insipid or sickly sweet or both; some fake the spice with chili! The best I've come across is DG from Jamaica but Goslings (of the Rum fame) makes one now that's good. We made one years ago but it was difficult and messy. Bartender Jeffrey Morganthaler has a good write up on how he does it, including an instant one using an iSi soda siphon, which we just happen to have. It turned out well but we'll tweak it for the next batch. Here's our first take on his recipe, using the iSi.

1 ounce Ginger juice (see below)
2 ounces Lemon Juice, finely strained
3 ounces Mint Simple Syrup
10 ounces Ice Water

I took a "hand" of fresh ginger, scraped most of the skin off with the edge of a spoon, cut it up, and juiced it with a juice extractor we got from FreeCycle -- much easier than using a MicroPlane!  Juice a lemon and strain with a fine strainer to remove pulp. At this point, the liquid changed from a slightly green-brown from the ginger to a light salmony pink from the acid. Irene pointed out it was the color of sushi ginger -- exactly.

We had made mint simple syrup for cocktails so added that rather than plain simple syrup. For force carbonation, the liquid needs to be cold so we used ice water.

Add all the ingredients to the iSi, straining once more since lemon juice can foam up and bits of skin can clog the siphon's dispenser. For our 1.0L siphon (0.5L liquid volume) we used one CO2 charger, shook well, and let chill in the fridge for a half hour.

To serve, invert and dispense into iced glasses, and enjoy. After our initial taste test, we added some rum -- white for Irene, white with a touch of molasses-y black for me -- and had a variation on a Dark and Stormy.

What Worked, What Didn't

This wasn't as fiery-gingery as we'd like. Next time, bump up the ginger to 1.5 ounces. 

We might try freezing the ginger hand before extracting: some vegetables and fruits break down when their cells freeze and exude their juices when they thaw -- this might make the extraction more efficient.

For 2-4 drinks, this was a fair amount of work. Just setting up and cleaning the juice extractor was a lot of overhead. Next time, we'd use Morganthaler's preferred method of force carbonating a large batch with a CO2 cylinder and a clever Liquid Bread soda bottle adapter -- which we also happen to have.