# Ginger Ale Recipe



## Cooking4Fun (Sep 4, 2021)

I found a basic ginger ale recipe that calls for a sugar/water simple syrup, ginger water from brewing raw peeled ginger, a little lime juice, and club soda.

Is it crucial to use club soda? Does it need to be carbonated? And if carbonated does it need to be club soda? I personally don't like mineral water taste. Would it be very inauthentic if I used seltzer water instead? And lastly did the Irish really invent ginger ale? I would think since ginger largely is from southeast asian it wouldn't have arrived in Ireland first. Lol.


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## dragnlaw (Sep 5, 2021)

To my way of thinking 'ales' are and have always been carbonated.  So if you are making Ginger Ale - I would say yes, you need to carbonate. Use which ever ingredient you prefer. 

Use selzer if you have it, although not many have that on hand. But I believe selzer loses' it's carbonation faster for some reason? 

The flavour is in the ginger, I shouldn't think mineral water/club soda would impart a strong enough flavour to bother.  Tonic water might be a little too bitter with the quinine.

On the other hand, whether or not you use carbonated water, you can call it whatever you want - it is your creation.  Call it ginger ale or an upside down Christmas tree.

I thought most soda pops were started in the U.S.


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## dragnlaw (Sep 5, 2021)

*Dr. Google*

LOL   googled Ginger Ale - 

interesting read!  

and yeh, I like Ginger Beer too.


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## taxlady (Sep 5, 2021)

A lot of people use the terms "seltzer" and "club soda" interchangeably. I have certainly bought club soda with and ingredient list that only had water and carbon dioxide.


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## Sir_Loin_of_Beef (Sep 5, 2021)

Get yourself a SodaStream® and you can make your own carbonated water, by the gallon if you wish.


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## Chief Longwind Of The North (Sep 5, 2021)

At most grocers, you can purchase carbonated water that is only CO2 and water.  I use it t make homemade cream soda.  

I once took a sliver of dry ice, and put into a two liter, clean, plastic water bottle, along with strawberry Kool-Aid and water.  I screwed the cap on tight.  I had to release pressure twice to keep the plastic bottle from exploding. Even then, the bottle was expanded by the time the dry ice was gone.  It made some very fizzy strawberry soda.  My youngest daughter was amazed that I could make soda-pop at home.  I had experience on my side though.

After high school, and just before going into the U.S. Navy, I worked at a soda-pop bottling plant.  We made Verner's, RC Cola, Upper-Ten; Frosty Root Beer,, and Both Nesbits, and Nehi fruit flavored sodas (orange, strawberry, grape)..  Th process was simple. 2 foot square blocks were placed by hand into10 foot steel pressure tanks, the lids were screwed on with cheater bars to get them sealed. 200 gallons, 200 lbs. cane sugar, and 1 gallon of soda concentrate were poured into stirring tanks, and let mix for thirty minutes.  Bottles were washed and loaded into the bottling machine, and the machine was set to add an amount of the pop syrup to each bottle, according to the recipe for the specific pop, and the carbonated water filled the bottles.  They were capped, and one person was in charge of inverting the bottles twice, to mix the syrup with the carbonated water, and the bottles placed into crates for distribution.  Good people worked there.  They'd all grown up on the tough side of the tracks, and were probably looked down upon by our town's hoity-toity types.  But they were really great guys.  I trusted them to be honest, hard working, and good friends.

I must have looked a sight, weighing in at about 95lbs., soaking wet, and carrying 200 lb. sacks of sugar, and driving a fork lift carrying pallets of bottles ten foot high.  But I did all the same work as the other workers, which included the foreman, one other recent high school grad, one truckdriver, and one assistant floor manager.  The foreman, years later, told me that he hadn't thought I'd have lasted a week, due to my small size, and that I really surprised him by carrying my load, and then some.  We all got along great, and occasionally got a little, um. inebriated after work, on site.  They liked peppermint schnapps.  Me, I hate mints, and detest the flavor of alcohol, and so drank the root beer.  I got razzed a little for that, but not badly.  I also got to know the foreman's family, and shared a meal or three with him, his wife, and kids.  I've always been great with kids.

Good memories.  Sorry to go so far off track.  But like I said, good memories.


Oh, and about ginger ale, and ginger beer, The original root, and birch beers got their carbonation from yeast fermenting in the brew, just like more familiar ales, and beers.. It wouldn't' surprise me if ginger beer wasn't initially made through yeast fermentation as well.

Oh, I looked up ginger ale history, and found this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_ale

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North


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## Cooking4Fun (Sep 6, 2021)

Chief Longwind Of The North said:


> At most grocers, you can purchase carbonated water that is only CO2 and water.  I use it t make homemade cream soda.
> 
> I once took a sliver of dry ice, and put into a two liter, clean, plastic water bottle, along with strawberry...



Is it hard to get a hold of sassafras for rootbeer? I hear it can be toxic if not prepared certain ways.


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## Cooking4Fun (Sep 6, 2021)

taxlady said:


> A lot of people use the terms "seltzer" and "club soda" interchangeably. I have certainly bought club soda with and ingredient list that only had water and carbon dioxide.



I have always thought of club soda as carbonated mineral water and the ingredients on bottles seemed to suggest it's always that way. Seltzer water always seems just pure water.


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## taxlady (Sep 6, 2021)

Cooking4Fun said:


> I have always thought of club soda as carbonated mineral water and the ingredients on bottles seemed to suggest it's always that way. Seltzer water always seems just pure water.



Maybe that is another subtle difference between the US and Canada. I have never seen any implication that club soda was made with mineral water. I also haven't seen seltzer at the store, but I wasn't looking for it, so maybe I just never noticed.


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## Chief Longwind Of The North (Sep 6, 2021)

Near Mammoth mountain, in the High Sierras of Northern California is a campground called Reds Meadow.  There is a nearby fishing lake, a roped off part of the San Andreas Fault,, a big waterfall fed by a nice fishing river, and a soda springs where carbonated water, sparkling and clear bubbles up from the ground.  We used tof9ll clean 2 liter bottles and use it for batters, and to make soft drinks  Oh and at the campground, there is a building with individual, private shower/bath stalls, with the hot water coming from a hot spring that had to be mixed with cold water from a nearby stream to make the otherwise scalding spring water usable.  There were small brown bears in the area (if you can call 600 lbs. small).  We would often find bear paw prints on the side of our camping tailor.  I took my full thirty days vacation while in the navy, evert year, and we'd go there and camp fo about a month.  Good times.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North


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## dragnlaw (Sep 6, 2021)

Cooking4Fun said:


> Is it hard to get a hold of sassafras for rootbeer? I hear it can be toxic if not prepared certain ways.



When does your recipe date from?  I believe that newer recipes have removed sassafras from the ingredient list.

Sassafras, indeed, has a bad rep.  Google it and you will see that although it is still used in medical situations, it was banned in 1969(?) for carcinogenic reasons. 

I don't think "how" it's prepared but more 'quantity'.


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## dragnlaw (Sep 6, 2021)

taxlady said:


> Maybe that is another subtle difference between the US and Canada. I have never seen any implication that club soda was made with mineral water. I also haven't seen seltzer at the store, but I wasn't looking for it, so maybe I just never noticed.



I think of seltzer bottles as glass containers with the metal tops that could jet stream the carbonated water into your glass.  These containers are filled and sealed at the factory and you cannot remove the tops yourself.

The problem with plastic is that once the seal is broken you must use the entire contents fairly quickly as it loses it's bubbles fast.  

I have a friend who still orders and has delivered the glass style ones.  Really neat and sorta retro.


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## Chief Longwind Of The North (Sep 6, 2021)

root beer is one of the easier soda-pop flavors to make.  You can purchase root beer extracts, root beer concentrate:

https://www.amazon.com/Zatarains-Concentrate-Ounce-Plastic-Bottles/dp/B00122E62S

https://www.amazon.com/Root-Extract-Natural-Flavor-Blend/dp/B00O59OP0S

https://www.amazon.com/Watkins-Natural-Extract-Ounce-Packaging/dp/B00G6CLLLI

You simply mix sugar, carbonated water, and the concentrate, or extract together in a sealable container and you have root beer.  

Root beer was originally made from birch bark, birch buds, wintergreen, and sassafras.  Sassafras's was found to be carcinogenic, and was banned from the recipe.  However, if you are a forager, wintergreen leaves and berries, steeped into a strong tea, and mixed with a little vanilla extract, and brow sugar, and birch buds in the spring, will give you a thick syrup that can be added either to carbonated water, or distilled water with a little yeast, capped, and let the yeast created the CO2 carbonation.    And as I said, a sliver of food grade dry ice, placed in a sealed bottle of the mix will also carbonate the water, but you have to release pressure every now and again to keep the bottle from exploding.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North


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## taxlady (Sep 6, 2021)

dragnlaw said:


> *I think of seltzer bottles as glass containers with the metal tops that could jet stream the carbonated water into your glass.*  These containers are filled and sealed at the factory and you cannot remove the tops yourself.
> 
> The problem with plastic is that once the seal is broken you must use the entire contents fairly quickly as it loses it's bubbles fast.
> 
> I have a friend who still orders and has delivered the glass style ones.  Really neat and sorta retro.



Same here, but like the ones you sometimes see in movies from the 1930s and 40s. You put water in the container; screw on the lid; attach a CO2 cartridge; and stream the seltzer into a glass or whatever.

I find that 2 litre plastic bottle of club soda keeps its fizz for at least several days after opening. I can't say for sure, because I drink a lot of club soda and usually finish a bottle in one to three days.


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## taxlady (Sep 6, 2021)

My DH's grandmother made ginger ale by fermentation. Apparently, every once in a while, there would be a bang from the cellar, as one of the bottles exploded from excess pressure.


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## GotGarlic (Sep 6, 2021)

dragnlaw said:


> I think of seltzer bottles as glass containers with the metal tops that could jet stream the carbonated water into your glass.  These containers are filled and sealed at the factory and you cannot remove the tops yourself.
> 
> The problem with plastic is that once the seal is broken you must use the entire contents fairly quickly as it loses it's bubbles fast.
> 
> I have a friend who still orders and has delivered the glass style ones.  Really neat and sorta retro.


https://youtu.be/VO9RP4QEZKU


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## skilletlicker (Sep 6, 2021)

Cooking4Fun said:


> Is it hard to get a hold of sassafras for rootbeer? I hear it can be toxic if not prepared certain ways.



Remember "Jambalaya", the old Hank Williams tune? The chorus goes,
Jambalaya, crawfish pie and *fillet gumbo*
'Cause tonight, I'm gonna see my ma cher ami-o
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-o
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou​
Filet powder is just ground sassafras leaves and you can buy it most anywhere that sells herbs and spices. Even my corner Kroger has it sometimes.

As far as the danger, maybe look at the excerpt below from FoodPrint.org.


> Depending on whom you ask, sassafras is either a folk remedy that makes for great tea or is a dangerous carcinogen that deserves Drug Enforcement Agency oversight.
> 
> Why? It’s because the roots and bark of the sassafras tree contain a high concentration of the chemical safrole. Safrole was judged a carcinogen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after testing it on rats in 1960. Safrole is also used in the production of MDMA (aka the illegal drug Ecstasy). On the other side of the coin, critics of the ban cite sassafras’ long-standing use as a folk medicine and that the amount of safrole the rats were fed was much higher than would normally be consumed by humans. Since only you can decide if the food you’re eating is safe, we’ve put together the facts about all the parts and uses of sassafras.
> 
> To be clear, the leaves of the sassafras tree do not contain enough safrole to be banned, so filé powder is fine for consumption and sale.



Pretty sure Ye Old Root Beer recipes called for root instead of leaves but already said everything I know about the topic.

Edited to add: Truth be told, wouldn't have replied at all but for the chance to quote Hank.


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## dragnlaw (Sep 6, 2021)

taxlady said:


> My DH's grandmother made ginger ale by fermentation. Apparently, every once in a while, there would be a bang from the cellar, as one of the bottles exploded from excess pressure.



LOL -one summer my parents also made root beer -  it was a hot summer and overnight most of them exploded!  ....  and they weren't in the basement. 
my mom was not impressed with my dad - the engineer!  LOL




GotGarlic said:


> https://youtu.be/VO9RP4QEZKU



LOL - and thanks GG! 
too bad they were always getting seriously hurt in so many of their scenes.


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## skilletlicker (Sep 6, 2021)

taxlady said:


> My DH's grandmother made ginger ale by fermentation. Apparently, every once in a while, there would be a bang from the cellar, as one of the bottles exploded from excess pressure.



Uncle Homer didn't have a cellar. I was seven or eight and a big group of relatives was gathered in his back yard for a summer gathering. Funny noises and dogs periodically going crazy. Turns out his shallowly buried home-brew was exploding. Aunt Mildred was pissed or pretended to be.

I'm interested to see if this evolves into a discussion about adult alcoholic ginger beverages.


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