I've always liked the burn of ginger. Ginger Chew candies are pretty good and Reed's Ginger Beer is pretty good.
But the beer is non-alcoholic, which is ok, but they want $1 a bottle for basically soda pop.
Then I ran across an blog post about how to make your own ginger beer. Phil, golf buddy, has been making it too and tipped me off to inexpensive ginger at Costco.
It's a pretty simple recipe:
Grind a couple of ginger roots in a food processor.
Dump that with two cups of white (brown is an option) sugar and some cream of tarter in a sauce pan.
The blogger mentions that he likes to add red and black pepper in the mix for more spice.
Bring it to a boil, with some stirring, then let it cool and steep.
Filter the material to remove most of the pulp. I used a hand held strainer, the blog post used cheese cloth, but we didn't have any. That allowed a fair amount of pulp into the syrup.
I bottled it and put it into the fridge.
I use about an inch of the syrup and fill the rest of a glass with soda water. There is a nice burn to the drink, it has a touch of sweetness and all in all, pretty good.
I've not looked into fermenting it. But it could be done.
Might be better for summer weather, but if you like the flavor, give it a whirl.
