Ale'd Ginger

I think the reason I wanted to make my own ginger ale is because I spoiled myself with 'real' ginger ale from Planet Organic, Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale.....



...not just Canada Dry, and I couldn't deal with buying the fancy stuff anymore. Plus I got an adorable bottle from IKEA and had to use it on something equally adorable.

Now, traditional ginger ale is typically made with yeast to create the bubbles. I opted to use club soda since I simply couldn't wait for multiple days to drink it, and the idea kind of scared me.

Homemade Ginger Ale

Ingredients:
1 cup diced ginger (tip: peel the ginger using a spoon (thanks Annand!) and then chop)
1 cup brown sugar (you can use white, but brown will give the ale a nicer color)
club soda
lime (zest and juice)

1. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add ginger and zest of one lime. Reduce heat to medium low and let ginger sit in the simmering water for 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit for 20 minutes minimum, or overnight for a spicier ginger flavor. Once the ginger has steeped for your desired amount of time, strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer.

(Normally you would discard the ginger pieces here; last time I saved the ginger and froze it, hoping I can do something with it eventually. It may just end up being used to enhance the next batch.)

2. In a separate saucepan, make a simple Syrup by dissolving 1 cup sugar into 1 cup of boiling water. Set aside to cool.

3. Combine all simple syrup, all ginger water, juice of one lime and club soda to taste in a bottle that will keep the fizz, or drink immediately. Serve with a wedge of lime.

I'm going to try to blog, in some way, for every day of October. It would have been wise to save this post until Saturday, but I received a request from one of my favorite food bloggers, former Edmontonian and current Texan, to post this recipe! Since I receive so few requests, I just had to do it. Take a look at Marynika's blog; the pictures are stunning and as a very lucky tester of some of the baking, the recipes were fabulous.

Enjoy, and look forward to more posts! I can't promise that they'll all be recipes but I'll do my best to make sure it's food related.