Ingredients
- 1 tbsp grated unpeeled organic ginger
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1 tbsp grated unpeeled organic ginger
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
Directions
- In a glass jar, combine about 1 tbsp grated unpeeled organic ginger and 1 tbsp sugar.
- Add 1 1/2 cups water and stir vigorously. Cover your jar with a small breathable cloth.
- Feed your bug 1 tbsp grated ginger and 1 tbsp sugar daily. Stir vigorously.
- Your bug should be ready to use in about 5 days. It will bubble and smell yeasty, have a cloudy yellow color with sludgy looking white stuff at the bottom of the jar and some of the ginger will float to the top.
Notes
Once you have established a vigorous ginger bug, you can keep it out on the kitchen counter but you will have to feed it daily—and you will end up with a lot of it. I sometimes keep mine in the fridge and feed it the usual meal once a week: about 1 tablespoon ginger, 1 tablespoon sugar. First I bring it to room temperature, feed it, let it sit for a few hours and put it back in the refrigerator, unless I want to make a drink!
I compost a little ginger occasionally. Otherwise your pile will grow to huge proportions. You can also regularly strain off the liquid, compost half the ginger-sugar mixture and start fresh—add 1 1/2 cups water and feed daily until it bubbles up again.
To make your ginger bug, you need only three ingredients:
- Ginger
Use organic ginger. In the US, non-organic (I refuse to call it conventional) ginger may be irradiated. Irradiation kills the naturally occurring yeasts and lactic-acid bacteria on the ginger which ferment it. Only once have I made a ferment that showed zero signs of life after several days: pickled ginger. I read about irradiated ginger later and realized I must not have used organic ginger. (We almost always eat organic.)
- Sugar
I use organic cane sugar, rapadura or sucanat. Jaggery should work too. Do not use stevia. You need real sugar. If you want to experiment with things like honey or maple syrup, I would wait until you have successfully made a bug with sugar. Sugar works and you’ll learn how your bug should smell and look.
The sugar feeds the bacteria and yeasts in the bug. The amount of sugar you add to your bug and to drinks may horrify you. I know sugar is terrible. I have read Fat Chance and have watched the documentary Fed Up. But the bug consumes the sugar—not you—and emits carbon dioxide as a result, which adds that sought-after fizz. Once your drinks have fermented, they will contain much less sugar.
- Water
I use filtered water. If you have highly chlorinated water, fill a vessel and leave it open to the air for several hours or even a day before you’ll use it and the chlorine will dissipate. I haven’t had trouble with chlorine but I do know that too much of it will kill your microbes.