I love fizzy drinks! The problem is most of them are filled with preservatives and unknown ingredients that don’t belong in our bodies. We’ve started making our own healthier beverages and fortunately there are so many to choose from: Kombucha, water keifer, milk keifer, kvass and many others. With all this in mind, I’ve recently discovered some great new recipes that have me giddy with excitement.
I have to share this with you because it’s so EASY to do!
I’ve been working my way through the book “The Wildcrafting Brewer” by Pascal Baudar and I’ve read it from cover to cover. The recipes, the photos, the explanations are all really exciting and doable. The book covers things like: primitive beers, country wines, herbal meads, natural sodas, fruit kvass, ethnic drinks, medieval brews and so much more! You can find the book on Amazon here.
I decided to start with a easy sounding recipe for Lacto-Fermented Soda. I was thrilled to discover that you can use fruit juice or a variety of fresh fruits/lemons and/or herbs to make this soda. All you need to achieve a ferment is a bit of sugar or honey and a cup of whey. You can purchase plain yoghurt with live cultures and strain it. You can use the left over yogurt to make yogurt cheese!
Here is the Yogurt and whey separating
Here are my sodas
There’s quite a bit of creative freedom in what ingredients you use to flavour your juice. Don’t feel beholden to a specific recipe – use what you have.
1. Pomegranate juice (equivalent of 6 pomegranates) diluted with purified water to top up the jar.
2. Lemons & a handful blackberries (It’s all I’ve got fresh – the blackberries were from the garden and frozen).
The basic directions. It’s crazy simple.
Combine the fruit & herbs, purified water or juice (6-7 cups), sugar (1 cup) and whey (1/2 cup) and refrigerate for a day to let the flavours infuse. You can use any type of jar but make sure that you don’t store it air tight as the gasses need to escape. Strain the solids out and pour the juice into flip top bottles or plastic beverage bottles. Sore in a dark, room temperature location checking daily until you are happy with the ferment. Fermentation can take 2-7 days. Once it’s ready, refrigerate and drink within a week.
I am pleased to say that it was a successful experiment.
The soda is delightfully fizzy and the flavours are incredible. Its the nicest “pop” we’ve ever had. This recipe is one of the easiest things I have ever made. totally worth trying.
I did forget about it for 24 hours and didn’t release any of the gasses during this time. The pomegranate soda got really, really fizzy. It should have been in the fridge already which would have prevented that overflow.
1. Pomegranate Soda
2. Lemon Blackberry Soda
Word of warning
I’ve had exploding flip top bottles before when I forgot about a batch of ginger beer that was fermenting and it’s sort of dangerous (especially when not all the glass bottles have detonated). You might want to use recycled juice and soda bottles instead if you are worried.
Where To Find The Book
If you can’t find this book at a local library most major books stores should carry it. You can find the book here (Amazon link).
