We were just talking at table about making homemade ginger ale and root beer. I’ll pass your message along to my son. I might try it too. Thank you for post in this recipe.

Thanks John. I had no idea it was made this way!

It's really easy and has a lot less sugar than a store-bought soda, plus lots of great nutrition from the citrus and the ginger. I tried juicing two different oranges to blend with the ginger ale, one batch of oranges I have no idea what is the variety from a neighbor's tree, and some Satsuma oranges from another neighbor's tree. The unknown oranges juiced up nice and the juice tasted great the day I juiced them but it was more bitter than sweet the second day and it followed the same way in the ginger ale. The Satusumas won hands down and makes a wonderful blend.

I want to try this. I was at a nursery yesterday that actually had a valencia orange tree, but I resisted! I am so glad you posted this...I now have another experiment for my daughter and I :)

Hope it works for you. Here are a few of my observations and notes.

I get some variation in the strength of the ginger flavor. I can grow my own here but this year was sooooo wet that I think the ginger is less strong. Store bought ginger is probably more uniform. You may want to try some different sweeteners but remember this is not just to sweeten the lemon juice but it's also food for the yeast. I don't know if yeast will do equally well on sugar substitutes like stevia. I like the light brown Zulka granulated sugar. I tried honey, thinking it would go great with the ginger and lemon flavors but I wasn't in love with the final flavor. I plan to try honey again, possibly as a blend. The original recipe called for filtered water (to remove the chlorine so as not to kill the yeast) but that recipe also only boiled a portion of the water and added the rest of the water after the cook period. I prefer to boil the entire water quantity since I think it helps to extract the most flavor from the ginger. Finally, remember to add the lemon juice AFTER the mixture has cooled down to near room temp. This helps keep the lemony flavor fresh and bright! Please share your improvements and challenges/solutions if you have any.

Thanks for the extra info John. I’ve resorted lately to just using regular sugar in small amounts instead of swerve so that is what I would use. I’m weaning it out of my coffee in the mornings sloooowly ;)

We would call this “ginger beer” rather than “ginger ale” here. It’s nice, but not the same. DH prefers ginger beer, I prefer ginger ale.

collenoz, wouldn't it have to ferment muuuuuch longer to get a "ginger beer" moniker? Technically, it does have some alcohol in it since there is enough fermentation to develop carbon dioxide but not anywhere close to a beer I would propose (not having measured it).

Fill me in on how you would make "ginger ale". Would you carbonate it with a Sodastream type setup?