Diet Ginger Beer? Does anyone have a recipe for "dietetic" Ginger Beer? Im .. diabetics and Ginger Beer, so I need to have the variety "diet", which is very expensive to buy.
The last experiment and most recently was an almost Food Ginger beer. As it is a fermented ginger beer you can not really cut sugar completely or it will be nothing for the yeast to eat. Bonus yeast eat some sugar which means less consumption of the final drink.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons cardamom seeds
(Or 1 teaspoon seeds)
2 sticks cinnamon
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 v. tsp cloves
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon of licorice root
dash cream of tartar,
cayenne Dash
1 / 4 cup ginger juice or ½ cup of finely chopped ginger
1 / 2 cup sugar
1 gallon of water
yeast
Put everything but the yeast in a saucepan and bring to a boil. I did not add the juice of ginger, but if you do not centrifuge, you'll want to mix the chopped ginger into the pot. Once the water boils I turn down and simmer for a long period. Ok, I totally spaced on the pot and he eventually simmer for about one hour. Let me tell you that was a dark, scented water!
About the time I start the water I usually put a teaspoon or so of sugar into a cup with a 1 / 4 cup warm water and sprinkle yeast over it. Whenever I make ginger beer I use less yeast, presumably in the hope that there is less yeast flavor (but it is growing, does that make sense?). The yeast begins re-establish and eating sugar while we wait for the spices to steep and then to the hot liquid to cool down. Everything else follows the steps of the recipe a few pages back.
It takes a little longer for the bubbles to go, whether the decrease in sugar or yeast, but once it gets going it acts just like any other lot. With the last round I let it ferment in the bottle a little more than twenty-four hours and the bottles were very tight (pressure).
What I ended up with was a well flavored, very bubbly Ginger Beer Lite with just a slight hint of sweetness. I think the seeds of fennel and licorice root to give it a little sweetness and make the taste sweeter than it actually.
Posted on April 3, 2010.