As part of my ongoing plunge into what was known amongst the self-styled High Magic practitioners from the 18th and 19th Centuries as Low-magic. I’ve been diving deeper into Herbalism, Essential Oils, Contact with Nature, Gardening etc… Part of the reason I retreated to the mountains in the first place.

I’ve been getting a lot better at herbal tea formulations, and have wanted to experiment with various fermentations so here we are.

This is my little cheater gingerbug on day 2. I say cheater, because I live about an hour and 15 minutes away from the closest organic grocery store, and there was no way I was going to make that drive in my farm truck just for some organic ginger. Evidently they irradiate your non-organic ginger and it kills the wild yeast on its skin so it won’t produce a bug, for soda, or ginger beer on it’s own. I’m also out of brewer’s and champagne yeast, so like Erma Bombeck would have done just like her “sourdough starter,” We’re going to kick this off with some good old Red Star Yeast.

Now commercial bread yeast isn’t going to produce the highest alcohol content, and it’s not in symbiosis with the house yeast or bacteria yet, but that’s fine we’ll get there.

I didn’t want to start weak on fermented potions so first I got some flip-top bottles and sanitized them.

Then I set about making a couple different elixirs for trial runs.

The ones marked GHR, well those are Ginger, Hibiscus, Rose Syrup made with lightly brown organic cane sugar very syrupy and cooling overnight in the fridge before adding our bug. The ones behind are a little more potent herbal concoction for stress relief and cortisol reduction. Those are going to finish ferment as sodas, with a fraction of a percent of ABV, while the GHR syrup, we’re going to see if we can get a proper ginger beer beer out of that. Each of these bottles got about 1/4 c. of the strained and stirred bug which smelled nice and yeasty and bubbly.

You can see the balloons as a vapor lock on the Ginger Beer while just tight lids on the medicinal sodas. Just look at the bubbles on top, that was after the first night of “buggin.” These are more active due to the commercial yeast so those sodas are going to need to be burped 2 or 3 times a day to avoid explosion, and will likely be ready to refrigerate after only 2 days. It would take at least 3 days with wild bug. Started to feel a little bad about cheating so hard though and remembered, you can make a pine bug with wild pine needles and sugar, just like a gingerbug. So the first little miss got a sister.

Gingerbug the first is probably going in the fridge tomorrow, so I can slow down the feeding and not overproduce my bug, but also while she waits for little additions from the natural yeast starter from pine. Going to try and strike a nice balance of our local wild yeast and the commercial bread yeast, and over time phase in some champagne yeast as well. Once I hit the right balance, there’s no reason this cannot be used to make a fresh sourdough starter on overnights, which doesn’t require constant babysitting. Not being much of a baker even on my second attempt at sourdough starter I killed an 80 year old heirloom within it’s first month in my care. These two are much less high maintenance.

I’ll let you know how the first trial runs in a update after I drink some.

1st Edit Notes: Mostly pretty tasty. Some of the bottles were too sweet even though I’d cut back the recommended sugar in the recipe by about 1/4c. But the bug was really prone to suicide.The pine bug was great after the first overnight, but spoiled after the second. Luckily, I had already added a little of the good bit, to a third bottle that’s going to be a strains mixture of house blend active yeast. I take the settled yeast out of the bottom of the capped bottles, a little ginger bug, and different commercial yeasts over time and voila. The ginger bug, plus one night pine yeast started producing an alcoholic bug immediately. It is not tolerant of it’s own byproducts however and tends to suffocate or poison itself after 3-4 days. Today a batch of medicinal herbal tea, specially formulated for my various conditions, and balanced for constitutional weaknesses was bottled and started on ferment. Today’s yeasts addition was divided amongst all bottles and a little added to both surviving yeast colonies. We’re starting with the Red Star Champagne Yeast sampler pack, and the first addition is their Premier Rouge. Activated per instructions with filtered well water between 90◦ and 100◦ F and allowed to awaken for 20 minutes I added it to all bottles. Including a large wine bottle with a balloon Vapor Lock. This amount of yeast is supposed to be good for five gallons of wine, and I have probably around 3 Gallons of sugar water so we’ll see what happens next. (Note, the Ginger Hibiscus Rose, have wildly different characters between bottles upon drinking. I just sampled the second bottle, and it clarified the most on it’s own but is very-very sweet with almost no carbonation.)