I'm digging up some old photos to share. I'm partial to ginger beers, and experimented with other flavours available here (in Taiwan). Roselle is our favourite (with lemon, of course), and always carbonated quickly. Turmeric by itself was too much flavour-wise, but half and half with ginger was tasty.
I followed Sandor Katz's approach (start a ginger bug with a cup of water, a tablespoon of sugar, and some grated ginger). It usually takes me a day to get that bubbling away. My recipes are fairly general: ~10-12% sugar solution, with enough roselle (or ginger, or ginger/turmeric, or mint/lemon) to give sufficient flavour. Ginger I usually boil with the water to extract more flavour. Mint and roselle I just steep in the water after bringing it to a boil. I almost always add some lemon, as that always makes it taste better. I rarely measure these amounts (apart from the water & sugar), but tend to go heavy on ginger if I'm using that.
Wait wtf it's this easy to ferment ginger? I need to give this a try asap! Thanks for sharing.
This is the way. And if you don't own The Art of Fermentation, it's highly recommended.
I do indeed have the book! Forgot about the ginger part of it, gotta revisit!