I'm up to eight pounds of home-grown forest shrooms this summer - most of it distributed to my neighbors who are my CSA membership for my EcoEcho CSA forest shroom farm. I started growing Winecap shrooms on woodchips - we have a huge mountain of city woodchips up the hill. People prefer to get the fancy mountains of woodchips delivered by the local tree cutting businesses or by the local garden stores....so luckily the neighbor loans us his trailer every spring. This spring is loaded up four trailer loads of woodchips to stash in the forest edge - and I inoculated each 5 foot by 5 foot by four inch wood chip bed in the forest with Winecap mycelium.
Last Fall I brought back Winecap mycelium from my land up north - and sure enough it is producing Winecap mushrooms here just outside my door or at my neighbors hill.
The big Oak tree I inoculated in the forest here has been producing Shiitake shrooms very abundantly this year - and also the past three years!! Wow. Nature is being very generous.
I bought this imported Ginger Beer once - or twice. It tastes very scrumptious but I drank it straight. It is too expensive to drink straight! It's meant to be used for mixing cocktails or something. So I'm making my own homebrew Ginger Beer - I start with a youtube recipe.
You make the Ginger Bug (not sure why it's not called a Wort?) - so two cups of water (filtered as all our water is). Two tablespoons of ginger powder organic and two tablespoons of sugar. You mix and cover with muslin cloth. You leave for 24 hours in a warm spot - preferably closer to 80 and out of UV light. You repeat the above process three more times!!
I did that and then on Wednesday, I then took two cups of sugar and one fourth cup of ginger powder - mixed and heated to a boil in eight cups of filtered water. Then I poured the hot mix into four jars with lids. Then I waited with a temperature gauge for the water temp to cool down to the 80s from 112 F. This took several hours to accomplish!
Then I took the Ginger Bug that I had added four days of sugar-ginger to - so it had 8 tablespoons of ginger and 8 tablespoons of sugar - and it was fizzy and bubbly and thick with a slime that must be yeast - I used a metal strainer to pour it into the four jars of ginger-sugar recently boiled. I mixed it all together and covered the jars. Sure enough those jars also got fizzy by the end of the day so I opened the jars and stirred to release the built up CO2 emitted by the yeast eating the sugar.
Will my ginger beer just taste like yeast?
The yeasts collect at the bottom of the vessel - the less of it that enters the bottle, the less yeasty your Ginger Beer.
So I need to make sure not to stir it on the final day when I harvest the ginger beer into a big bottle I have - I'll pour it all into one big bottle.
Authentic Ginger Beer has a much stronger ginger flavor, is less sweet, and contains probiotic cultures due to fermentation.
What cultures do I need for Ginger Beer? What is a Ginger Bug?
A Ginger
Bug is the culture added to make Ginger Beer. Ginger provides an
excellent environment for natural yeasts. Therefore, it is crucial to
use organic ginger exclusively for making Ginger Beer, as it naturally
introduces fermentation. The natural yeasts in the ginger initiate the
fermentation process almost independently.
Usually I just drink Ginger straight as powder in water or add ginger to everything else I drink that has sugar in it. We never use that big bag of sugar in the cupboard - it's sat unused for eight years. I hopefully we'll get some fermented probiotics along with some buzzy alcohol.
Harvesting
After about 5-10 days, your drink should have significantly lost sugar.
Instead, carbonation will have formed in the jar. If your drink tastes
slightly sweeter than the desired end product, it's time to harvest.
Remove all ginger pieces using a sieve. Adjust the taste of your ginger
beer with lemon if needed, and transfer it to bottles.
"Ginger beer loves lemon!!
Let the
Ginger Beer continue to ferment at room temperature for about 2 more
days. Bubbles should rise in the bottle with gentle movement. Now, your
drink is ready and should be refrigerated.
https://en.augora.at/ginger-beer
So they add lemon juice after they filter it for the final harvest and then filter it a 2nd time for the final bottling after the yeast settles in the frig overnight.
When using commercial yeast I have insane carbonation and moderate trub
after 2 days in bottle. Cold crashing after primary fermentation then
bottling for carbonation seems to work better. But that is for hard
ginger beer at 6 to 7 pct abv.
Maintaining consistent, cool fermentation temperatures (66-72°F for most ales) is crucial. Higher temperatures can lead to the production of more esters, contributing to off-flavors
There are tens of thousands of different strains of yeast. Each strain
has different properties. Some will die in 1% alcohol, others can live
up to 20%+. In the brewing industry the strains generally can stand
from 6-12% and in the wine industry up to 17%. While there are some
yeast that do produce "killer toxins", they are meant for other yeast,
not for people and are not produced in great enough quantities to do any
real harm to you (at least not in the beverage industry. you would
have to try VERY hard to accumulate enough killer toxins to make
yourself even slightly sick). The yeast you're using will die upon
contact with your stomach acid. They thrive at probably a pH of 3.7
while your stomach is around 2. I don't know how much information you
care to hear so I guess the shorter answer would have been yes. It is
safe to drink your ginger ale. Though if you do want pages and pages of
yeast information I could provide you with that as well :)