It's been awhile

Wow, it's been over a year since I last blogged. Life got busy, priorities shifted and time flew by.

A short recap of the past year would tell you that we sold our house in July, I'm still doing "no poo", I stopped brewing kombucha for a bit and just recently started back up again, we're waiting on the seller's bank approval for a short sale we put an offer on and I just recently started making homemade soda. And that brings us to today's post....

Homemade soda. In my research of fermented drinks, like kombucha, I came across different websites talking about homemade soda. Since we started school back up for the year, I've made a new commitment to make it to the gym at least 4x a week. I've got to get in shape, lose some weight and be healthier. Part of that was replacing Mountain Dew with kombucha, But reading about homemade soda got me curious about other alternatives. At best, I can get two of my kids to drink kombucha, but the other two refuse. Maybe I'd have better luck with fermented soda? I thought it was worth a try.

Here's the basic scientific basis for fermented soda. Start with a "ginger bug", which is nothing more than grated ginger, sugar and water. The ginger has natural bacteria and yeast which feeds on the sugar and starts a fermentation. After a few days of feeding the bug, it starts to bubble and is ready.

My very own ginger bug

Add some of this ginger bug to any juice, I used grape for my first try, cover with a cloth and stir twice a day for three days. During this time, the yeast starts feeding on the sugar in the juice and ferments the juice. This also lowers the sugar content. On the third day, it's ready to be bottle air-tight so that the yeast will continue producing carbon dioxide, which carbonates the soda. This brings us to last week. Wednesday was day three for my grape soda and I was uber excited to bottle it! When I checked it in the morning, it already had a thin layer of foam on the surface. This, combined with the four inches of foam that developed when I stirred it, should have been my first clue. But I was following all the instructions I had read: bottle air-tight for no more than 24 hours, then refrigerate. I poured the soda into my empty juice bottle making sure to leave enough head space and placed it in a stockpot on the kitchen floor. You know, so the pot could catch any soda that might accidentally escape. I also had a little left that wouldn't fit so I put that in a smaller, single-serving sized bottle.

Fermenting soda aka "Moses"

Layer of foam

Foam after stirring

Bottled and ready to carbonate

After an hour or so, the bottle had expanded and was quite tight. That should have been my second clue. I released some of the gas, but left it in a stock pot on the kitchen floor. It hadn't been nearly 24 hours yet, right? Well, as I'm in the bathroom that night getting ready for church and Tim is in the kitchen starting dinner, I hear what is best described as a gunshot. Followed quickly by Tim shouting something that sounds like "what in the world!?!?" Not good. Not good. at. all. I quickly run to the kitchen and find this:

Oh yes, this happened

24 hours, you say? Tell that to my kitchen which was now covered in grape soda. Or to my loving husband who was almost impaled by a flying juice bottle. According to him, the bottle flew up, hit the ceiling and then landed. Four feet from it's original spot in the stockpot. Let's just say the man was not well pleased. Did I mention this happened about 45 minutes before we should be walking out the door for church? Or that dinner hadn't been made. So we enlisted the help of our boys in the dinner making and we set about to clean. The walls. The floor. The ceiling. Sticky, dripping, grape soda. Did I mention earlier we sold our house and are living in a rental? Yes, sticky grape soda all over the rental kitchen.

Yep, that's the ceiling

And floor

But it was delish!

Grape soda, anyone?