Last Post of the Seven Days of Alton Brown Series! Let’s Celebrate With a Drink: Celery Seed Soda!

Well, this is the last installment of the blog series, Seven Days of Alton Brown. I hope I’ve entertained as I’ve ridden on the coattails of food geek hero (Alton Brown) by exploring some of the applications in his last Good Eats book, Good Eats 3. 

It was a fun project sticking to a strict blogging schedule of a post a day, and I’d love to be able to do this more often. Sadly one of the reasons this project was possible was due to one less person being around the house enabling me to make more use of the kitchen without getting grief, so for the time being, I probably won’t be able to keep up this rigorous schedule (hint hint.)

But enough on such sad stuff. While this is the last post of the Seven Days series, this isn’t a final farewell to Alton Brown. There’s still a ton of things I need to go through.

Seriously, look at all those bookmarks.

I think a fitting application is simple, sweet, and refreshing, just right to cleanse the palate. With just a touch of eccentricity. Celery seed soda it is! As always, this application comes from Alton Brown’s Good Eats 3.
This is very straightforward:

• two cups of sugar
• two tablespoons of celery seed, freshly ground
• one cup of water
• club soda as needed for serving

So, this is celery seed. Small but potent flavor containers.

Ginger ale part 2 - Flavor is good, fizz lacking

After much waiting, prodding and squeezing and a long night of chilling, the results are in.

So much promise! A glorious pale yellow liquid glowing in the late morning sun, it spoke to me of glorious fizzy delights, delicious cocktails and a ginger explosion. 

After cracking it open carefully however, the rather muted pop of gas released from the cap signaled that something had not gone exactly according to plan. Taking a whiff, the smell seemed wonderful. A pure, sweet ginger smell that one rarely gets from a commercial product.

But the pour, and lack of bubbling fizzy popping indicated that resulted, indicated that the carbonation did not  come about as powerfully as I had hoped. Most likely my use of a baker's yeast that was not as fresh as it could be was the leading culprit in the result.

Still, waste not, want not. The taste is great. It is clear, gingery, sweet and smooth. I still think there's good potential as a mixer, or just a simple (perhaps now too simple) summer drink. It's more of a "ginger-ade" than a ginger ale.

Onto new methods before trying this method again with a newer batch of yeast. Next, the ginger syrup method!

Just in Time For Summer Post! Making Ginger Ale part I

After a bit of a hiatus, a return to blogging. Lots of things happened, namely living with a family going on a diet. With such caloric restrictions in place, it's hard to pursue truly grand, rich things as is my inclination.

In the meantime, I've managed to escape a diet restricted eating regime temporarily to hopefully have some good material for a few posts. 

The inspiration for this post has been a fascination with ginger beer, ever since discovering the Moscow Mule from a manga about, well, cocktails. A Moscow Mule is vodka, lemon or lime juice and topped with a healthy pour of ginger beer. It is refreshing and has a good kick from the soda as well as the ginger. A perfect summer drink really! 

After coming upon this recipe for ginger ale through the comments on The Paupered Chef's post on Ginger Beer, an opportunity to pursue something great came about! So here it is. Seems to me the biggest differences between Ginger Beer and Ginger Ale is that ginger beer involves the use of heated water. I'll give that the try next time, but this time, the instructions for a Professor of Biology are good enough for me.

First the setup. Sugar, yeast, ginger, a lemon. The smaller fruit is a key lime, since our lemon's are Meyer's and not as tart, so I wanted to offset that a little.

A cup of sugar and 1/4 tsp of yeast is funneled into a 2 liter plastic bottle. 

Grate fresh ginger until you get 1.5 tablespoons of the wonderfully pungent stuff, and put it into a measuring cup or some other easy to pour container. 

Squeeze a lemon into it! Then pour this into the 2 liter.

And wash everything into the bottle with good fresh water.

Right now I'm keeping it in the bathtub in case of explosions, and will check it until the bottle is hard, a sign that things are at their limit. Once that's done, it's going into the fridge. I'll keep you posted on the results!