I was happy to see that the pic of our homemade fizzy turmeric ginger ale soda got so many attention and comments on social media… so as promised, I’m going to share this lovely recipe with all of you.

If you want to learn more about the benefits of adding turmeric to your daily diet, then also read this article: Top 7 Health Benefits of Turmeric

Turmeric Ginger Ale Soda, The Recipe

First of all start with making a ginger bug or live culture. It is actually super easy. The only thing you’ll need is ginger, water, sugar and some patience. It takes about 4 to 8 days to get it nice and bubbly. This will depend on the climate. If you are feeling adventures you could also add some fresh turmeric root to the ginger bug.

Click here for the instructions

Ingredients

• ½ gallon (or about 2 liters) water
• ⅓ cup fresh turmeric root (or more), grated
• 1 cup sugar (white or raw palm sugar, sweeteners like honey or agave won’t work)
• About 2 cups ginger bug (we used about 400 ml)
• 2 oranges (or grapefruit or pomelo), juice only
• 4 limes (or lemons), juice only
• Pinch of freshly ground black pepper (to improve the bio-availability of turmeric active compound curcumin)

FYI: the culturing process works best with white sugar, we always use raw palm sugar, though, which works fine as well but takes a bit longer. And of course no worries about drinking heaps of sugar, all the sugar will be converted, and your drink will not be a sugar bomb or tasting sweet at all.

Directions

1. First things first, make a healthy, bubbling ginger bug or starter culture. Get the directions here.
2. In a pot, bring water, turmeric, and sugar to a boil. Boil for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
3. Once the mixture has cooled down, add the ginger bug, black pepper, orange juice, and lemon juice. Stir well.
4. Strain the liquid through a fine-mesh sieve to remove turmeric and ginger bug debris.
5. Pour the mixture into soda bottles that have swing tops or tight-fitting screw top lids. Allow the bottles to sit for 2 to 3 days at room temperature. This will depend on the temperature. We live in the tropics so for us it takes only 1 to 2 days to get a nice fizz in the drink.
6. Regularly check the bottles by giving them a squeeze, they will get hard while the fizz or carbonation builds up. If not checking them regularly they can explode and you won’t like the yellow turmeric staining your kitchen walls.
7. Once a day open up the cap and they should make a fizzy sound. When you put the cap back on the carbonation will build up again.
8. Once you get a decent amount of fizz in it, refrigerate to stop the process.
9. Once they are cold, they are ready to drink. You can store them in the fridge for up to a week or even 2 weeks. But our bottles never last longer than a week, though… it’s too delicious to keep them in the fridge.

Once you get used to making your own fizzy drinks, you can start to experiment with adding more turmeric, ginger or use other fresh fruit juices instead. Watermelon is very delicious, just use your blender to make fresh juice out of the fruit and strain to remove seeds.

Berries are very delicious too. And in my last batch, I added some green tea leaves to the boiling water as well. As you see your options of adding flavor are endless.

Happy fermenting 😉