In typical Maryland fashion, the bone-chilling cold ended one day and the very next day we were greeted with scorching sunshine.
The “scorching sunshine” half of the year tends to leave me yearning for a crisp beverage at the end of my walk home. Ginger ale is a favorite and I’ve been flirting with the idea of home-brewing it for some time. I never expected that this urge would intersect with this blog at any point but here we are.
I found this nice little cookbook “Ellicott City Recipes” at Kelmscott Bookshop not too long ago. The book was put together by a “Pearl J. Rogers” in 1975 to celebrate the bicentennial and raise money for historic preservation.
Founded in 1772 as a mill town, Ellicott City is rich in history, as a walk down its main street – Main Street – attests. The town has survived many dramatic floods of the river its mills relied on, the Patapsco. The Patapsco Valley was once dotted with these mills and the homes and churches of the people who worked in them. Rivers tend to swallow up history, and all that remains of much of the industry is bricks and foundations along the trails in Patapsco Valley State Park.
According to Pearl S. Rogers, “pioneer settlers brought with them many food traditions which reflect their various national origins: German, English, Scotch and others. Their foods mirrored the people themselves – honest, stable, imaginative and delightful. Necessity spawned the unique cuisine, which is still very much a part of the rich way of life in Howard County.”
I’m not entirely sure of the origins of the recipes in “Ellicott City Recipes,” but the author has renamed many of them for streets and towns in Howard County as she meticulously hand-transcribed the recipes into the cookbook.
The book includes many recipes for wine, one shrub, and the most alcoholic eggnog in my Maryland collection thus far.
The carbonation in this lemon soda comes from yeast, giving it a different character from the large bubbles we’ve come to expect in commercial sodas.
Apparently this method for soda-making figures into a centuries-long quest for carbonated beverages – who knew? In 1767, chemist Joseph Priestley discovered that water could be carbonated by placing it over a fermenting mash. This became the basis of his work culminating in the book “Impregnating Water With Fixed Air” in 1772 – the year Ellicott City was founded, coincidentally.
Carbonated beverages have played many roles from questionable “health tonic” to a convenient excuse to drink alcohol on Sunday, but for the most part today we just consider them refreshing. I would certainly like to believe in the healing powers of ginger ale…
For authenticity’s sake I gathered spring water from a spring in the Patapsco Valley near Henryton.
Happily this recipe called for boiling this water, which has been known to contain bacteria. Nonetheless I did heed the raw egg white involved in the recipe. I suspect this is for a purifying effect although it could also be for the sake of sugars. Since “New Country Lemon Soda” is sweetened after fermenting, the only other sugar for the yeast is in the lemons.
I like my ginger ale a little more ginger-y, but this is “lemon soda” not ginger ale so I can’t complain. It would be perfect in a shandy if you are into that kind of thing. This recipe may just become the basis for my summer of ginger ale.
The kind people at Nepenthe advised me on yeast and steered me towards a champagne or cuvée yeast. Since the original recipe specified a liquid volume of yeast I had to estimate how much to use. Maybe next time I’d try it with one package.
I added some simple syrup after straining out the solids. In theory this creates a feast for yeast (that rhymes). With or without this step it is wise not to bottle this beverage in any container that could shatter.
I made sure to sterilize everything first, but there’s no accounting for that raw egg. I drank some of the soda a good while before letting anyone else taste it, just in case. I survived without incident.
Recipe:
- 1 gallon spring water
- 1 peeled, sliced lemon
- .5 oz ginger
- .5 oz cream of tartar
- pinch grated nutmeg
- 1 beaten egg whites
- 2 envelopes yeast
- sugar to taste
- mint leaves, chopped and mashed (optional)
Boil together spring water, lemon, ginger, cream of tartar, nutmeg. Cool and add egg white and yeast which has been dissolved into a small amount of warm water. Let this ferment 12 Hrs. Strain and bottle. Sweeten to taste and let sit for a day or two. Serve over chopped and mashed mint leaves and stalks if desired.
Recipe adapted from “Ellicott City Recipes”
