Lacto-Fermented Soda: Commercial and Wild yeast starters

[Tim Hall]

Melanie, you can use your water kefir/tibicos ferment as a secondary fermentation, as you noted. You can make a ginger bug, if you don't mind having a little ginger flavor. You can step your ginger bug up (once active) with just sugar water to dilute the ginger flavor.

You can also use brewer's yeast or even common bread yeast. Using yeast is essentially making a "small beer," meaning it's fermented like beer, but has very low alcohol (practically non-alcoholic).

You can also just leave some of your pre-fermented soda sitting out, stirring it often (cover with cheesecloth between stirrings) and wait for it to start spontaneously fermenting. Then bottle it when you see bubbles starting. This too will be mostly yeasts working, but will also have some Lactobacillus in the mix.

[Tim Hall]

Melanie, if you want to use your water kefir, you could try using just a couple tablespoons of the fresh ferment per bottle/cup of lemonade, and see if that works. I haven't tested this yet, but I suspect it would work well.

[MelanieM]

You can also just leave some of your pre-fermented soda sitting out, stirring it often (cover with cheesecloth between stirrings) and wait for it to start spontaneously fermenting. Then bottle it when you see bubbles starting. This too will be mostly yeasts working, but will also have some Lactobacillus in the mix.

Thanks for the quick reply, Tim. By "pre-fermented soda " do you mean the water kefir? I usually do a secondary fermentation in a Perrier bottle on the counter with some dried/sugared mango. That seems to give it quite a bit of fizz. So I guess I'm already making soda, is that right?

But all those other things you listed (ginger bug, yeast) can be used, too? so you're really using the term "soda" as a catch-all for a fizzy drink that might've come from a few different sources?

The small beer seems daunting from what I've read, but I'll do some more research on a ginger bug, 'cause that sounds appealing.

tnx!