Re: ginger beer - how much sugar?

[Guest guest]

Sol, there are tons of variables, but after 7 to 10 days I'd bet that

over half the sugar is gone. I made ginger beer a few months ago

according to Katz's recipe and it turned out very well. It was

delicious. I think I started drinking it after two weeks and it had

just a very light sweet flavor. Perfect for me since I don't like

oversweet things. I bottled the rest of the carboy and put the bottles

in the fridge. By the time they'd been sitting in the fridge for a

couple of months there was definitley not a saccharide left in the

solution! It was like drinking dry champagne. Also delicious, but

since it was so fizzy and dry it was no longer refreshing after a long

bike ride. Better as an aperitif or cordial at that point. I need to

make another batch....

So if you're really wanting a low- or no-sugar ginger beer, just keep

tasting it as it goes and give it time. At room temp 2-3 weeks would

probably be plenty to eliminate all sugar. Good luck.

Tom

> Hi,

>

> I was looking through my copy of Sandor Katz's _Wild Fermentation_ and

> got interested in making ginger beer (actually a soft drink) until I

> did the arithmetic on how much sugar he's telling you to put in. Per

> gallon of ginger beer he's got you putting in 2 cups of sugar. If my

> arithmetic is correct, that's 1548 calories worth of sugar in 128

> ounces of water. That's just about the same amount of sugar as in a

> can of coke.

>

> Can someone tell me how much of the sugar is consumed by the wild

> yeast during a couple of weeks of fermentation? Is this not as bad as

> it seems?

>

> Thanks,

> Sol

[Guest guest]

Sol-

>Can someone tell me how much of the sugar is consumed by the wild

>yeast during a couple of weeks of fermentation? Is this not as bad as

>it seems?

It's not as bad as a Coke, because a Coke has essentially no nutritive

value at all whereas ginger beer is going to have virtues from ginger and

from the fermentation. However, unless you ferment it long enough to turn

a lot of the sugar into CO2 and alcohol, it's not really going to eliminate

a meaningful amount of sugar. Some will be broken down into lactic acid,

but the liver turns that right back into glucose, which is why diabetics

have to take just as much insulin for yoghurt (even fully-fermented 24-hour

yoghurt) as they do for the milk that was used to make the yoghurt. So I'd

be really leery of the ginger beer.

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[Guest guest]

Tom-

>Sol, there are tons of variables, but after 7 to 10 days I'd bet that

>over half the sugar is gone.

Regrettably, " gone " doesn't necessarily mean gone. In shorter

fermentations, lactic acid is the main product of sugar metabolism, and

lactic acid is in many ways the functional equivalent of sugar. In really

longer fermentations, it's possible to effectively remove a lot of the

sugar, but then you wind up with an alcoholic drink.

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[Guest guest]

:

> Regrettably, " gone " doesn't necessarily mean gone. In shorter

> fermentations, lactic acid is the main product of sugar metabolism, and

> lactic acid is in many ways the functional equivalent of sugar. In

really

> longer fermentations, it's possible to effectively remove a lot of the

> sugar, but then you wind up with an alcoholic drink.

>

>

>

>

> -

I was not aware that lactic acid functions similarly [grammar?] to

sugar. I didn't even know that the liver converts lactic acid to

glucose. I'm taking a chemistry course and a nutrition course right now

so I suppose I'll learn that soon.

Surely, for a non-diabetic, there is no blood-glucose spike and crash

from consuming lactic acid, is there? I can tell the difference between

drinking a tall glass of fresh milk (oof) and a tall glass of sour milk

(harder to get down but I don't feel that my GI tract has to work as

hard without all the lactose). I suppose that's another variable

though, lactose being harder to digest than other sugars. But then

again, I think the same was true for my ginger beer, where the sugar was

sucrose.

Tom

[Guest guest]

Tom-

>Surely, for a non-diabetic, there is no blood-glucose spike and crash

>from consuming lactic acid, is there?

There might not even be a blood sugar _spike_, per se, for a diabetic, but

the glycemic load is the same, and thus the amount of insulin taken is the

same.

> I can tell the difference between

>drinking a tall glass of fresh milk (oof) and a tall glass of sour milk

>(harder to get down but I don't feel that my GI tract has to work as

>hard without all the lactose). I suppose that's another variable

>though, lactose being harder to digest than other sugars. But then

>again, I think the same was true for my ginger beer, where the sugar was

>sucrose.

If you produce enough lactase by yourself, lactose will be relatively

peaky, because it'll break down pretty quickly. Sucrose will also break

down pretty quickly, one way or the other. In both cases, half the

disaccharide is glucose; in the case of lactose, the other half is

galactose and in the case of sucrose the other half is fructose, and both

of those have to go to the liver to be converted to glucose, meaning both

disaccharides are less peaky than pure glucose (AKA dextrose).

But I wasn't really talking about the peakiness (i.e. glycemic index) of

ginger beer, but about the danger of consuming so much sugar (i.e. such a

large glycemic load) even in a modified form. I just don't think it's a

good idea.

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