Brad Makes Ginger Beer

Hoopa, hoopa.

Well Halloween's right around the corner.

They're going to do the BA haunted house

and I'll pop out of a frickin'

[roaring]

you know with a cabbage over my face.

You ever see them,

I used to, there's a couple pictures on the internet,

a couple pictures on the internet

where I have a piece of cabbage where I cut eyes out

and put a rubber band around it

and it's the cabbage patch uh.

Hey guy's today on It's Alive

pretty stoked we're going to be going a little ginger beer,

a little fermented beverage, ginger, sugar,

you can juge it up a little bit with some spices

if you want, but super simple, super fun.

Let's make some ginger beer.

[drum rolling]

Who's got it?

You got it.

I got it.

Man if we both were like this tall and walked around.

If you were jacked like that and that tall

you'd be dangerous dude.

You'd be swimming like Michael Phelps and [beep].

Uh, sure I'd also like,

nevermind, I won't even finish that sentence.

Just be crushing the world or what?

[yelling] [heavy metal music]

[laughing]

Whatever I'm crushing the world at this height too.

Yeah, you're damn right you are Andy.

Tall people got bad knees anyway.

[laughing]

[light upbeat music]

Oh anyhoot.

[clanging]

So, real simple, it's just sugar and ginger and water.

So you want to try to get the best ginger you can get.

I got some really nice, fresh young ginger here

from the farmer's market.

There's like almost like no skin.

You know it's just like, look at that,

it's just like juice man.

Oh my god, this is like what you want.

I'm just going to give it a little rinsey-poo,

add it to some sugar and some water

in this here fermentation jar.

Little buh, buh, buh, buh, little water thing there,

two way valve and we're going to let it go.

We're going to let it go for a few days.

We're going to taste it, kinda like kombucha or tepache.

You know it's like, it's not 100%

set to four days and it's done.

You gotta keep an eye on this, it's fermentation.

We're learning this, we know this.

So I'm going to give this a little rinse

and we'll trim it up.

Look at how beautiful that is.

If you can get it fresh like this

I'm thinking up until where it starts to go get green

we're going to nip off, little trimskee.

But these I'm going to keep, there's something there.

I want to do something with these.

Maybe I'll just ferment them for the hell of it.

Look, they're fun, they're pretty.

[sucking]

[lip smacking]

[Matt] Action.

Yes,

hold, trim, little trim.

I'm trimming these off because I don't think

they're going to add any gingery flavor

and it might give it a little bit of a vegetable off flavor.

But we'll leave a little bit.

We'll leave those little pink tips.

Remind me to never say pink tips again please.

[buzzing]

God damn.

[crashing]

Freaking fruit flies.

For the recipe I've been working on,

flip through the old notebooks.

I'm calling for 400 grams of ginger.

Let's see if we get it out of this.

Boy I hope so.

[stammering]

I don't think we're going to get there.

Oh big time, but we're going to have a little extra, huh.

[snorting]

I'm gonna do 500.

You know just because I want to.

Some of that tougher.

Oh, Tommy.

How's it going Tommy?

I feel like I haven't seen you in awhile bud.

I know you're traveling the world right now.

Traveling the world.

We're going to make a little ginger beer.

Ah, you make ginger beer, don't you?

I do.

I'm losing my voice, pardon me.

What you told me too is that it's gotta be

white sugar instead of like the raw.

I don't think it has to, but for certain,

I think it's just the way certain things like um.

[soft jazzy music]

Thanks Tommy, we'll catch you later bud.

[Tommy] Catch you later.

Feed those kids, okay.

[Tommy] All right.

So some of those older gingers are more mature.

Sometimes I'll grate 'em just to get 'em all going,

but you can crush 'em or put 'em in a food processor,

whatever, I just like to get juices out.

So this stuff is so juicy and beautiful

I'm not even going to use the grater.

I'm just going to chop it into little pieces,

give it a little crush.

We're going to do 350 grams of sugar.

All right, tell me when Hunsey.

[Matt] Ah.

[Brad] What do we got?

[Matt] 342.

[Brad] 342, what did I say we were going to do, 350?

[Matt] Oh, 363.

Ah, close enough.

So that's our sugar.

Now, I'm just gonna mix that.

I'm gonna add this to our fermentation tank.

I'm going to give it a little quick rinse real quick.

We want to make sure these jars are always nice and clean.

You just want to ferment what you're fermenting, not,

a bit of a rabbit hole of a comment.

Ah, Kevin!

[Kevin] I got you guys batteries.

Thanks bud.

Yeah, Kev say high to the world.

The world that watches.

Hi world.

[Brad] Yeah.

[Kevin] Bye world.

Bye world, so we're just going

to add the sugar to the jar, like so.

Okay, we'll put that bad boy right there.

Now I'm going to crush up the ginger.

Oh my god, look at that.

Look how juicy that is, look.

Not real woody,

[buzzer sounding]

crazy, hairy, fibery kind of thing.

Ah smells good, you just want to bite it,

just want to rub it on my face.

Oh geez, give it a little crush.

Ooo, little crush.

No, no, no allicin in this one.

Like I said try to get organic.

Some of the other stuff I believe it's irradiated, Chris.

[Chris] Irradiated.

Irradiated, right?

So what they like pass it under a light?

Yeah, UV light.

UV light, right.

To kill like any critters or whatever.

Kill critters.

Remember it wouldn't ferment that time.

Yeah, not as eager to ferment

and sometimes it wouldn't even.

Yeah.

That's right.

[smashing]

Huh? [smashing]

Beautiful.

Now we're going to add, check my notes real quick,

12 cups of water.

You know the best water you can get.

Today it's gonna be New York City tap water,

which is damn fine,

damn fine, but you know if you can get

like a melting glacier, go ahead get some of that

or maybe a nice little bubbling natural spring, sure.

You know hike in, you know spy,

get some great water, do that.

This is eight cups, remember.

So what do we need, we need four more after that.

[jingling]

Get that sugar nice and dissolved.

That's our food for the ginger, for the fermentation.

You know it wouldn't, maybe a little,

couple little tablespoons of maple syrup

if you wanted to counter it out.

That probably would be kind of cool.

It would also add a little bit of color.

You could probably use a little brown sugar

if you wanted it to be darker.

[jingling]

Kinda wish I thought of that before.

If you wanted to add some other

little fun things here you could.

I've thrown a little fresh bay leaf in.

You know I love them bay leaves.

[clanging]

Yeah, now we're just going to let this ferment.

It's Tuesday, I'm thinking Friday

we'll meet up, we'll strain it, we'll bottle it,

let it do its secondary carbonation.

So we'll send this to the fermentation station.

[train whistling]

Yeah.

Come back on Friday bud.

[cymbals crashing]

I think I have a fever.

[Matt] You want to check

your temperature with a thermapen?

Yeah, I don't know how accurate it is though.

Rectal?

Is this a rectal, little pointy.

Nope, perfect.

See ya on Friday man.

All right, quit following me around creep.

We gotta do another one.

We'll do a little wardrobe change

and hop back into this, same raspy voice.

[soft jazzy music]

How long's that thing been on?

You see that little loop I did there?

They teach you that in film school, yeah?

Yeah Brad, that's what they do.

Oh Hunsey what are those?

Are those your driving gloves?

Are those your camera operator,

Hunsey you forgot your camera operating gloves.

Oh my god, what kind of O.J. Simpson [beep] is that?

Oh no there's two of them.

Didn't he only have one?

Oh he had two O.J., right?

They didn't fit.

What the hell's going on anymore.

Let me just make a real quick little drink.

This has nothing to do with the episode,

but it's very important to stay hydrated while you work.

Little lemon, all right get organic if you can.

They put all kinds of stuff on citrus.

If you're going to buck up and spend a little more money

spend it on your citrus, all right.

Those were probably not organic, but I scrubbed 'em well

you know, it makes me feel good.

All right, where did we leave off?

Ginger beer, we used that nice, fresh,

young ginger that we had.

It was the first time I ever tried making ginger beer

with that kind of ginger.

I thought it was going to be kind of super active,

want to take off.

It's been a little slow on the ferment.

It's got some nice bubbles going.

I stirred it around before, I agitated it.

It's still a little sweet.

I'm afraid if we bottle it now

it might over carbonate and just be too fizzy.

It's hard to tell.

You know everything's a bit of an experiment,

but what I'm gonna do is take,

I have 100 grams of just like, I stole it from Gabby,

[siren sounding]

ginger, right out of the walk in.

I peeled it up a little bit, I washed it,

I cut any blemishes off it.

It had a couple little funky spots,

but I've used that before and it fermented like crazy

and this worked out really beautifully.

The one time I try using sexy, young ginger.

[buzzer sounding]

Anyway, I'm gonna add 100 grams of this.

I'm gonna grate it up, keep the sugar level the same

and I'm gonna let it go for, today's Monday,

you know we'll check it on Thursday,

check it on Wednesday, Thursday, hopefully Friday.

[soft jazzy music]

Enough of the chit chat.

I just got a box grater on the coarse one here.

Be careful, knock on wood,

because it's a real knuckle destroyer.

The last little chunk you know save your fingers

and just throw it in there, crush it or something.

There we go.

Oh, as it matures it gets so much more

the fibers in the ginger.

[suspenseful music]

What's going on over there?

All right I need you to pay attention.

I need you to focus now.

I need you now Matt, okay?

I mean I know whatever they're doing is probably really fun,

but so is this, all right, fermentation is fun Hunsey.

Look, look what we're doing you know.

This thing is,

my mother's got a sharper freaking

box grater than this thing.

It's probably 35 years old.

You know and the faucet's dripping.

They leave me with a wet counter,

dull box grinder or box grater whatever they're called.

Oh yeah, this is how you just get a horrible cut.

God I'm so close, please don't cut yourself.

Thing slips knuckle goes right down it.

[buzzing]

You know a burry, dull, scalloped blade

just right to the knuckle bone, oh god.

This just helps open it up a bunch.

So there, there we got it, okay.

I'm gonna add that, hopefully that helps just kickstart

a little bit more fermentation

and we'll let it go for a couple of days.

I'm gonna give it a little stirry-poo.

Let me wash my hands.

Turn the page, wash your hands.

What's that from?

It's from some like uh,

Doug Funny, no the other guy it was like a turtle,

Rocko's Modern Life.

Oh my god, I forgot that existed Rocko's Modern Life.

There was like this turtle and he would go,

and he had glasses.

[laughing]

I forget his name.

Turn the page, turn the page, wash your hands.

Anyway, little stirry-poo.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Don't do that.

[train whistling]

So I'm hoping the new added reinforcements

will help the fermentation

and we'll check it in a few days all right Hunsey.

To the next one.

Hey guys today on It's Alive.

No what are we doing now Hunsey?

We're going to do, oh,

oh you want to talk about fish jerky do you?

So have we addressed Kevin at all yet?

[soft jazzy music]

Oh, oh yeah, look at the air lock bud.

That's not he color of water anymore,

that's the color of ginger beer my friend.

Let me take a seat, we'll talk through it.

So, ideally, oh you getting, look,

those little bubbles in there right, things coming up,

things are fermenting, things are consuming the sugar

and giving off gas.

So what happened, ideally you'd want

a little more head space than what we have now

so that when it ferments sometimes you know

[stammering]

it'll get bubbly and what happened was

it fermented so much it came up into the airlock

and it mixed ginger beer into the water.

Not ideal, you're going to want to clean that

if you're gonna keep fermenting.

We're going to bottle it now.

Let's taste it real quick.

Just gonna borrow that Andy, thanks.

[siren sounding]

Love the color.

[lips smacking]

Oh yeah, now when we bottle it

I like it to have a nice carbonation

so just like in kombucha

[laughing]

or tepache where we do what I call F two R,

secondary fermentation

where we'll bottle it, leave a little space

and that residual sugar will still ferment in here.

[smashing]

The cap will keep the gas in and force it

back into the liquid, carbonation.

I'm predicting we'll do

[whistling]

today's what, Thursday?

Thursday, today's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,

Monday, Monday, Tuesday.

I'll check it Monday, maybe Tuesday I'm thinking.

[soft jazzy music]

So let's get a bottle.

Delany.

[dramatic music]

Hey guys, guys, I promise you, I swear to god.

He's got a camera somewhere.

That's the ongoing theory

and I think Morocco and Andy and I had

that he's got like a camera hidden somewhere,

secret camera, and whenever he sees something

really cool or delicious going on.

Yeah well obviously.

None of that here.

None of that's going on here.

[groaning] [laughing]

Thanks Delany.

[new wave music]

This is very high tech.

It's gonna fall immediately.

[pouring]

Havoom.

I like to use, these are great man.

You know if you see people drinking them,

store bought kombuchas, great fermentation bottles okay.

They already did the hard work.

They got the glass, they got the top, they did it all.

You see people going Oh, I got my little kombucha

I'm going to throw it in the recycling.

Take that one right back, save 'em up

and you've got fermentation grade bottles, okay.

Or you can buy like beer making things

like a little beer making bottle.

That's fun too, you put the little cap on it.

Or like these guys, like the beer ones, you know.

But you can't go getting the ones that are like

oh I'm at a little restaurant in Greenpoint or whatever

and they like Oh you guys want water for the table?

Yeah, and they come and they bring you that little

pop top thing, looks like this you know.

Those will blow up on you.

All right, they are, the word they use 'em

if you go looking it up it's like ornamental.

Now we're just going to pour them in there

and you want to leave a little bit of head space

right here like so.

[glass clinking]

Okay.

Let's see if we can get this thing to pour right.

God I hate 'em.

Tell me when it's getting close, shake the camera.

All right.

You know what can you do with this leftover ginger?

I don't know, I don't know.

I'm literally asking myself that.

Compost it, let's taste it.

[laughing]

I don't know, you'd probably just throw it away.

You know what you could,

probably just throw it away.

Oh god I keep almost knocking these over.

Before you guys got here I knocked one

and broke it all over the freaking floor.

[somber music]

Very disappointing.

Who's a little shy, we got just a little bit.

Oh, yeah, right in the old drink huh.

Not bad, not a bad yield.

What ya drinking today?

Ginger beer, great.

[laughing]

I gotta get a bar one day, right?

I feel like I do this every episode.

I just wanna, yep, no problem Joe.

Whiskey, don't even look up.

[crashing and yelling]

Whatever, just make the ginger beer and shut up Brad.

Again, there's a couple ways to make ginger beer.

I know people like do a bug

where you'll leave some like back slop

or whatever they call it

where you'll have some of that juice,

add to it and just keep the whole cycle going.

I've had great success just doing one offs like this.

All right, but you know let me know in the old comments

if you do it a different way.

I always like learning, right.

I never stop learning.

The tricky part, like most things,

it's easy to make, it's hard to make really well.

So if this doesn't work out, it over goes

or if it's under, if it's too sweet

you just make notes and you kind of tweak and adjust.

That's fermentation, that's cooking.

Oh that's the stuff, very satisfying.

Oh dogs.

Oh dogs.

Whamo, oh I could do that,

I could do that for like an hour.

Capping bottles and then like anything

you'd probably get really bored of it.

Okay, I'm gonna put some fresh labels on 'em.

A little GB, hey GB what's the D?

Nine,

hey Siri?

All right, today's the 26th of September so

you'll probably see this maybe in I don't know,

nine, 10 months.

[laughing]

All right ginger beer we'll do,

what did I say it was the 20 what, second?

I don't pay attention.

I literally just looked at it and didn't even pay attention.

26th, GB, hey GB.

Oh this one's already got it on it.

GB 9/26.

I have the worst handwriting ever.

It looks like a child.

Actually children probably write better.

Not in cursive though.

They don't teach that [beep] anymore, right?

I can still write my name in cursive.

What kind of kids can do that?

[Matt] Ginger beer in cursive.

Boom, there's my signature, read it.

[Matt] He signed something.

First thing ever.

[soft jazzy music]

Give me that back so they don't forge my life.

Buy a house with my signature or something stupid.

Oh you want to see ginger beer in script

for all you younguns out there?

I'll do it.

You might not be able to read it, but let's see,

let's see if I can remember.

Oh capital G! [intense music]

Oh boy, we're screwed.

Is it that?

Yeah, something like,

or is that D, that's D, is that D?

It's close, it's something like that, right?

B, I think B is just like a big B.

[laughing]

[suspenseful music]

Oh wait I wrote my name, [beep].

E, E and then it's just like a little D like that.

Oh wait I put a D, god damn Brad.

All right, hold on let me do beer again

because I'm a little dim.

There it is, boop.

Forget the second one because I messed up.

Ginger beer in script.

So we'll put this back over in the fermentation station

[train whistling]

and we'll let it go.

What'd I say, today's Thursday.

We'll check in on Monday all right.

Hunsey, Monday, maybe Tuesday.

I'll let you know.

To the station bud, all right.

[bell ringing]

Oh check this out, come on.

Look at this experiment.

Rip it off the wall.

It's been there forever.

Since March, April, been there since April.

What this is is just egg yolks.

Egg yolks, sugar and salt.

I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with it,

probably nothing, but it's been sitting at room temp in that

for like, since April.

Look at that though, huh, look at that color.

Maybe we'll get Gabby to try it one day.

[Matt] Chris.

Morocco, oh we'll trick him.

I made this, it's like a clarified pumpkin caramel.

I know you have like a super palate

or whatever you call it, super taster.

You know dip a piece of angel hair in there

and just taste it, let me know what you think.

Maybe it's, ooo we should do that.

No, yeah you can't get sick.

[soft jazzy music]

[Matt] Action.

Cool all right so ginger beer left off

F two as I call secondary fermentation.

We're going to try to achieve some carbonation.

Going into it the whole process with the fresh ginger

I've been a little skeptical.

It wasn't really, I don't know why.

It wasn't eager to ferment.

Nice color, I'll give it a little half turn,

let some of that sediment drop.

Moment of truth, I'm not expecting a big gas off

if any here, but let's see.

I'll hold it up to the mic.

Hopefully it doesn't sphhh in my face.

No.

My theory is the fresh ginger, again this is a theory,

I didn't research this or Google it or nothing.

I'm thinking maybe either there was some kind of.

[soft jazzy music]

So yeah, that's this one.

Beautiful color, right, if that was carbonated

and a little less sweet I'd be so happy with it.

But fool around with it, try that.

That's not a dead thing.

But I'm going to look into the fresh ginger as an issue.

Probably should have done that beforehand,

but you know what where's the fun in that?

I do have a couple bottles I want to grab.

I'll go grab one right now of a different ginger beer

that I used without fresh ginger

and I let it go and it's like bone dry.

Like somewhere between this

and the other one would be perfect.

Let me go get it.

I mean the freaking lid is pushing up.

Okay, oh yeah, well that one worked.

Let's give it a little tasty-poo shall we?

Little yeasty, it doesn't have that punch in the face

ginger aromatic that this one has.

Super dry, ooo a little combination of the both maybe.

Oh my god that's really good.

It tastes like the high end ginger beers that you buy.

You know I guess they figured it out.

[laughing]

Gabby, hey Gabby!

[speaking foreign language]

Come here I want you to try something.

Try this.

Is this ginger beer?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a mixture of two.

Are you sure?

Give it a taste, let me know what you think.

I'm smelling it first.

[Brad] What do you smell?

Don't get mad, but it smells like a cleaner or something,

not in a bad way.

Okay.

Like something refreshing.

That's not a bad thing.

Gabby I'm not upset.

Oooh.

It's good.

Gimme it, let me see it.

Drink on the cause I was sick.

It's very subtle, I want it stronger.

Stronger ginger, like spice?

Yes.

What do you know about young ginger?

It's better, right?

It's the one that is pink.

Yeah, pinkish and yellow whitish.

Young is always better.

Naw. [foghorn sounding]

But it didn't ferment as well.

I mean I will drink this, but I want more ginger.

Try this.

I want more ginger.

Try this, it's not carbonated and sweet.

I think, or maybe the opposite.

Try that, what's the deal?

It has a little effervescence to it.

You're sick?

I was, I'm fine.

I took like a week of antibiotics.

Oh this is the mix too.

And if you're sick this will cure it.

Yeah, this is not.

All right dump that swill and try this.

Shot?

No, it's not very good.

Bone dry remember.

Not good, bone dry.

Sorry, this tastes like soap smells.

Yeah, there's nothing in it.

So this one was the fresh ginger

that didn't really ferment.

Okay.

It's sweet, but if you mix that or put that in--

Ohh the smell is completely different.

The smell is completely different.

It's like--

Fresh, pow, beautiful.

Yeah this is something that you will be like

ohh I'll drink this.

Do you want to sit down?

Let's sit down, come to my bar.

Yeah.

Oh like he's on an apple box.

[laughing]

[whistling]

This I like.

It's sweeter.

If it was carbonated it would be awesome.

Yeah, but it's sweeter also.

Because in the secondary where we produce carbonation

there wasn't enough life force in it to eat the sugars.

This is like a lemon ginger tea.

Yeah, it'd be good for a cocktail.

Right, it's a fun additive.

Boom, you got a little tea, boom.

Oh yeah.

You got a little ice tea, boom.

Little water, boom.

They're tasting moonshine there.

Moonshine and this?

Moonshine and this, boom.

That's it, it cures all your bad shoo shoo, whatever.

All your bad shoo shoos?

Yes, I like this.

What's a bad shoo shoo?

No, bad shoo shoo's something else.

Bad shoo shoo is like.

Bad juju.

Bad energy.

I like this.

Thank you Gabby.

Ginger, we say--

Cheers.

Ginger is jengibre.

Jengibre.

[speaking foreign language]

How do you say ginger beer?

[speaking in foreign language]

Bon Appétit.

Bon Appétit.

Oh by the way, you notice, Hunsey.

[Brad] What, oh nice, Gabriella.

His mom gave me these.

Aw, Mrs. Hunziker, what a gem right?

The circle you see?

Let me see.

Yes.

Stick with us, all right?

Yes.

All right Gabby, thanks for swinging by.

Oh god.

[Emma] Don't die.

Oh god, brad.

[Brad] What are you gonna do?

You ever play dry ice?

[Emma] You want me to kick around a bunch of dry ice?

No you got to pick it up quick

and throw it to the next person.

Not a chance.

You got to catch it, ready Jesse?

Dry ice, dry ice, dry, dry ice.

Emma let it go.

You do hot coals too.

Jesse, coming at ya.

Jesse dry ice, dry ice, dry ice, hoo.

Whoo.

[laughing]

Oh we're making a mess.

Let's just put water on it and make it smoke.

Oh don't go picking that up Emma.

Christ, you can't hold it like that.

People think you touch dry ice and like,

it's not like dipping your hand in liquid CO2

or liquid nitrogen you know,

like you can hold it for a second.

Muaw-ha-ha-ha.

We're going to open up a haunted house,

right here, BA haunted house.

You guys want some?

Emma's going to drop from the ceiling.

She'll be a spider.

What do you want to be?

[Jesse] With fake arms.

[Brad] Yeah, with fake arms.

What do you want to be?

I'll be Spiderman.

You know Spiderman and the spider.

Spiderman's a hero, not a scary guy.

[Emma] I'm not scary.

You're not scary.

All right get out of here.

We're trying to make a television show, cut.

What the hell's going on?

[light upbeat music]