I highly recommend trying to make some homemade ginger beer. It’s super easy, takes just a few days to ferment, lots of recipes online. Much better than the stuff in the store which is filled with added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Plus you can brew with extra ginger if you like it strong. Whatever you do, don’t ferment it in glass bottles. Use 2 liter plastic soda bottles.
most of the time folks are fermenting ginger beer, it's just to carbonate it. ginger beer isn't usually fermented to produce alcohol like a normal beer.
since there is so much sugar available in ginger beer, fermenting/carbonating it in sealed glass bottles will result in bottle bombs.
skip the fermentation completely: 2 liter plastic soda bottles are great for force-carbonating with a co2 tank. if you really don't like plastic you could find a 1 gallon stainless steel keg and carbonate (and serve) from that.
Probably pointing at exploding bottles; I've made probably 40 batches of ginger beer and when I would 'burp' the bottles I never had an issue. Decided once to try out not doing so and had six hours of clean up. But otherwise you're probably fine. Just let out carbonation morning and night, it takes a minute or so.
You can definitely make ginger beer with wild yeast (fresh ginger root conveniently comes with lots of wild yeasts) and make delicious drinks. There are lots of recipes.
I also recommend, if anyone is interested, investigating “ginger beer plant” (GBP), which is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts (SCOBY) such as that used to brew kombucha and kefir. It was once common in Britain, but almost went extinct. Some was saved by a German culture bank (DSMZ), and now you can buy some online! Makes a different, and I think delicious, drink compared to the “ginger bug” method!
You don't have to ferment it to get a rich flavor. You just have to use fresh ginger instead of dried or powdered. We make it with Fresh Ginger, Lemon juice, orange juice, cane sugar and molasses. Then force carb.
