A golden state

It's summer in Sacramento again, and for me that means three things: marathons of old Simpsons episodes, praying for death on account of the heat and ginger beer.

For those of you who are soft drink neophytes, ginger beer is a precursor to ginger ale, which has far more of the spicy rhizome's flavor and in some cases a small amount of alcohol content. Making it during summer months makes sense because heat speeds up the fermentation process (yeast, like lizards and ice cream men, thrives in heat).

My process all started out as a failed attempt at making lager. Homebrewed fare is far more lab experiment than cooking. This will become evident if, like me, you do a shoddy job cleaning old Grolsch bottles for your cider to go in, only to come back a week later and smell something so rotten it could easily be weaponized by the military industrial complex. Or worse: you run into a multicolored fuzz on top of your wort which might be a new, stronger strain of the toxic mold Stachybotrys.

Brewing beer takes dedication and far more elbow grease than I will ever be able to dispense. For the weaker among us, there's the far less laborious ginger beer.

Still, there's no getting around cleaning glass bottles and everything that will touch the soon-to-be beer. Lots of warm, soapy water and bleach (more than the Playboy Mansion probably goes through in a month) sanitize fancy flip-top bottles that used to house Lorina French Lemonade.

Next, the syrup that will flavor the beer is made with tons of grated ginger, lime juice and zest, and if I have it, an old vanilla bean. Once it's boiled, it's left to steep overnight.

The next morning, the golden syrup is strained through cheesecloth, an item you're not allowed to own unless you’re over 60, but I have a few back channels.

Filtered water dilutes the syrup creating a flat beverage which would be suitable over ice if you're impatient. A small amount of champagne yeast is awakened with a little warm water and added to the batch, which is carefully bottled. Carefully in theory anyway; I've never been able to do accomplish this task without making a few ginger-flavored puddles all over the kitchen floor, but the mess will be worth it in a few days.

The wait is the most difficult part of the process. For two to three days, you'll have to suffer through lesser beverages, probably full of caramel color and sodium benzoate, while the yeast convert some of the sugar in the drink into tasty bubbles.

Once they're done, the drinks are allowed to settle in the fridge until chilled. The first bottle guzzled down, I present my craft toward the heavens and cry, “I made this with my hands!” There's plenty of pride to be had when you've spent a week toiling over a simple drink.

My family still prefers Canada Dry.