It’s blueberry season here in Florida and that means blueberry recipes are also in season. With so many plump blueberries available we’re making a delicious fermented blueberry soda using a ginger bug! We’re also adding a twist with a sour ingredient by making blueberry rhubarb soda. Yum!
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Lacto Fermented Blueberry Soda With Rhubarb
Homemade blueberry soda has a delicious, smooth taste that’s perfect as it is, but to make the flavor even more interesting, we amped up the sour level by adding rhubarb. You can alternatively add lemon or lime instead and feel free to do that if that’s all you have, but if you have rhubarb available, give your taste buds a treat.
Rhubarb is famous for its tartness. Surely you’ve heard of strawberry rhubarb pie? It’s probably the most well-known of rhubarb recipes, but it also pairs well with many other sweet fruits. After this recipe, we love it with blueberry!
If you’ve never tried it, buy a couple stalks if you see it at the store and try an experiment. Slice off a few thin pieces, dip it in sugar, and give it a chew. You’ll see what we mean. Sweet in sour heaven!
Let’s get into our recipe.
Fermented Blueberry Rhubarb Soda Using Ginger Bug Recipe
Makes 1/2 gallon (to make 1 gallon, just double the recipe)
If you want a smooth, sweet and slightly tangy drink to impress your friends, seriously try this recipe. Serving it over ice froths the bubbles up into a fizzy blueberry drink that’s beyond compare. This is one of our favorite fermented drinks using a ginger bug.
Equipment:
- 1/2 gallon jar <– we love these mason jars
- Mason jar funnel
- Fermentation lid <– These silicone lids work well for us
- (3) 16 oz. glass flip-top beer bottles <– We use these in every soda recipe
- (1) 16 oz. heavy duty plastic bottle (such as Perrier or a soda bottle)
Ingredients:
- 3 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
- 2 cup fresh rhubarb, diced
- 1 1/4 cup sugar (you can use less, we like it slightly sweet over ice)
- < 1.5 liters non-chlorinated water (use a bit less since blueberries are full of juice)
- 1/2 cup ginger bug starter <— don’t be afraid, it’s super easy to make
Wash fresh blueberries or skip if using frozen. Add to cooking pot.
Wash and slice your rhubarb stalk into small pieces. It doesn’t matter how thick since they’ll soften when cooked. Add to pot.
Add sugar and non-chlorinated water to pot and bring to a boil. Simmer on medium for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat and mash with a potato masher, fork, or lightly blend with an immersion blender.
Cool completely to room temperature! We put ice and water in a larger pot or sink and add our hot pot to cool it down rapidly while stirring. Be careful not to get any chlorinated tap water in the pot.
Strain blueberry rhubarb juice through a strainer into your 1/2 gallon jar. Keep what’s left after straining. It makes a great blueberry rhubarb compote to add on top of toast. ??
Add ginger bug to jar once blueberry soda syrup has cool completely. This is important so you don’t kill the active ginger bug starter!
Add more non-chlorinated water up to target volume of 1/2 gallon or 2 quarts (if needed). We started with less water to avoid overflow since fresh blueberries already hold a lot of water.
Ferment at room temperature for 3-5 days or to taste. 3 days works best for us with the temperature of our house. The trick is to wait until fermentation has calmed down before moving onto bottling. Homemade blueberry soda can be VERY active so watch out for filling the jar too high!
Once primary fermentation is done and the blueberry rhubarb soda has settled down, give it a taste. If you like the flavor, it’s ready to drink, but we like moving on to the bottling stage to give it some carbonation.
We like bottling for 1-2 days. This brings our total fermentation time 5 days.
Warning! Be very careful when bottling fruit sodas! They can over-carbonate and explode if you’re not careful. As a safety precaution, we like to use a plastic tester bottle to get an idea of how carbonated our bottles have become. Plastic #1 bottles are already made for soda which is what we like to use.
Homemade Blueberry Rhubarb Soda – What to Expect During Fermentation
Fruit sodas such as the one we’re making here can ferment very rapidly. After only 12 hours of fermentation, our 1/2 gallon jar already started getting bubbles, which meant the ginger bug was super active. By 24 hours we had a good 1-2 inches of foam on the top. Crazy!
At this point the blueberry rhubarb soda was so active that it clogged our fermentation lid and blew the top right off! So to be on the safe side, we made sure to put the lid on very loosely. Also since we had filled the jar a little too high with liquid, the foam kept building and pushing the lid right off the jar.
Note for next time, we’ll leave a lot more headroom and start with less liquid.
By day 3 the fermented blueberry soda calmed down and we were getting a steady stream of tiny champagne-like bubbles to the top. We bottled and after 48 hours, our blueberry brew was ready to drink.
Homemade Blueberry Soda – with Sour Rhubarb!
Making homemade soda using a ginger bug is the easiest and most reliable way to get an active and fizzy soda from fruits such as blueberries. Add in rhubarb and you’ll be delighted with the deliciously tart flavor that makes this such a good drink.
Sarah has loved drinking this dark purple blueberry soda in a wine glass to imitate red wine and I love it in a glass over ice. It’s so amazing and refreshing! We hope you try it and let us know how yours is going!
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Hi,
Does this have to be cooked, or would it work to just put the blueberries, rhubarb, etc in the jug with the ginger bug and let it start fermenting right away. That way the bacteria is still on the blueberries, etc.?
Thanks
Hello Deb, thanks for the question! Cooking makes sure we get all of the juice and flavor out of our blueberries and rhubarb. It also sterilizes the whole batch so that we don’t get any rogue bacteria that might spoil the batch. But it’s possible that you could try mashing or blending the entire batch and sieving it all through some fine mesh to get only the juice. You could then add a starter culture to it and see if it works. It might be extremely active so you’ll have to watch it and take care if you try bottling it. Let us know how it goes! 🙂
Hello,
I love blueberries. I have frozen blueberries always available. I have wanted to try substituting date paste for the cane sugar to see how it works. Also I couldn’t find any rhubarb, but I had grapes growing in the yard that are sour wine grapes. I thought I would try them instead of rhubarb with the blueberries. I juiced the grapes. I prepared a gallon batch cooking the blueberries and the date paste in water and adding the fresh grape juice directly into the ferment vessel with the ginger bug on Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning there was a 1/4 inch layer of bubbles at the top. Sunday evening there were champagne bubbles steadily rising throughout the gallon jug. This morning, Monday 36 hours into the ferment, there is an inch of foam at the top and wild bubbling of tiny champagne size bubbles. I tasted it just now and it tastes like both blueberry and grape, mildly tart and not too sweet. The flavor on Sunday at the 24 hour mark was sweeter but the blueberry and grape flavors were not as detectable. I will see where it is tomorrow and likely bottle it then as you suggested. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I am concerned that it not get to a sour that overpowers the blueberry and grape flavors.
Thank you again for the wonderful recipe and your creative play with making carbonated drinks. It has been such a blessing during the isolation of the pandemic.
Terry
Wow Terry that sounds really good! I bet blueberry grape soda made a very tasty combination. Since grapes have a lot of juice also, that probably turned out nicely. Let us know how it went and if you liked the flavor!
Did you ever try making with date paste? I was just thinking of trying this yesterday!
Not yet but I bet that would be good! Dates are super high in sugar so it would most likely work. It’s possible the ferment would be slower than straight sugar but it would be a great experiment! Let us know how it goes if you do!