I have been following Greg’s guide and had mixed success so far. I completely failed to get a culture to not turn to mould; I think this has been caused by pasteurization, chlorinated water and supermarket bought start fruit. I’m now using a cultures based on a bottle Greg’s provided me with.

Now that I have a living culture everything is behaving as expected.

Batch 1 (22-11-2008)

Boiled up enough bottled water to dissolve a cup of sugar, juice + zest from large 3 lemons, and approximately 4 thumbs of mashed, finely chopped ginger. Simmered for approximately 15 minutes and then split over 2 soft drink bottles. Added more cold bottled water to the 3/4 mark. Once the temperature was reasonable I added 1/4 of my culture to each bottle.

Results: Bottle 1 was refrigerated on the 25th for a couple of hours; Sweet with an acidic bite and mildly ginger. I would prefer it to be dryer than this bottle.