How do you grow yeast? 
Like, to keep up a steady supply not within a food product.
@pamela sourdough starter is basically just this, just slightly funkier yeasts than you’d get in a supermarket packet and the answer there is just give it fresh flour on the reg?
I assume the mass produced version is much more sterile and temperature controlled and probably maybe using some sort of engineered carb but fundamentally not that different
@Satsuma they're gluten-free so I'm really curious what they're fed. I can't find a lot of information about things like how you'd use your homemade yeast starters to do things like soda or beer instead
@Satsuma rather, how people would have done it on the frontier, for example. Yeast in cake form can't be that complicated but I don't think it's actually that old, either.
@pamela i think most people who do sodas use cultures that eat white sugar—I have made self-carbonized kombucha before, which eats tea and sugar for example. Which is I guess one way of solving the problem of how to get the yeast into your soda without putting a ton of flour in also I guess?
Old school beer brewing I believe you reserved some of the mash to use as a starter for the next batch. Wine and apple cider can both be done 100% with the yeast that lives on the skins of the fruits, so technically not required to grow a separate yeast supply.
@Satsuma thanks! I wonder if an apple would like to try starting some ginger ale for me? ill see what sorts of critters I have access to
@pamela yeah if you can get ahold of a farm apple (something that hasn’t been washed in chemicals to help it store better) i bet it’d also have a bunch of tasty yeasts that would be happy to be fed ginger ale ingredients! i have helped make cider a few times and it was always pretty fun and straightforward (and tasty once it was done!)
there should be cider guides on the internet you can refer to for estimates on how fast it’ll eat the sugar and what percentage gets turned into alcohol so you can estimate when to put the yeast to sleep (I am assuming you want your ginger ale fairly weak in that regard?)
@pamela if you’re struggling to get ahold of apples or worried about the alcohol content i do also think you could probably make a pretty solid ginger ale starter out of a bottle of grocery store kombucha — transitioning from sugar + tea to sugar + ginger seems pretty straightforward