Webgiant:
How about making a syrup that you can add to soda water?
While I have been doing that very thing, I'd still like to work out how to make very low-sugar yeast-carbonated soda pop. Here's the situation:
My wife and I like to go backpacking a few times every year, which to be quite clear about this, means carrying everything in (and out) on your back. We've found a beautiful campsite out in the middle of the wilderness, with a fresh clear stream (for water), that is a little more than five miles from any aspect of civilization. The stream is quite cold and chills waterproofed stuff rather well, especially under all the trees.
One thing we've always wanted out there is carbonated drinks. "Make your own ginger ale" would work great for that, since you carry in an empty 2-liter bottle and some light ingredients and yeast, and the water (and its heaviness) is waiting for you at the campsite. We stay a week so there is plenty of time to make homemade ginger ale. Where it doesn't work is the heavy sugar syrups used in all the recipes for the yeast-based method of carbonation, which send diabetics into sugar shock (did I mention we're five miles
on foot from civilization and all its helpful Emergency Rooms?).
I don't want to have to carry in,
on foot, two heavy 2-liter bottles of club soda (4.4 pounds each at the start, but feels like 100lbs after walking a mile...), especially as pack space is limited. If I could find out the bare minimum amount of sugar required to feed the yeast, possibly even to the point that the yeast consumes all the regular sugar itself, I could provide us with a diabetic-safe homemade fizzy pop out in the wilderness.
Plus it strikes me that anyone who knew how to do the math on this could save his or her work in a text file. Then when someone else says "no you can't do low-carb yeast-carbonated soda pop", that person could stand up, a Genius Among Men/Women, and say "why yes you
can make low-carb yeast-carbonated soda pop", and demonstrate their genius-osity by spelling out How It Can Be Done.