Jess Bergeron • Herbalist & Wellness Guide

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When you combine flowers, ginger, water, and a sweetener like sugar or honey, you are feeding naturally occurring yeasts and microbes that already exist around us and on the plants themselves. Ginger especially is known for carrying wild yeasts on its surface, which is why ginger has traditionally been used to help create naturally fermented drinks.

As these microorganisms feed on the sugars, they begin a process called fermentation. During fermentation they convert sugars into tiny amounts of acids, flavor compounds, and carbon dioxide gas. That carbon dioxide has nowhere to go inside the bottle, so it dissolves into the liquid and creates those beautiful natural bubbles.

The flowers bring more than color. They add aromatic compounds, plant pigments, and delicate flavors that become transformed during fermentation. The flavor changes from simply sweet and floral into something more layered, bright, slightly tangy, and alive.

One of my favorite parts of herbal kitchen work is seeing simple ingredients change over time. A handful of flowers, a little ginger, patience, and suddenly your kitchen becomes a tiny living laboratory.

Flowers to choose from (use one or mix several):
Butterfly pea flower
Calendula (pot marigold)
Marigold (only edible varieties you positively identify — many ornamental marigolds vary in flavor and use)
Alyssum (sweet alyssum varieties are sometimes used as edible flowers and have a mild honey-like flavor)
Mexican sunflower
Snapdragon

One kitchen herbalism note: with any flower soda, use only unsprayed, positively identified edible flowers since many ornamental flowers sold from garden centers may be treated with pesticides or may not be intended for culinary use.