My Mum used to make ginger beer on the farm. We would seal it in the glass bottles with bottle caps that you tapped on with a ham\u00admer, try\u00ading hard not to break the glass. A bottle or two would occa\u00adsion\u00adally explode dur\u00ading the fer\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion pro\u00adcess, which was excit\u00ading, and messy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve taken to mak\u00ading it. Home-made ginger beer is a refresh\u00ading, fizzy drink, much less sweet than com\u00admer\u00adcial soft drinks, with a pleas\u00ading zing. There is a small amount of alco\u00adhol in it due to the yeast-mak\u00ading-bubbles fer\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion step, but it\u2019s min\u00adim\u00adal. The pro\u00adcess of mak\u00ading it is fun, teaches the kids some\u00adthing about chem\u00adistry, and is much less messy with the advent of PET<\/span> bottles.<\/p>\n The pro\u00adcess is reas\u00adon\u00adably simple. You start with a ginger beer plant (actu\u00adally a fungus yeast and a bac\u00adteri\u00adum; more details here<\/a>). You feed it ginger and sug\u00adar every day until it\u2019s ready, then add the liquid to a mix\u00adture of water, sug\u00adar, and lem\u00adon juice. Bottle, store for a few days, and enjoy!<\/p>\n There are a num\u00adber of places on the inter\u00adnet you can get a ginger beer plant. I made my own; as a con\u00adsequence it may not be a \u2018real\u2019 ginger beer plant, but giv\u00aden the ginger beer it pro\u00adduces is good, I\u2019m not bothered by that fact. There are lots of vari\u00adations; this is the recipe I follow.<\/p>\n To make the plant, put the fol\u00adlow\u00ading ingredi\u00adents in a jug or jar.<\/p>\n Stir, and cov\u00ader the jar loosely with a cloth. You want air to get in (for the nat\u00adur\u00adal yeasts) but not bugs (in sum\u00admer this is a mag\u00adnet in my kit\u00adchen for fruit flies). Keep at nor\u00admal room tem\u00adper\u00adat\u00adure. Feed every day with 2 tea\u00adspoons ground ginger and 2 \u2014 4 tea\u00adspoons of sug\u00adar (I use 4, you may like it slightly sweeter or less sweet). After a couple of days, you should notice some bubbles in the mix, and even a slight smell of fer\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion as the nat\u00adur\u00adal yeasts go to work on the sug\u00adar and ginger. The plant will be more act\u00adive in sum\u00admer, when the kit\u00adchen is warmer.<\/p>\n After a week or three (the peri\u00adod depend\u00ading on how much time I have in any giv\u00aden week), make the ginger beer. You will need around 12 one-litre PET<\/span> bottles. If you don\u2019t have those at home, a loc\u00adal beer-brew\u00ading shop will be happy to sell some to you, com\u00adplete with the caps. Wash in soapy water, and rinse to get the bubbles out. You don\u2019t need to ster\u00adil\u00adise the bottles, I find the usu\u00adal deter\u00adgents to be adequate.<\/p>\n In a large pot, boil 5 cups of water with 3 cups of sug\u00adar. Stir to make sure the sug\u00adar is all dis\u00adsolved, then take the pot off the heat. Add the juice of three fresh lem\u00adons (yes, the pro\u00adhib\u00adi\u00adtion against bottled lem\u00adon juice applies here too). If you have small lem\u00adons, make that the juice of four lem\u00adons. Place a clean cloth (an old lin\u00aden tea tow\u00adel, for example) over a sieve or colan\u00adder and pour the ginger beer plant through the cloth into the pot. Squeeze the cloth to get as much liquid out of the plant and into the pot as pos\u00adsible. Add 7 litres of water to the pot (same com\u00adments on the water as above; I use tap water). Bottle the ginger beer, leav\u00ading some space at the top of the bottle for expansion.<\/p>\n The con\u00adtents of the cloth are the ginger beer plant itself. Take approx\u00adim\u00adately half of it, put in a clean jar with two cups of water, and feed. I also put anoth\u00ader couple of sul\u00adtanas in at this stage. This is the basis for the next batch of ginger beer, so feed every day as before. Give the oth\u00ader half of the plant to someone, or add to your com\u00adpost bin. The plant gets bet\u00adter as it ages, so it\u2019s worth\u00adwhile keep\u00ading it going rather than start\u00ading new each time.<\/p>\n After a couple of days, you should see some small bubbles in the bottles, and the bottles should be firmer. This stage may take a couple of days longer in winter than sum\u00admer. You can drink the ginger beer at this stage, but it tastes bet\u00adter if you can leave it at least a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Mum used to make ginger beer on the farm. We would seal it in the glass bottles with bottle caps that you tapped on with a ham\u00admer, try\u00ading hard not to break the glass. A bottle or two would occa\u00adsion\u00adally explode dur\u00ading the fer\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion pro\u00adcess, which was excit\u00ading, and messy. I\u2019ve taken to mak\u00ading it. \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cGinger Beer\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-11","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1255,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n