Ginger beer

The original recipe came from Down To Earth http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/2007/05/ginger-beer.html

This is my version of Rhonda's recipe :


Ginger Beer Plant
1 dessertspoon of brown sugar (could use rapadura, white, raw)
1 dessertspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon dry yeast
300mls filtered water or rainwater

Mix all these in a jar with a largish open top. Place a piece of clean thin cotton fabric over the top and secure with a rubber band. Leave it on the kitchen bench and feed it every day with 1 teaspoon of brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, stirring well.


This stage of the process is to grow the yeast population in the ginger beer plant. Yeast will come from the dry yeast you have added and wild yeasts from the air in your house. The cover needs to be breathable to allow air in for the yeast to live and ferment, and temperatures need to be moderate - not too hot or cold. The yeast use the sugar you add to breed more yeast. After a few days (or even one day) you'll see the top looking bubbly and a little scummy. You might even be able to see bubbles rising from the sediment at the bottom - this means that the yeast are alive and breeding and that fermentation is occurring, which is what you are aiming for.


To make the Ginger Beer :
After 7 days of feeding the plant, you need to strain the sediments from it in order to use the yeast-rich liquid. I use a 30cm square piece of old cotton sheeting and place it in a seive over a bowl. Pour in the plant and allow it to drain. You will need to squeeze the last liquid out by twisting the fabric tightly.


Dissolve 3 cups of sugar in 20 cups of water and allow to cool. Add the juice of 2 lemons and the liquid plant. Stir well.


You could bottle in sterilised glass bottles, which is what we did as kids, but overfermentation can cause them to explode. So I use clean plastic softdrink bottles (although the next batch I'll try glass Grolsch bottles with the swingtop lids as well). I pour a little near-boiling water into the bottle through a funnel before using them, but you need to use a funnel or the plastic on the sides will melt and deform as the hot water touches it. As you pour the water out, try to run it over all the sides of the bottle. Pour the ginger beer in and leave a couple of inches space at the top.


Screw the caps on and leave them to ferment undisturbed for a few days in a warmish place (but not too hot). The yeast will continue to multiply in the sugar-rich mixture, and will use the sugar to breed; the byproducts of this process are alcohol and carbon dioxide, which will give the beer fizz when you open it. The longer you leave it the more fizz and alcohol content the beer will have. I've left mine 3, 6 and 10 days, and the 10 day brew was good for a real beer; the 3 day brew was fizzy but no detectable alcohol content (using my 1 pot screamer alcohol detector).


If you want to re-use the plant sediment to start a new batch, use half of the sediment in another 300ml water/dessert spoon of sugar, and feed each day with sugar and ginger, as before. The longer you keep a ginger beer plant alive by re-using it after each batch of beer, the more wild yeast it will grow and the more complex the flavour will become - or so the story goes ;)