Daily Survival: GINGER BEER

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

GINGER BEER

Original Article

from Suburbhomestead's Blog by suburbhomestead

Image by Willrad via Flickr
Image by Willrad via Flickr

GINGER BEER PLANT
In a glass jar – a pickle or canning jar is perfect – place:

1 teaspoon of raw (or white vanilla ) sugar. Raw sugar gives it a better color
1teaspoon ground ginger – you can use raw ginger if you have it
A small pinch of dry yeast – the yeast you use for your bread
1 ¼ cups boiled water, or tap water that has stood for 24 hours
4 sultanas (golden raisins) – for the wild yeast on the skin (optional)

Stir this together and cover it with a cloth or cheese cloth cover. It needs air but

you don’t want dust or insects crawling in. Leave it to sit on the kitchen bench. After about 2 or 3 days, depending on the temperatures in your house, it will begin to bubble and ferment. That is good. Fermentation is a healthy process. Every day for 7 days, feed the plant 1 teaspoon ginger and 1 teaspoon sugar, and stir.
TO MAKE THE GINGER BEER

After 7 days take a clean piece of loosely woven cotton cloth, or a clean cotton tea

towel and place it over a bowl. Pour the ginger plant into the fabric and twist

the top of the cloth to make it into a ball. Squeeze out as much of the liquid

as you can in to the bowl.

Dissolve 3 cups of sugar in 20 cups of water. Add juice of 2 lemons and the

ginger mix. Stir and bottle in plastic bottles. Place the caps on the bottles but don’t screw them on. Leave the ginger beer on the kitchen bench for a couple of days to ferment a little more, then tighten the caps. When bottles are firm place the bottles in the fridge. Time will vary depending on temperature, rock hard is the level of carbonation desired. Placing it in the fridge will slow the fermentation process to almost zero. Well chilled over ice as desired.