Around here - Home Made Non-Alcoholic Ginger Beer

A few weeks ago I was reading Dancing with Frogs blog post about making Ginger Beer and low and behold she linked back to the fabulous Rhonda from Down to Earth's recipe.  Since I had so much fun mastering my sourdough bread I thought I would give this a try.  I made the non-alcoholic version using this blog post of Rhonda's.

Mine took about 11 days until I thought it was ready to squeeze out and add the water, sugar and lemon juice to it.  It was actually a really fun experiment and I have a glass of ginger beer sitting next to me right now.  Back in the day there wouldn't have been any soft drinks and supermarkets and it was more than likely how it was made.  All you need to start off your ginger beer plant is some water [I boiled the kettle and then let the water cool down], ground ginger and sugar.  You can use real ginger however if you use ground ginger it is supposed to taste more like the bottled stuff that you buy so I thought I would start with that version the first time.

You can read Rhonda's detailed post how to make it however a brief summary is as follows:-

DAY 1

• Put 375ml [1.5 cups] of water in a glass jug or bowl.
• Add 2 teaspoons of ground ginger.
• Add 2 teaspoons of sugar.

STIR TOGETHER and leave uncovered on the bench.  At night just place a cloth on top and remove in the morning. 

DAY 2-7 [in my case I continued on to DAY 11] each day do the following:-

• Add 2 teaspoons of ground ginger.
• Add 2 teaspoons of sugar.

STIR TOGETHER and leave uncovered on the bench.  At night just place a cloth on top and remove in the morning.

DAY 11

• Add 2 teaspoons of ground ginger.
• Add 2 teaspoons of sugar.

STIR TOGETHER and leave for a while on the bench.  Come back in an hour or so and then you will want to strain the liquid through a cloth into another jug underneath.  Let it strain by itself for a bit however you will need to get a spoon and stir the mixture around as it's quite think and will prevent the liquid flowing through easily into the jug below.  I ended up pulling the cloth tight at the top and twisting it and then squeezing by hand all the liquid through the cloth until only the dry mixture was left inside the cloth.  You can put this dry mixture into a container and this is called the "ginger plant" [something like a sourdough starter] you can start another mix of ginger beer using this dry mix.  The second time making it using the ginger plant it should be faster to ferment than the first time because you will be using the ginger plant you've just made.

USING THE LIQUID

Using the liquid you have just squeezed into a jug you will need to add the following to it:-

• Four litres of water [boiled water cooled down]
• 2-3 cups of sugar [I used 2.5 cups of sugar]
• Juice of 2 lemons
• Mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

I didn't quite know what to mix all of this in as I don't have large bowls that take 4 litres and luckily I had a container that could take 8.5 litres so I used that.  Once all of the mixture was in the big container I left it on the bench for a few days stirring it and had a chux cloth pegged to the top allowing air at the side as the cloth wasn't that big.  After a couple of days on the bench I then put the liquid into the empty cordial bottles with the lids off and left them for a day or so on the bench and then put them into the fridge.  NOTE:  You must use PLASTIC bottles as you don't want to have an explosion of glass if there is any build up of gases in the bottle.

I had fun making ginger beer and can add another string to my bow [ha ha].  I actually found this fermenting experiment fascinating.  Here's some pictures of the stages.

This is what the mix looks like to start off with.

This is ready with all the bubbles to strain out through a cloth.

This is the liquid and it's really thick so you need to stir it around to drain the liquid.

This is the dry mix that's left over now called a "ginger plant" which is your starter for your next batch.

This is the strained liquid with the water, sugar and lemon juice added.

This is after a few days in the large container with the bubbles.

Popped some of the ginger beer into plastic cordial bottles [must be plastic not glass].

Finally a glass of home made ginger beer ready to drink.