How to Brew Your Own Ginger Beer

Originally Ginger Beer was an alcoholic beverage, averaging an intoxicating 11% alcohol.

In the 1800s, ginger beer became a popular export to America. The technological superiority of English potters can take a lot of the credit for this. The ginger beer was bottled in stoneware jars finished with a revolutionary glazing process called Improved Bristol Glaze. This, along with stout corks and wire, ensured that the pressure was maintained and also guaranteed that the ginger beer had a long shelf life. These stoneware ginger beer bottles have become very collectable items in recent years.

The original ginger beer recipe required only ginger, sugar, and water, (though lemon was often incorporated) to which was added a gelatinous substance called a "ginger beer plant". Fermentation took place over a few days and turned the mixture into ginger beer.

The Ginger Beer produced industrially today is often not fermented. Such ginger beer is carbonated with pressurized carbon dioxide, does not contain alcohol, and is sold as a soft drink.

No one is really sure where the first ginger beer plants came from, but the mystery of its identity was solved by a pioneering scientist in the late nineteenth century.

Harry Marshall Ward studied how plants and microorganisms live together in symbiotic relationships. He became curious when a friend at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, gave him a ginger beer plant.

As the years passed he built up a whole collection of ginger beer plant specimens and painstakingly identified, separated and attempted to grow the different organisms within the mixtures.

His analyses revealed that it was a type of organism new to science. He described it as a 'composite body', consisting of many microorganisms living together.

Not all of these microbes helped in making the beer, but two organisms were present in every sample, and seemed vital to the production of ginger beer.

One was a fungus he named Saccharomyces pyriformis. The other was a bacterium, which he named Bacterium vermiforme, and is now called Brevibacterium vermiforme. Together, they produce the essential ingredients of traditional ginger beer: carbon dioxide and alcohol.

I remember my aunty making ginger beer when I was a child. She had a "ginger beer plant". It wasn't a green, leafy kind of a plant but a sticky white mass, which lived in a jam jar!

The Ginger Beer Plant would be regularly 'fed' with sugar and every so often the liquid would be tapped off, diluted and bottled. The liquid would ferment in the bottle, producing the fizz. After about a week or so it was ready to drink.

The plant was treated like a chain letter. As it grew it was halved and passed to family and friends.

The commercial, canned ginger beer of today is very different. It doesn't contain alcohol and isn't made by fermentation.

Equipment You Will Need

A jar and lid which is big enough to contain the plant.
One pint-sized measuring jug
Several clean and dry two-litre plastic bottles.
Teaspoons
A large pan
A fine cloth for straining the plant

Ingredients

Dried ginger
Dried yeast
Sugar
Juice of four lemons
Water


Making your Plant

The plant is a mixture of dried ginger, yeast, sugar and water. This creates a yeast culture.

In the jar, place one teaspoon of dried yeast, two teaspoons of dried ginger, four teaspoons of sugar and a pint (600ml) of cold water.

Stir and Store the jar in a warm dry place to help the process along.

Every day your plant must be nourished by feeding with two teaspoons of dried ginger and four teaspoons of sugar.

Stir after feeding.Your plant should be ready after one week.

Reviving Your Plant

Once the plant has been harvested, it is possible to revive it by separating the remainder into halves and cultivating it as before.

Discard half of the solid from the plant or give it to someone so they may start their own.

Place the remaining half in a clean jar with a pint of water and continue to feed as above.

Place 1kg (2lb) of sugar and two pints of boiling water in the large pan. The sugar will dissolve.

Add the juice of the four lemons to the pan.

Strain the contents of the jar - the plant - through the cloth into the pan. See below for what is to be done with the solid portion of the plant.

Add 14 pints of room temperature water.

Stir and bottle in plastic bottles. Fill the bottles about seven-eighths full as you need to allow for expansion.

Squeeze the air out of the bottles to stop them exploding under pressure from their contents.

Store the bottles in a safe place at room temperature, and leave for three to four weeks to 'brew'.

Alternatively you can try my Quick And Easy Ginger Beer Recipe

***Or, if making your own ginger beer all seems a bit too difficult you can get a Ginger Beer Making Kit from Amazon UK.***