Ginger Beer!

Yum! I first made ginger beer about 3.5yrs ago and made a few batches, but didn't continue.

So after watching River Cottage Every Day last week, I decided to get all my gear out, sterilise it all, and make up a batch with the kids after school. We set the bucket in the laundry for a few days to do its thing before bottling it up.

Shaking in the tsp of sugar at the end

Within 2 days, the bottles were firm enough, indicating that it was ready (I kept the box of bottles next to the fire in our lounge to give them enough warmth). We popped them in the fridge, which stops the yeast action, and enjoyed! The kids weren't too keen on this batch, but Simon and I liked it.

New batch on the go

Well, we finally finished drinking through the first batch of ginger beer. It definitely improved as time went on and had a lot more fizz - it was lovely and tasty too.

So, today I pulled out my 2nd recipe to see how it goes. The yeast mixture is in my hot water cupboard at the moment and over the next week will add more sugar and ginger to the bowl before adding the water and bottling up.

Giving it a kick start...

Well the ginger beer doesn't seem to be doing a lot. There is not a lot of fizz at all - so I have added another teaspoon of sugar to see if we can the yeast going again.

I will be trying out Mel's recipe next and hoping for a bit more success.

Thanks for your feedback on how you all bottle your brews. I bought myself a larger funnel, so at least my sieve now fits inside it and hopefully a little less hit and miss.

The bottling has been done

It wasn't the most elegant of processes and definitely something I need to work on.

I had the kids holding the bottle still with the funnel (too small for the job I think) balanced in the neck, I held my small cooking sieve over the top with one hand and used my soup ladle in the other hand trying to get the liquid into the sieve and hope for the best. Put it this way, Nathan needs a bath tonight or else ants might find their way to him (Danielle wasn't the dedicated worker he was and moved out of the way lol) while he sleeps and my floor needs mopping coz my shoes stick to it!

How do y'all go about it?

Make hay while the sun shines...

Well, it was actually the flip side of that today lol! It was raining all day, so instead of conditions being favourable for working outside, it ended up being favourable for knocking off some of those inside activities that I've been meaning to do.

Ginger Beer it was.

I decided to start with the recipe from the Living the Good Life book.

I will then try out Mel's recipe (along with the above recipe is a non-plant ginger beer since I don't have access to a Real one).

Either way, I'm looking forward to some homemade fizzy since I do quite like some but we no longer buy any.

I have my supplies!

I've been procrastinating - but today I put my bum into gear and went and sourced myself some supplies for ginger beer making. I needed to get a food grade bucket with lid, some bottles (we don't buy anything in plastic bottles anymore), ginger powder and tartaric acid (one of the recipes required it, so at least I have it on hand now). I'm sure I could have found cheaper than going to the local brewing supplies shop, but I really wasn't up for driving around to find what I might be after for the best price, so took what I could find which happened to be enroute elsewhere.

Found me a ginger beer recipe...

I've been on the hunt, and there are so many out there and I've already found a few I want to trial. So while I've got the Living The Good Life book in my hands, I thought I'd take note of it here for later reference since the book will be returned to the library in a few days. Will do my comparisons with other recipes later on to figure which one to go with first. This recipe appears to be a quicker method than some which feed the plant over a week or so prior to adding the water.

Step one
2 teaspoons dried yeast
4 teaspoons sugar
1 cup warm water

Step two
4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons ground ginger or 4 tablespoons fres grated
2 teaspoons tartaric acid
4 litres hot water
4 litres cold water

Stir the step one ingredients together in a glass and leave them in a warm place.
Put the first four ingredients from step two into a large clean bucket, add the hot water and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Then add the cold water. When the liquid has cooled to only just warm add the yeast mixture from step one. Cover the bucket and leave for 1-2 days then strain into bottles. Fill each to within 3 cm of the top. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar to each bottle, cap and shake well to dissolve the sugar. Place in a warm spot for 1-5 days. The liquid will expand in the bottles over that time. Refrigerate for several hours before drinking. Makes about 10 litres.