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Ginger beer
Non-alcoholic refreshment
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I remember my mum making ginger beer when I was a child. We had what was known as a “ginger beer plant”. It wasn’t a green, leafy kind of a plant but a yucky white mass of stuff, which lived in a jam jar!
Mum would “feed” it regularly with sugar and pour out the liquid, which would be diluted and bottled. The liquid would ferment in the bottle, turning fizzy and would be ready to drink after a few days.
The plant grew and was divided up, passed to family and friends, and very soon everyone in the neighbourhood had one. Now it sounds a bit like something that you would see on Doctor Who!
I don’t know what happened to all those plants but nowadays you can make a similar beverage with a little dried, fast-action yeast, which you’ll have in the cupboard if you have a bread maker.
Start to make it 3 or 4 days before your picnic.
1 heaped tablespoon of grated fresh ginger
1 unwaxed lemon, sliced
250 g of caster sugar
half a teaspoon of cream of tartar
three quarters of a teaspoon of dried fast-action yeast
You’ll also need two 1.5 litre plastic bottles, washed in hot soapy water and rinsed – i.e. sterilized. Don’t use glass bottles because they might explode as the pressure builds up inside them.
Take a large saucepan with a lid. Put in the ginger, lemon slices, sugar, cream of tartar and 750 ml of cold water. Over a medium heat, stir to dissolve the sugar and slowly bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for five minutes.
Take off the heat, add another 1.5 litres of cold water and sprinkle the dried yeast over the mixture. Put the lid on the pan and leave overnight.
The next day strain the liquid through a fine nylon sieve or a piece of muslin and pour into the sterilized, plastic bottles. Make sure you leave at least a 5 cm gap at the top to allow for the build-up of gas.
Screw on the lids tightly and leave in a cool place. Check the bottles every few hours, unscrewing the tops a little to allow the build-up of gas to escape.
When the ginger beer is fizzy (can take anything between 12 and 36 hours) it’s ready to drink, with plenty of ice. Don’t leave it hanging around for days or it will get stale and smell yeasty.
It’s fun for the kids to watch the brewing process, so go on, have a go!
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