I fancied a nice cool drink the other night, but I’m fed up with cola, lemonade and juices.
I prefer a “drier” soft drink, and one that doesn’t make you want to scrub your teeth
immediately after drinking. So I decided to make myself some ginger beer.
“Hang on, why didn’t you just buy some ginger beer?” I imagine you asking me. Well, most commercially produced ginger beer is far too sweet and not gingery enough for my taste, that is why. And I was bored.
So, here’s what I used to make a delicious ginger beverage:
- 2 litre bottle of still mineral water
- large chunk of root ginger (you need 1½ to 2 tablespoons of grated ginger)
- 1 lemon
- 1 cup of sugar
- ¼ teaspoon of dried yeast
You’ll also need a grater to grate the ginger, and a plastic funnel. I didn’t have a funnel, but you really need one. Trust me on this.
“Hey idiot, why did you buy a bottle of water instead of using tap water?” Well, you need a two litre bottle to make the ginger beer in, and London tap water isn’t the nicest in the world. So I spared no expense and spent 18p on a bottle of Sainsbury’s Still Table Water and killed two birds with one stone. If you already have a clean two litre bottle, and your tap water is ok, then feel free to use that. Or try a nice expensive mineral water if that sort of thing tickles your fancy.
Now that’s out of the way, here’s what I did next:
1) Lay all your ingredients out to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.
2) Realise you’ve forgotten the yeast, so get that too.
3) Decant the water into a suitable temporary container (skip this step if you are using tap water)
4) Using a plastic funnel, pour the sugar into the bottle. (if you don’t have a funnel fashion one out of paper like me)
5) Add the dried yeast to the bottle.
6) Now, grate the ginger until you have between 1½ and 2 tablespoon’s worth. I used 2 tablespoons because I really like ginger, but feel free to vary this according to your tastes. Also, you may wish to cut the skin off before grating. I’m lazy so I left it all on.
7) Next, extract the juice from one lemon.
8 ) Mix the grated ginger and lemon juice together in a cup or other suitable piece of crockery.
9) Next you need to add the ginger/lemon mixture to the bottle. This is where a plastic funnel comes in really handy. for some reason paper funnels don’t work so well once wet.
10) Now, you need to add the water to the bottle. Fill it up until it is about ¾ full, then put the cap on and shake the bottle until all the sugar is dissolved.
11) You then need to top the bottle up until there is approximately a one inch gap at the top. This gap is to prevent explosions once the yeast gets to work.
12) Put the cap on the bottle as tightly as you can, then place the bottle somewhere warm. I put mine in my airing cupboard. You’ll need to leave it for 24-48hours to let the yeast go to work. Once the bottle is very hard, and can’t be squeezed, the ginger beer is done. It took 24 hours for my batch to be ready.
13) Place the bottle in the fridge overnight. This halts the yeast and stops the bottle exploding. You really don’t want to leave that bottle in a warm place for any longer than 48 hours.
14) Once the ginger beer is chilled, pour it into a glass and enjoy. I sieve mine when pouring so I don’t have any lumps of ginger in the drink.
And there you have it. 2 litres of delicious ginger beer for around 90p and very little effort.
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Hi everyone
I came across your recipes about ginger beer on the way to something else! I was amazed at the variety of recipes it’s wonderful. I love ginger and ginger beer but have never used yeast in the recipe and wondered if it wouldn’t make it more potent and potentially alcoholic?
Anyway I have plant on the go year round, I put it in the freezer or give to a freind if I am going to be away! I simply ‘start’ it with ginger and sugar it starts working within the hour usually (hence I’ve never considered adding yeast).I start with an inch or so of ginger I just simply chop it up and stick in a large coffee jar then add 2 teasp ginger powder and 4 teasp sugar and that’s it. I then feed it every day for a week to 10 days (depend how busy I am ) with another teasp sugar dried powder ginger and sometimes a bit more ginger root (if I am making say a curry and using it!.
When I come to make the ginger beer I add at the final cooking stage, a pinch of chopped dried chillies to add a bit of fire, I also sometimes use dark suge in the final cooking stages that makes a nice caramel colour to the drink.
When I bottle the drinks I use screw top lids but this summer had two blow off and break into pieces the lids! I’d turned a fridge off and overnight in the 20c temperatures they had ‘started’ up again and got too excited! So I bottle and leave them out for about 5 – 7 days then stick in fridge or the cellar to ‘stop’ them.
I find that 8 out of 10 are always fizzy, those that are not are still lovely to drink with lemon and added to other fruit drinks like rhubarb juice mmn wonderful………
Happy ginger beer making!!
I wanted to add that I only use half to 3/4 of the starter and leave the rest in the jar and continue to feed it after that.
I love the recipe that started this thread thnx! and might try it without the yeast tho!
I haven’t made this recipe but when I did used to make my own I added all the ingredients to a big bowl and let it sit out at room temperature with a tea towel over it. 24hrs later I’d siphon off the liquid into bottles – leaving the sludge behind – and let it ferment for a day and then chill. I used half litre plastic bottles with screw tops so as to prevent the dreaded midnight fireworks (been there, done that).
I used a combination of dried and fresh ginger (merely crushed) and the result was nice and fiery. Alas, I cannot recall the exact proportions but I was generous.
Remember, there are no rules, only guidelines!
Two things to keep in mind are that ginger is a natural yeast energiser and, just as in baking, time and temperature are the petulant twins that affect your product – increase one, reduce the other. For the adventurous, try a cooler fermentation for longer periods and see how it affects the flavour. A longer ferment will allow natural lactic bacteria to add their own particular charm to your ginger beer and enhance the heat.
Perhaps once my sauerkraut has finished fermenting I shall get teach my kids the joys of home brewed ginger B!
I’ve just made this and it was really great!
Thanks so much for the recipe, I’ll definitely make it again as it’s so easy and yummy!
buttermere4 – could you spare some of your ginger beer plant? lrndqg@btinternet.com
I made the top recipe, only 1 litre, but all good :)
Experiments : now I want to up the alcohol content, but I dont want any explosions.
All my theory comes from…
davidbeerman 16 July 2009 @ 9am
-”…it would take approx 1week to ferment all the sugar and if kept sealed from day one most bottles would fail.”
I considered letting a bit of CO2 out each night. This might prevent my epic fail, but will it be flat and dissapointing?
I know the 3 variables on alcohol content will be yeast, sugar and time. Anyone else tried to up the alcohol?….or have any input on how it can be successfully done? (without the boom!)
If not, I will probably experiment.
I made your recipe as above and put the bottle on the floor of the airing cupboard on Sunday night. I remembered it on Wednesday night and took the out of the cupboard this morning (Thursday). The bottle was completely hard (so hard the dimples had gone from the base). I put it in the fridge for a few hours then decanted it (using a funnel and tea strainer) into bottles and am now drinking the best ginger beer I’ve tasted since I was a child. I don’t know about the alcohol content but there is certainly a smile on my face. Thank you very much for this brilliant recipe.
To improve the recipe, let it ferment out for a week. This will kill the yeasty flavour as the yeast will drop out over time.
Add a tablespoon of sugar to a 2 litre bottle to prime, then screw the lid on and leave for a few days to gas up. Then cool and you will have nice sparkling non-yeaty ginger beer!
To avoid explosions, put a ballon over the end of the bottle. Pierce with a needle. Voila! Elementary airlock.
Try using some proper all yeast as well, as bakers yeast is no good for brewing. You can get 12g packs of Safale SO4 yeat for as little as £1.05 and you only need around 1/4 pack at the most for a 2 litre brew.
Thanks for the recipe. I think it’s great!
I followed it with a few minor changes. I used wine yeast instead of baker’s yeast and I also added a quarter of a teaspoon of yeast nutrient to help the fermentation get off to a good, fast start.
I also squeezed the air out of the bottle before putting the lid on. I figured there was enough oxygen in the liquid after shaking it to dissolve the sugar and the air was just reducing the space left for the carbon dioxide, I didn’t want an explosion!
I started it at 10pm and left it overnight, putting it out in the warm sun when morning came. It was obviously fermenting very fast, and the bottle was becoming quite hard to the touch, so I put it in the fridge at 12:30pm and drank my first glass at 2:30pm. It was delicious, fizzy, very gingery and light (no yeasty taste).
I think next time I will add some cayenne pepper to see if I can make it a little more fiery!
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How long does it keep in a glass bottle ?
Unfortunately I don’t know as I’ve never decanted it to glass bottles – I usually drink it in a day or two so have never had any issues storing it.
If you do attempt to rebottle it in glass bottles, then I’d love to hear how you get on.