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reshroomED

Eileen's Ginger Beer plant recipe

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8 sultanas

Juice of 2 lemons

1 tsp lemon pulp

4 tsp sugar

2 tsp ginger

2 cups cold water

Mix ingredients and place in jar on windowsill/warm place until fermentation begins, then feed 2 tsp ginger and 4 tsp sugar each day for one week.

Strain (and put aside residue) and add to 4 cups sugar dissolved in 4 cups boiling water and the juice of four lemons. Add 28 cups water, bottle, and leave stand for 2 weeks.

Take half of the residue from straining, add 2 cups water, and feed as above for one week. Repeat process.

Ha ha, and all these years I thought it wasn't alcoholic.

I'll post her Rhubarb wine recipe tonight.

cheers

ed

Edited by reshroomED

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awesome i got the other recipe you wrote earlier on the go now i will let you know how it goes in 4 days or so

and then i will begin playing with this one here

thanks so much for shaing its great

so when its ginger are you meaning dried ginger like the other one or is this fresh ginger?

eileen has shifted from being a fantastic cactus to now fantastic ginger beer,

how very cool

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Nice, mate.

I've done ginger beer from kits before, but you really can't beat the real deal. You just have to be careful to store it in the fridge, preferably in plastic bottles to avoid having ginger-flavoured grenades.

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Thank you for the recipe ! Just a question...what are sultanas ?

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Great recipe! Sounds delicious...

:drool2:

And please do post the rhubarb wine recipe. That sounds friggin' awesome!

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so when its ginger are you meaning dried ginger like the other one or is this fresh ginger?

Generic ground ginger. I consulted mum on this and apparently it's been readily available since at least the end of WWII and she thinks before as well.

Sultanas

ed

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thats great thanks mate

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many thanks, i'm trying with fresh ginger

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I know this thread is yr's old but how is the liquid turned into alcohol? Just outta curiosity

edit.. I mean what makes it actualy ferment? Maybe a time frame to get it 'alcoholic'?

Edited by Chef's Foreskin

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I know this thread is yr's old but how is the liquid turned into alcohol? Just outta curiosity

edit.. I mean what makes it actualy ferment? Maybe a time frame to get it 'alcoholic'?

 

Lactic acid bacteria, usually found on the skin, in combination with natural yeasts from the air doing their thing. Same as with wildcrafted sourdough.

both convert the sugars added to the ginger into alcohols as a byproduct of their metabolisms.

Edit: To make it a more alcoholic beverage you would probably add brewers yeasts (as it tolerates alcohol better) and more sugar. this would also speed it up somewhat.

Cheers, Ob.

Edited by obtuse

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Lactic acid bacteria, usually found on the skin, in combination with natural yeasts from the air doing their thing. Same as with wildcrafted sourdough.

both convert the sugars added to the ginger into alcohols as a byproduct of their metabolisms.

Edit: To make it more alcoholic you would probably add brewers yeasts (as it tolerates alcohol better) and more sugar.

Cheers, Ob.

 

So does that mean fresh ginger with skin on is better?

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fresh ginger with skin on is always better, regardless of whether your making ginger beer or a honey ginger chicken stirfry :wink:

In this yes, as natural lactic acid bacteria and yeasts are living on the skin, and assist in the creation of the ginger beer plant, i.e. the ferment you use to make your batch.

Edited by obtuse
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Thanks for your help mate. I am going to try this in a week or two.. But say I want an alcoholic one how long should I leave it to 'brew' ?

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I have never brewed ginger beer with the intention of making it alcoholic. I dont really like alcohol. so i am afraid i cant help you beyond the basics.

cheers, Ob.

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When I've brewed ginger beers that I wanted alcohol in, I left it for 3 months minimum once bottled. Even then it tastes a bit green. 4-6 months is perfect.

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Don't forget to 'prime' the bottles by adding about 1 teaspoon of sugar when you're bottling. Use plastic to start with until you get the ratios right, so as not to have a "glass grenade" as someone called it in another thread. Later, switch over to glass (old longnecks work perfectly). You also need to sterilise the bottles if you're planning to leave them for a few months. Once you get some experience you can start playing around with substituting honey for sugar, mmm. But I did fail with many 'plants' trying to start them with honey, so start simple.

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Someone say ginger beer?

Well back when youthful Pat was hired out by the missions to cut cane 80 hours a week for two shillings (minus tuppence for the missions' offertory plate Sunday church my 'day' off -"why Almighty God need my charity?- think him be well off! Justa Big Bludger!") at Christmas the charitable's would splash out and treat us to as much of the above ginger "beer" as us workers could drink - Hurrah!

We got to watch them, however, toast their God's birth, (Almighty - born? like man?), with the rum, from the cane we cut, mixed with the rare, big city "Coca-Cola" - a cocktail, falsely declared Qld's own, but known to the world - ironically for us workers - as a "Libre Cuba".

Believe me please - you cannot get drunk on it - we've tried exhaustively and so, even to impeccable Puritan values, it was most suitable for us "boys" to drink.. Dried ginger, bush lemons, rawest dreg sugar and boiled water from local "Ginger Beer Creek".(Sultanas - dried grapes - bloom white with starter culture necessary only to start)

It was very much "Secret Women's Business" - we just drank the result - but "spies" revealed that:-

The 'bug''plant' - as you will - was kept veiled, like a holy relic, with mosquito netting and safe from infidel sight, in a jam jar toppest pantry shelf, and proved its "miraculous" living presence with coils of hairy (plant fibre) mucousy trails of symbiotic microbes sinewing their tentacles upward on a few bubbles in otherwise still liquor, given daily sacrifices of a little sugar and water by its priestesses and tended constantly by a devoted priesthood of fruit flies.

What sublime ecology evolved in these uniquely Aussie strange "kombucha" of dried ginger, water and a little lemon juice to pH down away from botulism, over the decades of the ginger "beer" cult's practices is anyone's guess!

Ginger, a fibrous herb, gives its best when dried, powdered, aged, and yeast fermented into an 'ale' - like nettles.

Besides sugarcane, and men, Queensland produces the best ginger - and TWO varieties of DOM ginger "beer" exist! (Rare in a capitalist run domestic market!):-

Bundaberg Ginger Beer - Nice 'soft' drink that bites thirst, enough complexity for the refined palate. I note a lot of Asian restaurants keep it on their list - rightly so! it's a perfect compliment. The 'standard' of ginger 'beers'.

Buderim Ginger Beer - Land of ginger, but a little 'caramel' to my taste. Probably better after a meal.

The best is the absolute nectar of Saxby's Ginger Beer the pride of N.S.W.! Family recipe of fresh and dry aged brings out everything the herb and ferment culture can offer I feel.

The full crescendo is there:- From the rose like top note florals of green freshly cut, slowly building to the "fireworks' the tapestry of its pungency and down to the deep, resiny warmth of its bass notes. Truly a cognac amongst beers I impress worldly conniseurs with this unique Aussie speciality.

Please Folk! If you come across any other great Aussie ginger 'beers' - do let us all know!

All of the above use cultured, even patented, 'wild yeast strains' capable of only a few percent alcohol at best. They're chosen so they act to just carbonate the drink, lower pH, and then go dormant leaving much of the sugar and little alcohol. The proprietary 'strains' like those of champagne are specially bred for their flavour. Hence they might get a little upset if they knew you were straining the yeast off the bottom of their ginger 'beer' bottles and using it to start your own brew....hint! hint!

The above recipe will give you such ginger 'beer' community of ferments that is the 'plant''bug''starter' of ginger 'beer'. It's all very akin to sauerkraut or Californian sourdough where saccharomycial growth is balanced by lactobacillus together preserving it against lethal bacteria. Their presence makes the drink biotically active - even antibiotic to pathogens. Combined with ginger we have a notable treatment of colic and 'travellers' sickness.

If the culture has been locally prepared in your household, it may have power over your local pathogens. There's a lot to be said about local peasants's beers, breads, pickles, etc. to provide the enzymes and cultures that will give you local immunity: - worked for them!

Using commercial, "souped-up" wine or beer yeast for full strength ginger 'beer' home brewer style [Remember it is an offense to brew beer above 3% alcohol in Australia without a brewers license. (Oh4FS!)] will produce alcohol and consume all the sugar making it dry.

Be warned attempting to go higher is very dangerous with ginger - much like adding hops to wort BEFORE pitching the yeast! It makes full fermentation unreliable and hard to judge due to inhibition. But there is nothing wrong with using fresh or dry ginger as "steep" exactly the way hops (and the herbs I mentioned above) are used just before bottling actually to inhibit and slow secondary fermentation and give storage quality. (please do check that wiki on "gruit")

Ginger, calea, sinichuchi, cannabis all inhibit fermentation and primary fermentation doesn't go to completion. Incredibly dangerous pressures can build over time. Believe me an overcharged box of ginger 'beer' bottles has the explosive force of a grenade and twice the sharpnel! When one goes off it sets of the others - like a cluster flagellete.

Stick to low sugar, low alcohol, inhibited 'wild culture'!

Tip! - any "kind stranger" leave a carton of 'beer' on your steps - call the bomb squad! - it's an old trick.

Check wiki on the subject of gruit to find out what herbs used to go in 'beer'/'ale' preparations (It includes an interesting theory that the schism between Catholic and Protestant was over beer! - Now that I would believe!)

I will start a topic on 'shaman beer', but in antiquity nettle beer was huge - but horehound, hops, Sida, other dried or green herbs can be made into herb 'beer':-

2 kilos of herbs (much young green nettle sprouts) are boiled with 8L of water for 1 1/2 hours. Then after the liquor is strained off, a little ground ginger and 150g of sugar (or honey) is added. This wort placed in a beer brewing fermentor and 1g of beer yeast pitched in. Fermented for 3 days and bottled (old soft drink bottles will do) while gas is still evolving. It can be drunken after a week. (Notice very low sugar)

That's Gaydons Victorian Pharm. recipe for herb 'beer' that "should not contain more than 1% alcohol; it contains dissolved carbon dioxide; which gives it the properties of an aerated drink, and the minerals and actives dissolved out of the herbs"

Hope to tell you all about the triumph of brews "Pat Uri's Seven Roots Beer" soon.

Here's a recipe that is the most dangerous thing I have ever seen! Incredibly I got it off Burke's Backyard one evening when I was too shitfaced to get to the remote control in time! It is the most irresponsible advise ever to go free to air! It is probably still on their website! It should be in the "Anarchist's Cookbook" but here it is:-

(I once heard that Mr Burke and our amazing Mr T are "special friends"! So I best be respectful! check the recipe http://www.burkesbac...ves/2000?p=1722 That has been modified somewhat since when I printed it off! I wonder if the program go "modded" too?)

Original was not intended with tropics in mind (most Australians think we live in Melbourne - teee!heee!) and as "on-air" version was 3 days - hence rest of yarn)

Sounds like a disaster - so I had to try it. (USE PLASTIC. OBSERVE AMMENDED LIMITS}

DO NOT FORGET ABOUT IT - Yes, it is still an unsafe level of sugar, the full fermentation pressure could kill you, so don't forget about it.

Now once I drank a 3 day brewed version of this, one morning mowing - it wasn't bad, it wasn't good - but it quenched my thirst and I drank it all.

I was drunk as a monkey and had to leave the mowing! If I'd been on site I would have been sacked! Thanks Burke's Backyard for the warning! (well it's there somewhat now)

Sounds like 'gaol house' wine? Well actually the boys in the pen tend to use enzymatic "Turbo" 'Yeast' these days, giving them 20% alcohol in a teacup within 24hrs.

You have a great day, mein volk! Remember in commercial beer, that too uses enzymes not yeast, the most expensive part of the process is sterilizing the water. The bottle cost more than the contents that can cost you $10 for a few cents of barley water!

Now that's the drug game to get into! - and it's legal. (with a brewers license - and $100K to put on the table)

Gidday!

Edited by Pat Uri
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I've been making ginger beer for a few months now. Remember that if you use bakers yeast the highest alcohol content you can achieve is 3-5%, if you use brewers yeast you can achieve 20%+.

Adding a little bit of cinnamon adds to the flavor and the sultanas are definitely necessary.

If you're using plastic bottles then be sure to squeeze the air out of the top of the bottle (so its squashed in) then as the fermentation process produces CO2 it has extra room to fill before exploding.

If you want to go a step further, 30L fermenters are available on ebay for ~$50 delivered.

The fermentation process is great to watch under the microscope, a drop of ginger beer plant that hasn't been 'fed' for a day in a well slide or similar and add a little sugar to bring the process back to life.

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It should be noted that you don't need to use any yeast at all - bakers or brewers (as in ed's recipe in the FP). If you use fresh ginger the wild yeasts on the rhizome will be enough to start the fermentation process alone. As Ed says, even powdered ginger works (probably from yeasts in the air or on the sultanas). If it is high alcohol content you're after, you can make a ginger "champagne" which takes a while but will get fairly strong.

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Later edit:_Big time thanks to all who restored my last texty post! I rejoice over my place in the forum! Hurrah for us@SAB! I love you!

I've never "uncensored lift" before and for the first time in my life feel like a real porn star!....well a serious artist one like "The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black" I mean if you gonna tap dance on the very boundary line of decency you are gonna make a few people a little angry - get them laughing, and we make our compromise

I respectfully acknowledge I'm a guest here - this forum isn't my possession! - so if I do offend just pm us folks! - it'd be an innocent (if incendiary) mistake.

Bye! And loves to all!

Edited by Pat Uri

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I've just bottled up 8 x 1.25l plastic soft drink bottles with Eileen's ginger beer. Had to use brown sugar to feed it as it was all i had, but used raw sugar when bottling. Being a noob i also think i started feeding it a little bit too soon. Tastes good already even though it's green.

Started a new batch up and will just use raw sugar this time to see if there is any difference.

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nice thanks for the recipe

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so two weeks have passed since I bottled. I put a bottle in the fridge yesterday and tried it tonight and I must say it is yummo!

Thanks Ed and Eileen.

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It's warm in Newie today - seems like Ginger Beer brewing time!

I was thinking that some calamus or chilli might be a good addition as well.

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Does anyone have any recommendations about converting the original recipe to use fresh ginger instead?

how much fresh would be equiv to 2tsp dry? Thanks.

Edited by chilli

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