Today I started ginger beer plant - round two... the first round being several years back. The recipe I used has long since fallen off the internet, so I am posting it here.

Plant Phase

Ingredients:

• 1 packet dried brewing yeast (Champagne Yeast)
• 1 cup warm water (90-110F)
• 1 tsp raw sugar (turbinado) (+1 tsp per day for 6 additional days)
• 1 tsp ground ginger powder (+1 tsp per day for 6 additional days)

Dissolve the yeast in the water, and add one teaspoon of sugar. Add one teaspoon of ginger if making 20 12oz bottles. Add two teaspoons of ginger if making 40 12oz bottles. Leave covered, and every day for six more days add one teaspoon of sugar and either 1tsp ginger for 20 bottles, or 2tsp of ginger for 40 bottles. The sugar stays the same. After 7 days, the plant is ready for use.

Bottling Phase

Beer

• 1 Ginger Beer plant (Above)
• 6 Quarts of Water
• 2 Lemons
• 5 Cups Sugar

Dissolve the sugar in the water over heat. Add the liquid from the plant and the juice of the lemons, and mix together. Bottle the beer. According to the original recipe, the beer is "ready to drink in 5 days, but is better after 2-3+ weeks." The author had drank it after as little as 3 days, but more usually drank it after a week or two.

Previous Author's Notes

Gassiness

Ginger beer is notorious for causing explosions. The author had never had a bottle explode, but indicated that the beer can be under quite high pressure when bottled, and said it pays to watch where you are pointing when opening the bottle. Keeping the bottle in the refrigerator will reduce the pressure in it.

Recycling Your Plant

Once you have drained the liquid from your plant to make beer, you can continue the plant by adding another 250ml of warm water, then feeding it with sugar and ginger once per day as before. The yeast from the original plant will continue to live, and after another week you will have another plant ready. You can also divide the sediment of a drained plant into two, and make two plants.

Alcohol Content

I have read that ginger beer made this way typically has 1-2% alcohol. The author never measured theirs. I have not measured the alcohol content in mine. If you are concerned, please make sure to measure the content before consuming any of the brew.

I've just finished brewing my seventh batch of ginger beer. Honestly, there has been a lit of disappointment.

Batches

Of those seven batches, four tasted good. I'll go into detail.

Batch 1

This tasted good, but I suspect only because I hadn't had ginger beer in so long. The yeasty flavor was strong, the odor was strong, it actually LOOKED like beer in color, and as well as head. Honestly, in hindsight it was pretty bad. Lessons: Don't use too much yeast. Don't misread the recipe.

Batch 2

This tasted good, but not great. It tasted WAY less yeasty than the first batch, the odor was much more palatable. It looked like ginger beer in color, and fizzed like pop. Really it is still passable - I have three bottles left. Lessons: Using white sugar at bottling yields the right color.

Batches 4, 5, 6

Strong yeasty smell and flavor. These looked like batch 2, and tasted/smelled like batch 1.Lessons: Yeast is a tricky thing. You need to use the right amount, and sometimes it doesn't look like it is doing OK, but it really is. If you leave yeast to do its thing, it will build up a LOT of pressure in those bottles. When you try to take the cap off, you WILL lose some bottle tops.

Batch 7

This is the first batch I carbonated directly with CO2 using a Fizz Giz. It works very well, and since there was no yeast in those bottles, it had NO yeast flavor or smell. I also yeast carbonated some bottles. The result had no yeasty smell or taste, and great carbonation. This is the first batch that used fresh ginger instead of ginger powder. Lessons: Fresh ginger works really well, and lets "turbo brew" really get a STRONG ginger bite. Dialing in the perfect amount of yeast per water volume makes for a great tasting bottle of ginger beer.

Batch 8

My goal here was purely to repeat the success with Batch 7 (half batch) on a full scale. It worked.Lessons: Do the same thing, get the same results. To do the same thing all the time, keep really good notes on what you did!

Tips

Starting Yeast

I start my yeast in 1/2 cup of body-temperature water. It feels neither warm nor cold. I add 6-8 tsp of sugar to it and stir until disolved. I add 1/8th teaspoon of champagne yeast per 3 quarts of water I will be making up. It looks absolutely tiny amount for so much final liquid, but any more and you get too much yeast smell and flavor and it ruins the soda.

Fermentation

Straight up, I don't do it. Technically I do while the soda carbonates, but I do not have a ginger beer "plant". It serves no purpose other than to sustain yeast growth. Yeast costs me $0.75 per packet. Each packet lasts 4 batches. I don't mind buying dry yeast, and my kitchen smells better for it.

Carbonation

Here goes against traditional wisdom. I don't know if it is because I use champagne yeast instead of bread yeast... but my ginger beer carbonates in TWO DAYS. As a matter of course, I try a bottle after 36 hours and it is drinkable, but not quite carbonated. at about the 46 hour mark, it's perfect. If you wait until 56 hours, you will have noticable yeast flavor and smell. It's really that precise.

Turbo Brew

Turbo brew is actually a combination of the Fermentation and Carbonation notes. From the time I start peeling ginger to the time I can drink a chilled bottle is about 49 hours using natural yeast carbonation! And this is quality ginger beer - I would put it up against Bundaberg or Schweppe's Old Stoney in a heartbeat. I have never seen anyone claim that before.

Bottling

A few small things...

1. Fill your bottles evenly. Too much variance in how full your bottles are will mean unpredictable carbonation.
2. Stir while you fill your bottles, or your yeast will settle yielding unpredictable carbonation and flavor.

I've played with the recipe each time I made it for the last three weeks... the first batch I bottled using all raw sugar, I fed it too much sugar, and too much ginger. It came out looking like beer, and tasting like a mild beer. Not undrinkable (barely), but not great. The second batch I used the right amount of sugar, and bottled using white sugar. It came out the right color, and tasted like mild ginger beer. It was actually pretty decent. The third batch, I bottled using white sugar, but I fed the plant double the sugar and double the ginger all week. I also added a cut up cinnamon stick. It came out looking like ginger beer, and tasting like a mild beer. I could not taste the cinnamon... at all. Not drinkable this time either.

So what have I learned?

1. If you feed the yeast too much, they will multiply too much. This will make it taste like beer.
2. If you bottle using raw sugar, it doesn't taste right... no matter how much you try to tell yourself it will give it a "spicy" flavor.
3. The lemon juice really matters. How much to use ... that's still a developing art. I'm wavering currently at about a cup in 1.5 gallons of water.
4. The amount of sugar when you bottle ... it's about taste. Do you want a sweet ginger beer? 6 cups. Do you want it a bit more "burney"? Try four.
5. Test a bottle every day from the fourth day on. I left the last batch in there a week. I lost five bottles to overcarbonation. Five good bottles blew their tops when I opened them.
6. Ginger beer floats are really good. Like ... REALLY good. Yum!

This is all good, but what have I got left to try?

1. Fresh ginger. I read somewhere if you peel it, you can puree it with a quarter cup of water, and that it will yield a spicier brew. Count me in!
2. Vanilla. That (who am I kidding that it was just one?!?) ginger beer float was FANTASTIC. I'm thinking adding some vanilla when I bottle could help? Otherwise, I need to figure out how to make a "cream soda"... because ginger cream soda would rock hard!
3. Lime. I'm really thinking I want to try lime instead of lemon, and lime as well as lemon.
4. Turbo Brew. This is so top secret I shouldn't even be talking about it yet. If it works ... it will be huge. Well, huge to me.

I also knocked up some Lemon Lime soda tonight. 3 quarts water, 3 cups of sugar. 1 cup of lemon juice. 1/2 cup of lime juice. 1/2 tsp champagne yeast in 1/2 cup warm water with some sugar to help activate it. I'll have to wait a few days to see how it tastes - really excited about this one too as it was a completely original "recipe".

That's enough for now. Happy drinking!

The yeast is still alive :)

I keep adding sugar each night, and also a little ginger. It took about 20 minutes to start bubbling again tonight - I the yeast had died. In fact, I was about to dump it out, but came back to the computer to search for a more conclusive way to test it, and for a better way to start the next batch... it was only when I went back to actually dump it that I heard that characteristic bubbling like a freshly opened can of coke.

For a week that started out so badly, this week has potential after all.

Last time I made ginger beer I somehow had trouble starting the yeast. That made me a little nervous tonight, because I couldn't remember why. I just remember that there was no yeast activity. It is possible that perhaps I just added too little yeast. Tonight, my yeast started in about five minutes... it was quite surprising, and honestly a fun show!

To start the yeast, I got mixed one cup of warm water, seven tablespoons of sugar, along with one and a half tablespoons of ground ginger. Warm water is loosely defined as just slightly cooler than skin temperature. I put it in a clean glass jar, mixed it up with a forg and draped a wash cloth over the opening.

I wasn't sure what to look for to see that the yeast had started, so I kept it on the desk next to me. At first after a minute, there was a tiny haze of bubbles over the surface. I was a bit excited, but I wasn't sure if this was it "working", or if it was just from stirring. A few minutes later it started to really work in what I would describe as "blooming". Little eruptions of bubbles jetted to the surface, blooming small platelets of bubble islands.

It was kind of amazing to see for the first time... I suppose people that do this all the time would be bored by it, but it seemed almost miraculous to me. Watching the bubbles surface like mini volcanic eruptions was immensely satisfying despite only having added sugar and water was mesmirizing.

Too late, I realize I was only supposed to add one teaspoon of sugar. The way this recipe is written is confusing because it lists the entire weeks worth of ingredients in the "Plant" section. I almost added 7 times too much ginger too. Before I use this recipe again I am going to write it out my own way to prevent the confusion.