Beer is done. We’ve drunk it, put it in kegs, and used it to augment our enjoyment of everything from table tennis to the month of October. What else can we do with it? Answer: nothing. Beer is the modern-day recumbent bicycle—anachronistic, fetishistic, and favored by people who don’t own a television.
Ginger beer, on the other hand, is on the come. We’ve just started to figure out what it can do. Dark and Stormys are yummy, but they’re just the opening salvo, the first paragraph of our ginger Jules Verne. It can, however, be hard to find—especially the high-quality/not-in-an-orange-aluminum-can stuff.
Fortunately, ginger beer is cheap and easy to make at home. It does need to rest for 48 hours, which is just enough time to dispose (one way or another) of all that regular beer that’s clogging up the fridge. A couple of the things I needed were hard to find: I had to get champagne yeast from a home brew specialty store (although it can be ordered online), and I had to search for a bottlecap or cork combination that would ensure an appropriately tight seal. Once those items were in hand, the rest was a breeze—almost as easy as popping the top on one of those orange cans.
Step #1 DISSOLVE IT
Step #2 ▼
Here’s the one bit of actual cooking: whipping up a quick simple syrup. Heat ½ cup sugar and ½ cup water together on the stove over medium heat. Once the sugar dissolves, set the mixture aside to cool—it should be at room temperature when it’s mixed with the other ingredients.
Step #2 JUICE IT
Step #3 ▼
While the simple syrup cools, carefully measure out the needed amounts of all the other ingredients: ginger juice, lemon juice, yeast. It’s important to be precise: Just a slight deviation from the recipe will impact the flavor of the ginger beer. Ginger juice, if you were wondering, is literally just liquid extracted from fresh ginger—just place a bunch of freshly grated ginger in a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl, and press on it with a wooden spoon to extract the juices.
Step #3 POUR IT
Step #4 ▼
Once the simple syrup has cooled to room temperature, use a funnel to pour it into a 22-ounce bottle. Then add the ginger juice and the lemon juice.
Step #4 PINCH IT
Step #5 ▼
Finally, add a pinch of champagne yeast to the bottle. For this drink, a pinch should consist of around 25 yeast crystals. Now, you might be asking, why champagne yeast? Well, for starters, it’s sturdy, it hasn’t failed me yet, and it’s inexpensive. I pay about a buck for a packet that will make five gallons of this stuff. I’ve never tried making ginger beer with any other kind of yeast—honestly, I took it on recommendation from a friend and never messed with the recipe since.
Step #5 FILL IT
Step #6 ▼
After making several batches of inadequately carbonated ginger beer, I discovered that the bottle needs to be completely full of liquid before it’s sealed. Oxygen hinders carbonation, so add lukewarm tap water to the brim to displace the air and fill the bottle.
Step #6 CAP IT
Step #7 ▼
Here’s the most important part: seal the bottle tightly. I tried sealing with all shapes and sizes of corks, caps, and toppers with varying degrees of success; in the end, a bottle capper worked best.
Step #7 CHILL IT
And that’s pretty much it. Shake the bottle well to mix up all of the ingredients, then store it in a warm dark place for exactly 48 hours. When time is up, move the bottle to your refrigerator to stop fermentation. Once the ginger beer is chilled, well… I like to mix up a Dark and Stormy, kick back, and think of all the things my brew can do that regular beer can’t.
About the Author: Chris Dudley
5 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Nice recipe but what you are really doing is making good old fashioned soda not beer.
This recipe should have a warning label on it. If you do not chill, and keep chilled, your bottles at the 48 hour point the yeast will continue to convert the sugar to alcohol and CO2 and your bottles could explode.
To help avoid costs in your recipe I’d recommend you use bakers yeast instead of champagne yeast. Champagne yeast is very good at surviving in a high alcohol environment. You may only be getting to 1-2% alcohol with this recipe and the brewers yeast would do just fine.
A suggestion instead of using bottles you need to cap or cork. Reuse french sparkling lemon-aid flip-top bottles.
I use them to make home made beer and they are reusable.
Most discount grocery stores sell it.
I’ve made some ginger beer quite a few times, and here are two very helpful tricks I’ve come up with.
1) I usually make ginger syrup in large quantities then save it in small empty jam jars. That way I can make it when ever I want.
2) Bottling the brew can be tricky. There is the obvious risk of the bottles breaking, and then the disappointment of a non-carbonated brew. To avoid these problems I brew my bottles in super clean used 1 Liter PET bottles (plastic sparking water bottles). The bottles are very resistant to high pressure and even if they do break you won’t have all that dangerous broken glass. SO, what you do is put the pre-bottled brew in a plastic bottle, leaving about an inch of head space. Then right before you put the cap on you very carefully squeeze the air out of the bottle and tightly screw the cap on. This eliminates the problem of having oxygen in the bottle. It also affords you the advantage of actually seeing the progress of your fermentation. You can see the bottle inflate as it carbonates. That way you place the bottle in the fridge when it is fully carbonated and looks and feels like a regular coke bottle. The main disadvantage to this is the lack of aesthetic appeal.
While I must fully disagree with your views on beer being “anachronistic, fetishistic, and favored by people who don’t own a television,” I can respect the opinion and only suggest you look at the work of Sean Z. Paxton for proof of the extreme versatility of the world’s most popular alcoholics beverage. Hope your ginger beer turns out well!
So, how much alcohol is in this? am I going to get the kid’s tipsy???
The amount of alcohol it *can* produce depends on the amouint of sugar and yeast. If you follow this recipe and the timing instructions, any alcohol should be negligible (if there is *any*).