When I was a child my dad made the best non-alcoholic ginger beer in the whole neighbourhood. He'd feed the plant with ginger and sugar every day for a week, then we'd all gather on the weekend and bottle it. I can remember many a bottle exploding in the middle of the night because it was overloaded with fizz.

I've decided to start making it myself and although I remember we put in ginger and sugar, I can't remember what else. I do however seem to remember my dad using sultanas where-as I'm finding all the modern recipes use yeast instead.

Does anyone have a good recipe for a mother plant to get me started? I want the non alcoholic one please.

I have no idea what you are talking about! Going to have Google that.

I'm wondering if this is a "Down Under" thing, or whether you know it by a different name.

Here's what I remember:

For the mother plant you add ground ginger, sugar and water, and I remember sultanas. The recipes I find now add yeast and no sultanas, but I know my dad didn't use yeast.

Every day for a week you feed the plant with ginger and sugar. At the end of the week you strain the mother plant, then add sugar, water and lemon juice to half of the plant to make up your ginger ale.

After making up your ginger beer/ale, you use the other half to start all over again.

Does that help?

I think the word plant was throwing me completely. When I googled it, no help at all for what you need. Still looking.

My grandma used to make non alc Ginger Beer too...sure wish I had her recipe. We would arrive for Christmas and find homemade ginger beer and ginger snaps waiting.....yummmmmm

I call 'REAL ginger beer plant' the version that uses a gelatinous cluster similar to water kefir. Real GBP is made up of yeast and bacteria. Here is some background info taken from my website retro-culture dot com. I'm trying to post pictures / video but as this I'm new here I'm not allowed to post links / images / video.

Overview
Perhaps it's best to start by explaining what real ginger beer is not! Cans of ginger beer in shops are not real ginger beer. These are made fizzy by adding carbon dioxide, do not contain only pure, natural ingredients and there is no alcohol content. Some manufacturers sell 'botanical' ginger beer, or 'starter kits' for ginger beer. These are yeast-based products. Generally, if a description mentions brewers yeast, then you're not looking at real ginger beer plant, but a simulacrum.

Ginger beer plant is an organism which, when treated correctly, will help provide you with a lifetime's supply of real, old-fashioned ginger beer. Below we explain a little about the origins of the plant and describe the basic care.

Origins
Around in the UK from at least the 1700's, and passed from person to person, the ginger beer plant's origins were shrouded in mystery. To some extend they still are, but now at least we know what real ginger beer plant is. We have Harry Marshall Ward (a man with a singularly impressive moustache) to thank for solving some of the mysteries of the ginger beer plant. It took him many years, but he was able to determine that the plant is a "composite organism consisting of a fungus, the yeast Saccharomyces florentinus (formerly Saccharomyces pyriformis) and the bacterium Lactobacillus hilgardii (formerly Brevibacterium vermiforme)". It forms a gelatinous cluster which moves about within its jar rather like lava in a lava lamp! You can visit the gallery to see what the ginger beer plant looks like.

If we look back just one or two generations, most households had a ginger beer plant on their kitchen windowsill. Ask your older relatives and you'll often hear that spark of recognition as they remember that their great aunt always had a jar filled with a glorious golden liquid which would be tapped and drunk by the eager kids. As shop-bought fizzy pop increased in popularity, people forgot about the ginger beer plant and instead drank sugary chemical concoctions from multi-national corporations. Thankfully people are now realising that the old ways had merit and are thinking about brewing their own real ginger beer.

I am not certain, but this sounds a bit like what I am looking for - but let me tell you my story of how I know about this.
When I was a nipper our farming household had what they called an ale plant. It was of a semi-gelatinous consistency, somewhat friable, pale in colour and rather wispy around the edges (like cotton wool filaments embedded in a thick gelatinous matrix). It was kept in an old "sweetie jar" (one of those glass jars with 4 sides and a black bakelite-type screw-on cap) and floated in a starter-mixture of sugar and molasses with some flavourings added (such as ginger or lemon, or both). When I say floated, it actually sank to the bottom when first added, at the point where the molasses-sugar mix was replenished, but slowly floated upwards as small bubbles gathered around it. The bubbles would slowly get bigger, eventually coalescing into larger bubbles; when one or more of the bubbles lost their grip on the "blob" they would gurgle up to the top and the "blob" would then sink part way down the jar until, when more bubbles formed, it was floated upwards to the surface again.
The 'ale' was poured off every few days (5 - 10 or more depending on ambient temperatures, summer, winter etc) and the fluid then replenished with fresh starter mixture again.
The gelatinous blob would slowly grow bigger over time (and sometimes small pieces broke off) and parts were also deliberately broken off and either given away to others (neighbours, cousins, aunts etc) or discarded.
The drink was looked on as a health drink. Alcohol content was probably very low and it was judged ready to drink when the sweetness of the liquor was almost non-detectable.
Can you please tell me if you know where I could possibly find this "ale plant" nowadays. The one my family had, was gifted from a friend of the family who lived in Co Fermanagh (NI) many, many years ago
With thanks, Bill Kirk

Welcome snipe816.

Hi Bill,
welcome to the NeuroTalk Support Groups.

I've no idea where you could get one really, but you could perhaps grow your own.

What exactly did it taste like, do you remember?

Some bakers make their own yeast 'plants'. I came across one who used potatoes, raisins, salt and sugar.

There's also kombucha, but you didn't mention tea as an ingredient.

Only thing I'd be worried about these days is consuming some sort of icky contamination. I didn't think about that as much when I was a child.

Your recipe does sound different to the Ginger Ale/Beer I was after Bill, although the concept sounds much the same. Maybe you could start your own plant.