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.

http://www.forgreenies.com/how-to-ma...1#comment-2714
Rob
November 11, 2011 at 9:06 pm

After I logged off, I had a thought that the C.W.A. (country women's assoc.) would probably have something.

[We used to call it a ginger beer bug btw. lol Maybe just a FNQ term. ]


Here is a post from bestrecipes from an old C.W.A. cookbook.
http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/forums...71&postcount=3

No yeast in that.

Koala, be really careful where you store it once bottled.
I recall in Cairns the bottles used to be stored under our old Queenslander which was probably the coolest place but they still used to explode from time to time. You probably have a good temperature right now in Tassie for doing it before it gets too hot. I liked the idea of using an esky that I read on one post somewhere. If one explodes it's contained.

Thank you Alffe for doing that search for me, but Lara has found what I was looking for.

That's the one Lara! Thank you very much.

I had looked on the Internet but they all use yeast now and I remember my dad using sultanas and no yeast. Some of his bottles would explode anyway and I would not want to try adding yeast to an already potent brew.

Also, I was wondering if one used yeast would not that make the brew alcoholic?

After posting this thread, I'm now assuming this drink must be a UK delicacy especially as Chemar knows it, and Alffe's reference bears that out. Anyway.... thank you very much Lara for the recipe. Am now looking forward to quenching my thirst on a hot and humid summer's day.

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Yum!

Have fun preparing. Very nostalgic for me.



p.s. I just checked your temp in your sig. and notice you have East Australian time. I'm on that and you are Eastern Daylight Savings Time. lol