Home made ginger beer - ginger ale
 

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. :eek:

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! :D Going to have Google that. :hug:

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. :hug:

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

Still looking for a recipe
 

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.

mother plant
 

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. :D

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.

Yum!

Have fun preparing. Very nostalgic for me.

:hug:

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

LOL. I'd best go fix that. I forget that your state is an hour behind the rest of us :D

Behind in some ways, ahead in others.

Beautiful one day, perfect the next. :p

Funny I find this post... I just bought an old cookbook from a thrift store that had a Ginger Beer recipe. It is different, doesn't use the sultanas. One thing it does mention is do not use plastic containers to make or store it. Apparently it will take on the taste of the plastic.

Sounds like a fun project to try with my son who loves ginger ale!

Good luck with it 2K2C. It's really yummy and so refreshing on a hot day. BTW.... it's yummy on a cold day too, LOL :D

If you do make your own you need air tight caps when you bottle it, just like those on bottles of lager ... otherwise you'll lose the fizz or worse, the tops will blow off. :rolleyes:

When ready to drink (after about a week) your ginger beer will be fizzy/carbonated just like coca cola and such that you buy. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. :)

Dear Koala, Just wondering how the ginger beer is going? Were you able to get it made? I just realized that maybe you were doing some for the 25th?

No Lara, sadly I haven't got a brew ready for Christmas. :(
I've been too busy to make it so far but I hope to have my first bottle chilling soon.

Ale Plant or Ginger Ale Plant
 

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. :Wave-Hello:

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.

Your comments regarding ale plant are exactly what I remember from my Fermanagh home over 50 years ago. I can recall a fungus much like a small piece of sponge that floated in a large sweetie jar in our kitchen window.

My father used to drain off the very light brown coloured water which he called "ale plant". The sweetie jar was then replenished with sugar and a few spoons of treacle, which may have been mixed in warm water prior to adding. The jar then was topped up with cold water, leaving at least an inch below the lid. It was a really refreshing drink.

I have been attempting on and off for almost 20 years to locate anyone with ale plant who could give me a few "seeds" (as the pieces dropping off the fungus were called) without any sucess. I have tried a BBC Ulster radio show where it was mentioned on air and also tried "Ireland's Own" magazine to no avail.

Is there anyone out there who can make an old man happy and allow me to revive a family tradition and pass it on to my family to preserve for future generations?

Welcome RunningRed1. :Wave-Hello: