Saturday 26 March 2011

Homemade Ginger Beer

I am a big fan of ginger ale and ginger beer and ginger tea...ginger biscuits.....  This version of ginger beer is a  bit fizzy because it is lacto-fermented using whey.  It is full of natural ingredients and probiotics.  It is very easy to make and lasts for a while in the fridge.  You can add some homemade natural sugar syrup or stevia if it is not sweet enough to your taste.

The recipe is from Nourishing Traditions, and I found it on one of my favourite websites, The Nourishing Cook. 

You will need:

3/4 cup fresh ginger, peeled and chopped/grated
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/4-1/2 cup Rapadura (I used demerara because Rapadura is hard to find here in the UK)
1/4 cup whey
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 quarts filtered water

Mix all of the ingredients together and place in a 2 quart jar, leaving an inch of room at the top.  Cover and allow to ferment on your countertop for 2-3 days.  Store in the fridge.  According to Nourishing Traditions you can add some fizzy water to serve.  It is meant to be used slightly warm and consumed in small quantities at a time.  It will keep in the fridge for several months.

There are loads of other, very similar recipes available online.  There is one on Instructables.com which makes one quart if you feel that you want to make a smaller batch for your first efforts.  It uses honey, but needs 3-7 days to ferment.  This could produce too much CO2, so might need to be opened every couple of days.  And there are several recipes out there which do not require whey, which would be handy if you don't have any on hand.
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2 comments:

  1. amy@BreadandCircuses29 March 2011 at 12:54

    After two days this tastes rather salty and not gingery enough. We decided to leave it another day at least. And I want to research whether the salt is strictly necessary. My Other Half says it is fine, but I get the feeling I am meant to be gargling instead of drinking!

    He was worried about the small amount of sugar in it, but this seems to be fine. Will let you know how it is in a day or two.

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  2. amy@BreadandCircuses2 April 2011 at 14:10

    The next day we decided it still didn't have much flavour, but yeaterday it was really fizzy and the ginger was more pronounced. So it is now in the fridge. It tastes less salty and our testers say it could do with something to sweeten it. I don't think it needs to be sweeter, but is is easy to add some sugar syrup or something to it.

    I think that I will try to grate the ginger instead of just chopping it next time. And I still haven't found out if I could just put less salt in it.

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