# An Easier Way To Make Ginger Beer



## peterhop (12/7/10)

The traditional process for making ginger beer is:
1 Maintain a ginger beer starter
2 Steep ginger and citrus zest in warm water
3 Open ferment the zesty water, citrus juice, sugar, ginger and some of the starter
4 Bottle and store in frig when carbed up
I found I could not make too much at a time, because it got overcarbonated easily, and so it was time consuming to have a regular supply. 

It occurred to me that the above steps could be combined to this:
1 Make a starter and put it in a container - I use a 2 L glass jar, but a 2 or 3 L jug would be ideal
2 Add citrus juice, sugar, ginger (grated root or powder) and top up with water (I don't use citrus zest now as it takes too long to cut)
3 Stir, cover loosely and ferment for a day or so at room temperature
4 To drink, pour into glasses and fish any root ginger out with a fork
5 When about a quarter is left, go back to step 2 (a layer of what I assume is dead yeast accumulates at the bottom - discard every few weeks)

This is working well during our 8 to 15 degree winter. The drink is cool, spicy, slightly sweet, slightly sour, with a gentle carbonation. I prefer it to the ginger beer I made by the traditional way, which seemed too cold and too frothy.


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## Wolfy (12/7/10)

That works well if you're talking about the type of yeasty Ginger Beer starter that is often grown and propagated in a jar over multiple generations.

Personally, for (mostly) non alcoholic Ginger Beer I use my 'real' Ginger Beer Plant (_a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, that forms a gelatinous substance, much like kefir grains and tibicos_, description stolen from Wiki) but follow mostly the same steps you've outlined in your alternate approach.
However, I prefer it to be slightly carbonated, and mostly un-yeast-tasting, so after fermenting for a day or few, I bottle the GB into plastic PET bottles, let it carbonate for another day or so and then store it in the fridge to let the yeast settle out.

For alcoholic Ginger Beer, I think the best approach is to simply brew it much like beer, and add a set quantity of yeast directly to the mixed Ginger Beer 'wort', there are quite a few recipes in this forum that do exactly that.


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