wildschwein
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This post is a copy and paste from a thread in another HB forum. Wanted to replicate it here for some more coverage.
I've been pondering writing a post on lacto-fermented soft drinks for quite a while, but I've been in beer mode and haven't done any homemade soft drinks for a year or so. However, the other day I was given a link in one of the forums to www.basicbrewing.com which is an American online HB site with lots of radio and video content. One of the 2006 archived radio programs had an interview with a guy called Raj Apte who has been messing around with an authenticate ginger beer plant he acquired from Germany. You can listen to this interview here Raj Apte interview. And there is some other stuff here PDF and here Fermented Treasures
After reading and hearing all this I was inspired to make another ginger beer plant, as I threw my other one out a while back and had forgotten about it. I just thought I'd use this post to share some of my experiences with home bred cultures and how I've used them to partly ferment and carbonate home brew soft drinks which are great if you have any citrus trees in your back yard. I've tried a couple of the commercial ginger beer home brew kits and was pretty unimpressed with the results as they taste like diet soft drinks, and I don't like fake sugar flavour. The following brews are not really geared towards large scale production, rather it's for small batches like 4-6L that are consumed within a week or two of bottling. Although you could do more if you want to feed a large crowd in the near future. The good things is that you can prepare it and have it ready faster the home brew beer.
To make a plant you need some type of unsprayed, uncleaned fresh or dried fruit. For the last plant I made I used 1/2 a handful of organic raisins placed in a clean jam jar covered them with cold water, left the lid slightly ajar and then left it near a sunny window (lactobacillus like light, yeast doesn't) for about five days. After this period I strained the water into another jar and added a teaspoon of dried ginger (you can use grated fresh ginger too) and 2 teaspoons of sugar. The sugar feeds the culture, which should be a mixture of lactobacillus and some wild yeasts which will largely be suppressed by the bacteria. In winter the plant needs to be fed 1/2 teaspoon of ginger and 1 teaspoon of sugar every 2-3 days in order to keep it lively. In summer it will need to be feed more often as it is more active in warmer weather. Malt extract will give the culture a more nutritional feed. The plant I made the other day was made by picking a mandarin from a tree in the back yard covering it with water and a dissolved teaspoon of malt extract and following the same procedure as above for the raisins. Any fresh untreated fruit will give you a similar result to using organic raisins. Treated fruits usually have been soaked in bleach solutions which will have killed off many of the wild yeasts and bacterias present on the skins.
So what do you do with the plant? Other than keeping it fed I use it to partly ferment home made soft drinks. For around 6L of ginger beer I usually juice and zest about 6 smallish lemons, or oranges (whatever is on the trees out the back), fresh grated ginger if I have some, and add quite a bit of sugar, a teaspoon of cream of tarter, some boiling water to dissolve the sugar and extract the citrus oils, plus whatever cold water is needed to make up to 6L. I usually do this mix by taste to get the sweetness I'm after. Obviously less sugar more citrus gives you a tarter result.
I then funnel the drink mix into PET bottles or clear plastic soft drink bottles which have been cleaned in very hot water. I would never use glass for this and ultra-careful sanatation is not that important because we're not dealing here with long storage times like we are with beer. The bottles are filled, leaving about 2 inches of head space. I then pour the liquid off the top of the ginger beer plant through a funnel to distribute it evenly amongst the bottles. The dried ginger sediment that is left behind in the jar is the plant. To keep it going for the next batch I add some more cold water (about 1/2-3/4 cup) to it plus a teaspoon or so of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of dried ginger. All the bottles are then capped but only loosely. This is important, as they will explode if left for a while to carb up at room temperature. Leaving them loosely capped allows fermentation to take place and let the excess CO2 vent out. For a sweet soft drink 2-4 days fermentation in winter in a warmish, well lit place is more than enough. I seal the bottle lids tightly and allow them to carbonate fully for a about a day, but no longer. Checking the bottle for hardness is a good way to see if it's carbed up. Hard bottle = good carbonation. In summer all of this happens in less time. Then I refrigerate before serving. Cooling the ginger beer down is a very good idea before opening otherwise it can gush. Once refrigerated the lactobacillus becomes inactive, and the wild yeasts will often back off too and you can keep the drink in the fridge for about week. It's not advisable to leave it any longer though unless you let off some excess pressure by quickly undoing the lid to vent off the excess CO2. This is a good way to regulate the pressure in the bottles. But the contents should be cold or they will defintely gush. The bit of head space in the bottle gives me some time to quickly twist the cap back to the closed position if the brew tries to escape.
Although this all sounds very backyard and esoteric (i don't make regular beer like this) these ideas presented here actually do work well and the taste of the drink is far superior to commercial home brew ginger beer kits IMO. Sourdough breads are actually made with very similar cultures to this and in Europe there are certain bakeries which have been using the same strains for over 200 years. I have also made lemonades and orangeades from the same plant by using more citrus juice in the mix. After a certain amount of use and refeeding the plant's properties became more stable as one type of culture in the mix becomes dominant over the others. Exposure to sunlight will aid lactobacillus development and help to suppress any wild yeasts present in the blend.
I've been pondering writing a post on lacto-fermented soft drinks for quite a while, but I've been in beer mode and haven't done any homemade soft drinks for a year or so. However, the other day I was given a link in one of the forums to www.basicbrewing.com which is an American online HB site with lots of radio and video content. One of the 2006 archived radio programs had an interview with a guy called Raj Apte who has been messing around with an authenticate ginger beer plant he acquired from Germany. You can listen to this interview here Raj Apte interview. And there is some other stuff here PDF and here Fermented Treasures
After reading and hearing all this I was inspired to make another ginger beer plant, as I threw my other one out a while back and had forgotten about it. I just thought I'd use this post to share some of my experiences with home bred cultures and how I've used them to partly ferment and carbonate home brew soft drinks which are great if you have any citrus trees in your back yard. I've tried a couple of the commercial ginger beer home brew kits and was pretty unimpressed with the results as they taste like diet soft drinks, and I don't like fake sugar flavour. The following brews are not really geared towards large scale production, rather it's for small batches like 4-6L that are consumed within a week or two of bottling. Although you could do more if you want to feed a large crowd in the near future. The good things is that you can prepare it and have it ready faster the home brew beer.
To make a plant you need some type of unsprayed, uncleaned fresh or dried fruit. For the last plant I made I used 1/2 a handful of organic raisins placed in a clean jam jar covered them with cold water, left the lid slightly ajar and then left it near a sunny window (lactobacillus like light, yeast doesn't) for about five days. After this period I strained the water into another jar and added a teaspoon of dried ginger (you can use grated fresh ginger too) and 2 teaspoons of sugar. The sugar feeds the culture, which should be a mixture of lactobacillus and some wild yeasts which will largely be suppressed by the bacteria. In winter the plant needs to be fed 1/2 teaspoon of ginger and 1 teaspoon of sugar every 2-3 days in order to keep it lively. In summer it will need to be feed more often as it is more active in warmer weather. Malt extract will give the culture a more nutritional feed. The plant I made the other day was made by picking a mandarin from a tree in the back yard covering it with water and a dissolved teaspoon of malt extract and following the same procedure as above for the raisins. Any fresh untreated fruit will give you a similar result to using organic raisins. Treated fruits usually have been soaked in bleach solutions which will have killed off many of the wild yeasts and bacterias present on the skins.
So what do you do with the plant? Other than keeping it fed I use it to partly ferment home made soft drinks. For around 6L of ginger beer I usually juice and zest about 6 smallish lemons, or oranges (whatever is on the trees out the back), fresh grated ginger if I have some, and add quite a bit of sugar, a teaspoon of cream of tarter, some boiling water to dissolve the sugar and extract the citrus oils, plus whatever cold water is needed to make up to 6L. I usually do this mix by taste to get the sweetness I'm after. Obviously less sugar more citrus gives you a tarter result.
I then funnel the drink mix into PET bottles or clear plastic soft drink bottles which have been cleaned in very hot water. I would never use glass for this and ultra-careful sanatation is not that important because we're not dealing here with long storage times like we are with beer. The bottles are filled, leaving about 2 inches of head space. I then pour the liquid off the top of the ginger beer plant through a funnel to distribute it evenly amongst the bottles. The dried ginger sediment that is left behind in the jar is the plant. To keep it going for the next batch I add some more cold water (about 1/2-3/4 cup) to it plus a teaspoon or so of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of dried ginger. All the bottles are then capped but only loosely. This is important, as they will explode if left for a while to carb up at room temperature. Leaving them loosely capped allows fermentation to take place and let the excess CO2 vent out. For a sweet soft drink 2-4 days fermentation in winter in a warmish, well lit place is more than enough. I seal the bottle lids tightly and allow them to carbonate fully for a about a day, but no longer. Checking the bottle for hardness is a good way to see if it's carbed up. Hard bottle = good carbonation. In summer all of this happens in less time. Then I refrigerate before serving. Cooling the ginger beer down is a very good idea before opening otherwise it can gush. Once refrigerated the lactobacillus becomes inactive, and the wild yeasts will often back off too and you can keep the drink in the fridge for about week. It's not advisable to leave it any longer though unless you let off some excess pressure by quickly undoing the lid to vent off the excess CO2. This is a good way to regulate the pressure in the bottles. But the contents should be cold or they will defintely gush. The bit of head space in the bottle gives me some time to quickly twist the cap back to the closed position if the brew tries to escape.
Although this all sounds very backyard and esoteric (i don't make regular beer like this) these ideas presented here actually do work well and the taste of the drink is far superior to commercial home brew ginger beer kits IMO. Sourdough breads are actually made with very similar cultures to this and in Europe there are certain bakeries which have been using the same strains for over 200 years. I have also made lemonades and orangeades from the same plant by using more citrus juice in the mix. After a certain amount of use and refeeding the plant's properties became more stable as one type of culture in the mix becomes dominant over the others. Exposure to sunlight will aid lactobacillus development and help to suppress any wild yeasts present in the blend.
:super:
