Nothing beats a homemade recipe. Ginger beer packs a flavor like sweet soda with a hot kick that hit the throat in a pleasant way. A glass of chilled ginger beer on a hot afternoon is just what you need as you soak up some Vitamin D.
To make ginger beer you first need to make a ginger bug, this will ferment the beer and make it bubbly.
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To make a ginger bug you basically grate up a tablespoon of ginger, combine it with a tablespoon of sugar and 1 cup or so of water and feed your bug more ginger and sugar daily for 5-6 days until it bubbles vigorously, smells yeasty and the ginger floats. At that point, you can start your ginger beer.
Ginger Beer Recipe
Ingredients
6 inches of organic ginger
1 cup sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cup liquid from a mature ginger bug
10 cups water
Directions
1. Cut up about six inches of organic ginger into 1/8-inch slices. You may want your ginger beer less or more spicy. You don’t have to peel the ginger.
2. Place the ginger and three cups of the water in a pot. Bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.
3. While your ginger simmers, stir your ginger bug up. Be sure to incorporate all the white yeasty residue at the bottom of your ginger bug container into the liquid.
4. When the ginger has finished simmering, strain out the ginger pieces. You’ll have less liquid than you started with, maybe only a cup or cup and a half.
5. Stir sugar into ginger water. After the sugar dissolves, add room temperature water until you have about 8 cups total. You can make a big vat of ginger water in a large pot but it will take a while to cool down. YOU MUST LET IT COOL BEFORE PROCEEDING TO THE NEXT STEP. Heat will kill your microbes and your ginger beer won’t ferment.
6. Once your mixture has cooled to room temperature, add the liquid you strained off your bug.
7. Pour the mixture into clean, flip-top bottles. Set them aside for a period from a few days to a week before transferring to the refrigerator.
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Note: The carbon dioxide building up in the bottles can cause the bottles explode. Open your bottles by rocking the lids back and forth gently and slowly to let out carbon dioxide every few days.
Happy brewing and enjoy.
PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Geraud pfeiffer & Ketut Subiyanto:
