Ginger Beer Plant

Meet Ginger, the ginger beer plant.

We made her by adding half an ounce of baking yeast to 3/4 pint of warm water, 2 tsps sugar and 2 tsps ground ginger in a roomy bowl. Then we covered her with a clean cloth. See how much she had grown half an hour later.

We'll feed her every day for a week with a teaspoonful of sugar and a teaspoonful of ground ginger, and keep her warm and covered.

After a week, we'll strain her and add the liquid to 24oz of sugar, 2 pints of water and the juice of 2 lemons. Then we'll add 5 more pints of water and mix well. Then we'll bottle her in clean screw top bottles and store her in a cool place.

I'm pretty sure this was mum's ginger beer technique. I got it from Marguerite Patten's book 500 Recipes for Home-Made Wines and Drinks, which mum had. And I remember helping mum make and feed her ginger beer plants. The "beer" is only weakly alcoholic - the main point of the yeast is to make it fizzy and extract the flavour, not to make alcohol - so this drink is perfectly suitable for children. I think there's a way of dividing the plant at the end so you make a batch of ginger beer and keep the plant going for the next batch. I need to do a bit of research and find out how to do that, because it isn't mentioned in the book.

I'll keep you posted about Ginger's progress. Watch this space.