GINGER BEER RECIPES

Home Made Ginger Beer

When I was a girl growing  up in the 1950’s we always knew as summer approached our mother would make a big batch of homemade ginger beer. A lovely refreshing soda pop with all the sweetness of carbonated drinks and the quick bite of ginger. It was wonderful.

There were no plastic bottles in those days. Everything, absolutely everything came in glass or tins. Mum used to use dads beer bottles. They were big brown glass bottles. She would buy new caps and she had a special capper that she used to put them on with a sharp quick tap of a hammer. How she didn’t break I don’t know but she was very adept at it.

Mum would first make a culture commonly called the “ginger beer plant”.  It would sit and bubble away on the kitchen shelf for weeks until it was ready. Mum would “feed it” each day with more ginger and sugar.

When it was ready a big processing day was held and she would fill the bottles. It was very hard to contain our eagerness for it to be ready.

Because of ginger beers volatility we used to store it in the laundry. In those days the laundry consisted of a large old copper for boiling sheets and two sturdy thick cement water troughs for general washing. There was a big gap under the troughs and that is where we would store the bottle of ginger beer until they were ready. It was the perfect place to keep them as it was cool.

As we waited for the ginger beer to ferment we would hear the inevitable explosion of the first bottle to tell us the ginger beer soda pop was ready.  We would be happy jumping up and down but mum would get a bit upset knowing she had a clean up as the brew was ready. Into the fridge it would go to get really cold where it would be eagerly awaited by three little girls. It was so special because in those days cooldrink as we called it was only had on special occasions. Nothing like today where it is an everyday item in most fridges.

Homemade ginger beer is so refreshing and relatively easy to make so the effort is well worth it.

This site will consist of my mum’s recipe and all the others she and I have gathered over the years. I will also link to other sites on the web when I think they have a great recipe to try.

I hope you will try some of these recipes for a very refreshing drink all year round.