http://www.instructables.com/id/The-REAL-ginger-beer-recipe/
intro:
The REAL ginger beer recipe!
Oh how so many people have been fooled into making authentic, real gingerbeer!Tsk tsk!Traditional ginger beer was made using a ginger beer plant. This is NOTsomething that you can easily make yourself - it must be possible to makeit yourself because someone hundreds of years ago by chance seems to havecreated it. If a recipe calls for yeast it is not REAL ginger beer!I have heard dark rumours that you can make one by blanching ginger andleaving it with wild yeasts to ferment (just like a sourdough starter).Why is this do you say? It's because a real ginger beer plant is asymbotic relationship between yeast and bacteria creating a unique flavouryou cannot achieve with just brewers or baking yeast.It is only in recent generations (read: 1887) that a gentleman calledHarry Marshall Ward looked into the sybiotic relationship and had he haveknown it was going to pretty much consume the rest of his life, he'dprobably not have bothered. He named the process 'symbotic fermentation'.I call it good beer!It is however extremely difficult to get ginger beer plant as its use hasalmost entirely died out. I assume from some of my research that it isdue to the WW2 where rationing made it almost impossible to maintain theplant. Some did survive however as there are small countries that stillbrew it traditionally and small internet shoppes which if you're lookingfor it will sell it to you - but be warned, there are those who arecashing in on your ignorance who sell you '100 generations old ginger beeryeast' which is for all intensive purposes, just yeast. Just old yeast...When a plant has made a batch, traditionally you could split it and giveit to friends, family or strange people on the internet.So the first thing you need to do is go forth, find a supplier. There area few links on Wikipedia (thanks to a bit of fervent editing I updated the page anonymously a few days ago). Go forth, make purchases or put begging commentsin the bottom of this instructable and when I've got enough, I'll do mybest to send some out.
Image Notes
1. Ginger Beer Plant. No, it wasn't supposed to be like a fish, it just came out of a square packet like that. Odd isn't it.
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