My Granny Lee was quite famous for the home-made ginger beer that she made back in the 1950's.

She would always store the bottles in the garden shed. Occasionally the family would be awoken by loud explosions and crashing coming from the aforementioned shed. She would say "oh dear" as she remembered the bottles fermenting on the shelves.

The moral of the story is that It is critically important to release the gasses from time to time when creating fermented concoctions.

Fast forward almost seventy years later and I've become known for doing the same thing on occasion. It can be quite a tense homesteading moment when you have to remove a few bottles that did not explode, but are likely going to at any moment. It's such a victory to come out of a messy bottle bombing unscathed!

Ginger beer isn't an alcoholic drink, it's a delicious ginger soda and far better than the commercial "ginger ale" you can buy at the grocery store. You can of course make an alcoholic version if you feel the urge.

In addition to the ginger beer I decided to try my hand at making some wild yeasts and I also strained some yoghurt to make yoghurt cheese. The whey from the yoghurt is also a wonderful way to make really simple fermented soda's. You can read about that in the following posts:

• Lacto-Fermented Soda Using Whey Part 1: How To Make It

• Lacto-Fermented Soda Using Whey Part 2 : How It Went

Ginger Beer

I have tried several recipes to try and recreate Granny Lee's famous ginger beer and decided to give it another go today. I've been working my way through the book 'The Wildcrafting Brewer' by Pascal Baudar (amazon affiliate link) and I am thoroughly impressed with the recipes and directions provided.

I used his recipe to make my ginger beer today. The ingredients are so darn simple and with no preservatives or other chemically ingredients you really can't go wrong. I do recommend reading more about fermentation before starting a recipe like this one.

Ingredients

284g sugar
2 ounces chopped ginger
2 lemons
1 gallon purified water
wild yeast (or wine yeast)

Directions

• Chop up the ginger, bring the sugar and water to a boil, remove from heat. Add lemon and ginger.
• Allow to cool to 21C degrees, add your proofed yeast, cover and allow to steep for two days. Stir twice daily.
• Strain and pour into sterilized bottles.
• Check the pressure/fermentation activity every ten hours or so and when the fizz is to your linking refrigerate to slow the fermentation. You will still need to check the bottles and release some gasses once in a while. Unlike store bought soda, you've created something "alive" that needs a bit more attention.

Note: The recipe did not say how much yeast, I just added 1/4 sachet of wine yeast.

Plastic bottles - word of warning

When you are new to fermentation or experimenting with new recipes it is best to use plastic bottles because you can easily feel the pressure and you know what you are dealing with. It's also a lot safer than glass. There are entire sections in the book devoted to explaining carbonation and how to manage it! I find it all really fascinating.

Wild Yeasts

Self reliance is a big focus for us and creating wild yeast is something I've been meaning to play with for a while. Once I've figured it out, it should be a lot like keeping a sourdough starter going. This will provide a continual supply of yeast for our wild crafted wines, sodas and other ferments that need an extra boost of yeast.

For now, using the same book for my recipes, I've started two small batches to see how each performs. The first with spruce tips and the second with dandelion blossoms. There is quite a range of ingredient that you can forage to make wild yeast including: grapes, plums and other fruit with a white bloom, organic ginger, some berries, some tree barks, unripe pine cones and many other items.

The basic ratio is 20 percent sugar or honey to 80 percent water. Add your wild ingredients to a sterilized jar, close the lid, shake well and then loosen the lid. 3-4 times a day tighten the lid, shake and then loosen it again. You can also keep feeding this concoction with some sugar to create a continuous yeast. I won't go into details on that being as I haven't reached that stage bit I'll provide some updates on how this all progresses.

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