Ginger + beer = awesome

While it nearly killed me, the pretzel adventure did set off something deep and primal inside me; a desire to stop buying what I can make.

This isn't the first time I have gone down this road. As soon as I moved from an apartment downtown into a house in the "burbs" I bought myself a box of beer, grabbed my yard tools, and built a vegetable garden. We didn't grow much that year, probably only enough for a few salads and a pot of French Onion soup, but I tells ya what, that was the best soup I have ever had. It tasted fresh, it tasted clean, it tasted like an accomplishment.

My most recent adventure into the world of DIY food began during a trip to the grocery store. As I bent down to grab a six-pack of my favorite ginger beer, I noticed something strange, the price had jumped up by almost three dollars! It was then and there that I decided I could make my own. Next stop, the produce department!

The principals behind beer aren't really that complex if we're honest. Take liquid, add yeast, add a source of food for the yeast, add flavour, wait. I had the liquid, in the form of distilled water at home, I had yeast, I had sugar, all I needed was some flavour, and since I was set on making ginger beer, that flavour would have to be ginger. lucky for me I live in the 21st century, and ginger is everywhere, including my grocery store.

Upon arriving home with my 800g "hand" of ginger, I put a pot of water on the stove, filled it with water and sugar and turned the heat up to fill whack, with the intention of making a simple syrup of course. The few sites I had consulted during past, when the urge to make ginger beer had taken hold recommended "steeping" the ginger in the syrup to extract the flavour, something that required turing my hand of ginger into many many small pieces of ginger. A task easier said than done.

If you have ever worked with ginger before, you probably know that it is a fibrous mass of watery pulp, and is not very conducive the normal methods of dispatching a rhizome. I tried grating, I tried chopping, I tried pounding, I even cried a little, but nothing seemed to work well. chopping left the pieces too big, grating too small, pounding really only gave me a store arm. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have elected to freeze the ginger, then grate it on the largest part of a box grater.

Following the fiasco that was reducing the ginger into a workable form I threw it into the pot with the syrup, slapped on the lid and let it sit for an hour. After a couple episodes of Alton Brown's Good Eats, which admittedly is where I got the majority of my ginger beer recipe, and once the child was down for a nap, I decided that the syrup had cooled enough to meet the rest of the ingredients.

Into a 2L pop bottle went the filtered syrup — nobody likes floating pieces of ginger in their ginger beer, especially considering the fact that most of the flavour had been extracted — a dime of yeast, some lemon juice, and enough filtered water — tap water contains chlorine, which kills yeast — to bring the level of liquid to the top, and on went the lid.

The bottle sat in my cupboard for two days, and I actually forgot about it, luckily I had a dream about exploding bottles of ginger beer one night, and sat bolt upright, remembering my concoction brewing in the kitchen.

Initial investigation revealed that my little yeast friends had done their best to ferment my ginger beer, turning the sugar in the bottel into alcohol and CO₂, as evidenced by the once flimsy bottle's newfound firmness, since it was filled like a balloon with CO₂. I cautiously opened the lid, and a flood of gas came rushing out at me, had I not screwed the lid back down I'm sure most of my beer would have ended up on the floor. Note to self, next time you make ginger beer, open over the sink.

After several gas letting sessions, or "burpings", involving opening the lid ever so slightly, then tightening it before any of the elixir could escape, I was able to take the lid entirely off, and sample my concoction for the first time.

The colour was similar to what I imagine a glass of half milk, half water would look like, kind of translucent, kinda opaque. Before the burping there had been yeast floating on top of the mix, along with some ginger which had stealthily made it through the strainer, but all that sunk to the bottom. It was time for the first taste.

I carefully drew a glass, pouring ever so slowly, lest I disturb the sediment on the bottom of the bottle, and cautiously put the glass to my lips. To my surprise it tasted good. Less sweet than I imagined, which I guess is a result of the fermentation consuming some of the sugar, and there was a definite hit of alcohol; without a hygrometer I can't be sure, but based on the taste, I would put the percentage somewhere around six or seven percent, more than a can of beer, but less than a glass of wine.

Disappointments? Well, the yeast I used was "instant yeast" which is packed with acetic acid to wake it up very quickly. Were I to do this again — a definite — I think I would go with either traditional bakers yeast, or a strain of brewers yeast. Secondly I would use a lot more ginger, and maybe extract it on the stove in the water, instead of in the syrup, I think this would really bring out the flavour of the ginger. And finally, I think the beer needs some more body, something carry the aromatic flavours of the ginger and lemon. Right now, I'm maybe thinking coriander, maybe maple, star anise or perhaps something as simple as letting the sugar in the syrup caramelize a little bit.

But for now, I have 2L of tasty ginger beer, which is very drinkable. The best part? The yeast in the bottom is still alive, so the bottle never goes flat!

Whoot!