I love all sorts of fermented beverages. Wine, mead, ale, spirits, I have my favorites in each category. With the exception of spirits, Oregon allows me to make what I like, and I can work with spirits as long as I buy my base alcohol from the liquor store. Just as well, as I've had moonshine that was good and some that was only suitable for paint stripper or fuel additive. Distilling spirits is not something I want to have to deal with anyway.
But as for fermented drinks, I'm all over that. Often, unless you're using expensive ingredients, making your own alcoholic beverages is very cost effective. I work a lot with wheat, and once it's mashed, I can feed the spent grains to my animals, so I get two uses out of the grain. I can make between 25 and 30 gallons of wheat ale from one 50# bag of wheat. Price 25 gallons of wheat beer. Even if you compost the spent grains (which make excellent compost, by the way), it's still much less expensive than buying that much beer at the store.
But even if you do use relatively expensive ingredients, such as ginger, it's still cost effective. I bought almost a pound of really nice fresh ginger from the store (non organic) at $3.99/lb. That amount of ginger will make 3 1/2 gallons of ginger beer. Price ginger beer from the store (if you can find it) and figure out how much 3 1/2 gallons will cost you. Probably a lot more than $3.99 plus a buck for the yeast and sugar.
The other nice thing about learning how to ferment your own beverages is that you can make things that you won't be able to find at the store. It's like cooking, once you learn the basics, the world is your oyster (or goblet in this case).
I'd been making a lot of wheat ale and got a hankering for something different. I'd experimented with ginger beer last year and found it to be easy and relatively fast to make (compared to beer) as well as downright tasty. So a while ago I decided to give the ale a break, and make some ginger beer. I wanted to make quite a bit, so I bought a large hand of ginger ("hand" is what a large section of the ginger rhizome is called) that weighed almost a pound. Once I had it peeled and grated I realized I would have enough to make 3 1/2 gallons. In order to make it an even 4 gallons, I decided to split the batches into 2 gallons of plain ginger beer, and one gallon each of ginger/kiwi and ginger/pomegranate. It's always nice to try something different, and pomegranate and kiwi are two types of fruit I've always wanted to experiment with.
Ginger Beer is one of those easy to make fermented beverages that doesn't involve a lot of steps like regular beer made from grains, or wine. All of the ingredients are available at your local grocery store, even the yeast if you use bakers yeast (which I have done in the past). It's also light and refreshing. The perfect drink on a hot summer day. You can start drinking it after just a few days fermenting, or you can bottle and let it age a bit. Either way, it's good. It has a gingery snap, but isn't overpowering.
2 gallons of basic Ginger Beer fermenting.
I like to use this like a big carafe. But sometimes I use it for fermenting as well. Depending on how much material is on the bottom, if I'm fermenting in this container, I may or may not draw directly off of this container for consumption. There's enough material in the bottom of this batch that I'll probably just go ahead and strain into another container, then return to this container for storage and consumption.
This is the size of container I normally ferment in. Ginger/Kiwi on the left, Ginger/Pomegranate on the right.
One gallon jars, you really can't beat them for trying out different recipes. Once finished fermenting, they'll be decanted into smaller jars or into bottles. Working with small batches is nice, especially when developing different recipes. If a recipe works, I can always scale up, but if it doesn't I haven't wasted much. And if a batch goes bad, I'd rather loose one gallon than 5. Batches going off is a real possibility because I don't use an air lock, and I lift the lid daily to check the progress. The sniff test works pretty well to check on progress of the ferment, but when I lift the lid new air will get into the container, and air is full of wild yeast and bacteria. But I've been brewing for a few years this way and it's what works for me.
Basic Ginger Beer - makes approximately one gallon
Ingredients -
4 T grated fresh ginger
2 C sugar
6 T lemon juice (fresh or bottled)
1 t Safbrew s-33 (general purpose, top fermenting, brewers yeast)*
1 gallon water
Method -
- Peel and grate the ginger
- Bring one gallon of water to a boil, then reduce heat and hold at a simmer for 5 minutes
- Add the sugar and stir to dissolve
- Add the lemon juice and grated ginger, shut off the heat (but leave on the burner), cover, and allow to steep for 1 hour
- Pour into primary fermenter, cover and allow to cool to just warm (100°F-105°F)
- Pitch yeast, cover or fit airlock, and allow to ferment for 3-5 days
- Strain into pressure safe bottles and store at room temperature or under refrigeration if aging, or you can begin drinking right away.
Variations on the theme:
Ginger/Pomegranate - To 3/4 gallon of basic ginger beer wort** add the pips of 4 large pomegranates that have been bruised. I like to freeze the pips first to break down the cell walls. Once thawed, I use a steel strainer and ladle like a mortar and pestle, to bruise the pips just enough to break the skin and release some of the juice, but not enough to crush the seed. Ferment for 3-5 days and then strain into pressure safe containers and age or begin to drink right away.
Ginger/Kiwi -
Ingredients -
7 large kiwi fruit, peeled and chopped
1 C sugar
1 1/2 C ginger beer wort**
Method -
- Bring the wort to a boil, add the sugar and stir to dissolve
- Add the chopped kiwi and reduce to a simmer, cooking for 20-30 minutes
- Force the pulp and liquid through a strainer and add both to enough ginger beer wort to make one gallon.
- Ferment as for basic ginger beer (3-5 days)
- When done, strain into pressure safe containers and age as you wish or start drinking right away
But here's the deal, the yeast will have a strong influence on how your beverage will turn out. I've found that the yeast influences the flavor of the beverage as much as any of the other ingredients. So the yeast you choose is every bit as important as the other ingredients.
After a couple of years of working with different types of yeast, I settled on two as my staple yeasts. Safbrew s-33 is a nice, all purpose yeast. It's most commonly used to brew beer and it has a pretty wide range of working temperatures, doing well in cold environments (50°-60°F) and warm environments (up to the mid 80°s room temperature), so I can use it year round. And it gives the beverage a nice range of flavors, being able to preserve both grain and fruit flavors.
The other yeast I like to work with is Montrachet. This is a wine yeast that likes warmer temperatures, but will still work in cool temps, although not as cool as the Safbrew s-33. It also preserves fruit flavors well and isn't as harsh if I let it use up most or all of the fermentable sugars, producing a dry wine.
These and many other yeasts can be found at your local home brew store and online from places like HomeBrewStuff on Amazon (where I buy yeast, hops, and other supplies), FH Steinbart, etc.
**Wort is what we call the liquid that the yeast is pitched into when making beer. It's a beer brewer's term. In wine making the juice from the fruit is called must. Ginger Beer isn't really beer, it's more akin to a wine. In general, beer is made from grain, wine is made from fruit and/or berries. Ginger Beer is made from a rhizome, but it's called a beer anyway. What the hey, Root Beer isn't what people usually think of as beer either....
All content including pictures © Joanne Rigutto unless otherwise noted.
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