Ginger beer, the old fashioned way

January 31, 2012

Recently, we purchased a "ginger beer plant" from England, so that we could begin to create and bottle our very own ginger beer.  The idea was planted in our minds over Christmas when Lee's father told us about this old school technique which blew up many a british kitchen a few decades ago.  Few people make ginger beer the proper way anymore, and if you haven't made it this way, it is unlikely you have ever tasted anything like it.

It's very similar to keeping a bread starter.  You feed your "plant" daily with 1 tsp powdered ginger and 2 tsp of sugar.  After 7 days you are ready to make ginger beer.


On bottling day, strain liquid and reserve plant and liquid.

Boil 1 litre of water and add 680g of sugar.
Add 3 litres of cold water.
Add juice of 2 lemons.
Add reserved liquid from plant.
Bottle.
2 to 4 days later the plastic bottles should be firm, put in the fridge.
Split plant into 2 and start again.

For higher alcohol, step everything up. In a fermented add your yeast plant starter after the 7 days, add a load of water, lemons and sugar, take your gravity reading, add an airlock, and take readings every few days until you get where you want to go alcohol wise. Probably need to back sweeten if it dries out too much, and careful not to get so high that it kills the yeast or you'll have to force  carb. It. Should be able to get to 11%

For an added treat, here's a cocktail we came up with using our ginger beer.

2 parts homemade ginger beer
1 part whiskey or bourbon
.5 parts honey   UPDATE:  maple syrup works really nicely here too!
.5 parts yuzu
two dashes of maple bitters

Server over ice.

2nd All Grain Beer --- Heffeweissen

January 31, 2012

In the kitchen today, we're making our second all grain beer, this one is a Heffeweissen using Belgian yeast.

We're also bottling our second all grain beer, which we are calling Whirlpool Porter, and uses vanilla powder and single malt Scotch (which made for an incredible, long finish).

Whirpool Porter


1/2 lb crystal 60l
1/4 lb roasted barley
1/2 lb cara vienne malt
9lb pale ale malt
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1oz black patent

60 min - 1oz northern brewer
no other hops. I threw in irish moss and yeast fuel.

sparge at 150

US05

at bottling time, when you add your priming sugar to the bottling
bucket add 1oz vanilla powder and 1 US cup of scotch. Mix well.
Bottle.

Finally, we're using the spent grain from the Heffeweissen brew to make multigrain bread with a flax seed crust.  We also experimented with giving some of the spent grain to Maya the pomeranian -- she scarfed it down!

Multigrain "Beer" Bread

4 cups of all purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup of spent grain
2 tbsp bread yeast
1.5 tbsp kosher salt
3 cups lukewarm (in the 90s F) water
Flax seeds

Mix salt, yeast with water in a 5 QT tub.  Add flour and grain.  Mix to form a wet dough (you'll need to use wet hands to really get it all mixed together--keep wetting your hands until its combined and no dry ingredients are visible).  Let it sit, loosely covered, for 2 - 3 hours.

To bake the loaves, break off a grapefruit sized piece of dough.  Form a ball and then stretch it out to the shape you wish.  Let it rest while you heat up an oven with a pizza stone in it to 425 F for about 30 minutes.

Before you bake it, after resting, wet a bread knife and cut a couple of slashes in the top.  Either brush with some egg wash or use a bread shine spray and sprinkle with flax seeds.

Put a cup or so of hot water in a pan in the oven to create moisture during baking.  Bake for 20 mins on the pizza stone.  Remove the water and pop the bread onto the top shelf of the oven for another 10 minutes.  Also, you can parbake by only doing the first 20 minutes and then cooling before putting the loaf in a freezer.  When you're ready for the parbaked loaf, simply bake from frozen for another 12 minutes or so.