Ninety Nine Bottles of (ginger) Beer on the Wall...

Okay, maybe not 99 bottles, but I did end up with a batch of ginger beer that filled these three bottles and 2 wine bottles (not shown) with a little bit extra leftover that I ended up dumping. Fred was quite the productive little "plant" (I have now learned that "plant" is the correct term for what I was calling ginger beer starter). Fred, my lovely little Fred, seemed to have survived the 2 hour car ride with little effect other than being shaken rather than his usual stirring.

On Sunday, I squeezed the juice of 2 limes, and 2 lemons into a bowl, then added 3 cups of sugar to it, stirring until all the sugar was mostly dissolved. The recipe I'm following called for the juice of 4 lemons, but I only had 2 lemons, plus those 8 limes I had picked up for $1.00 at the market last week, so I improvised a little. I used a very unscientific formula, following my preference for things tangy/tart yet slightly sweet to guide me, (you didn't know I was so talented did you?). I deduced that the juice of 2 limes = the juice of 1 lemon and so, 4 limes + 2 lemons + 1 extra lime to cut the sweetness resulted in a sweet/tart taste that I could live with. (To be fair to you Dear Readers, once this experiment is done and I've tasted the actual ginger beer, I'll post the recipe as it was written so that should you choose to make your own ginger beer, you can follow the actual recipe rather than my psychotic ramblings about the juice of 1 lemon equaling the square root of blah blah, blah). Anyway, once I had the juice of 4 limes and 2 lemons mixed with 3 cups of sugar partially dissolved, I then added 5 cups of boiling water stirring until the sugar was completely dissolved. I then added 12 cups of cold water, stirred, then strained the juice of the "plant" through some muslin into the bowl of sugary lemon/lime juice, except I had to use a double layer of paper towels because I don't yet have muslin or even a collection of kitchen linens at our house. You know what I mean by kitchen linens right? Cheese cloth and canvas and all sorts of dish towels for any number of uses from covering bread that needs to rise/proof to making bouquet garni or drying pasta or hey! straining ginger beer plants into liquid. ANYWAY, after I had strained the "plant" into the liquid I was ready to bottle, so after tasting the batch and adjusting by adding that 1 extra lime I mentioned earlier, I bottled the ginger beer into 2 wine bottles and the three bottles pictured above. It is not recommended that you use screw top bottles because of the risk of explosion, as it is, I'm not sure if my bottles won't just up and explode anyway, I'll have to see what, if anything, happened to them this weekend. I left room in each bottle rather than topping them off so that should the liquid need to expand when getting fizzy, assuming it would get fizzy, then it could. I then left the bottles uncorked for 2 hours before sealing them. The recipe didn't say why to leave them uncorked but I'm assuming it was to make sure that the liquid got to at least room temperature before sealing. OH! before I forget, just before I sealed the bottles I added a piece of fresh ginger to each bottle pictured above just to see if that added anything extra to the flavor. I left out the ginger from the batch in the 2 wine bottles. I stored all the bottles on our porch, (in case they exploded, I would rather hose down the porch than deal with a sticky mess in the kitchen) and this weekend, I'll chill and taste one of the bottles. I'll report back with my final notes, the recipe and my thoughts next week. One final little note; I ended up scrapping the first recipe I went with and finished the ginger beer following a different recipe. I thought the new recipe was easier and clearer to follow, so when I post the recipe next week I'll post that one rather than the first recipe.

Written by Deb on July 9, 2004 12:24 AM