Like kefir and kombucha, real ginger beer is cultured by a unique SCOBY with its own fascinating story. The ginger beer culture, also known as the ginger beer plant, once fueled a large brewing industry in Britain and several of its colonies. Today, after nearly going extinct, the ginger beer plant is available again. This chapter covers ginger beer made with this authentic culture. Also, there is a recipe for rejuvelac at the end of this chapter; it is a fermented grain drink that is useful mainly as a base culture for other drinks and foods.
As with kefir grains and kombucha mushrooms, the ginger beer plant can culture just about anything. Most people use it to make a (mostly) nonalcoholic ginger beer. There is an imitation version out there called a ginger bug, but the ginger bug generally involves just growing some wild yeasts. I’m sure they ferment things just fine, but they are not the authentic ginger beer plant culture. Authentic ginger beer has a very low alcohol content, probably below 1 percent.
Separately, this book covers “ginger ale” in the chapter on making natural sodas. For the sake of simplicity, I have given the name ginger ale to our ginger-flavored natural soda (with a base of water kefir, kombucha, or rejuvelac). The name “ginger beer” means the beverage that is fermented directly by the authentic ginger beer plant culture. In the real world, these two names are used rather interchangeably, and these two drinks might come out tasting pretty similar, but I think the ginger beer plant deserves its own drink.
No one is quite sure where the ginger beer plant originated. There are claims that it came from India or Africa before being brought to the Caribbean. In the 18th century, it became popular in Jamaica, and British breweries began making boatloads of it. Significant quantities were exported to the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere in the British sphere of influence. Soon, these countries began to brew their own; call it ginger beer independence.
Toward the end of the 19th century, as brewing yeasts became better understood and more widely available, the drinks probably became more alcoholic and less probiotic. The ginger beer plant then faded into obscurity and virtually disappeared. It was discovered decades later in Germany, where a few determined souls continued to keep it alive. Today, there are amateur fermenters around the world who have ginger beer plants. You can obtain one through a local group or online, though these SCOBYs are nowhere near as prevalent as kefir grains or kombucha mushrooms.
The old stoneware bottles for ginger beer remain collectors’ items in many places. I have one from a Syracuse, New York, brewery that made “English brewed” ginger beer. This particular brewery began in England in the late 19th century and expanded to the United States in 1900. It was closed in 1920 with Prohibition, so the brew probably included its fair share of alcohol by then. Most likely, the brewery was using brewing yeasts, which were capable of making ginger beers with alcohol contents of up to 11 percent. The real ginger beer plant is capable of creating a little more alcohol than some other SCOBY cultures (perhaps around 1–2 percent, probably since there is no aceto acid bacteria when fermentation starts), but an isolated yeast is far better for making an alcoholic drink.
The ginger beer plant is a rather unusual SCOBY culture. While kefir grains and kombucha mushrooms often contain ten or more species of yeast, lactobacteria, and aceto acid bacteria (a mix that can vary), the ginger beer plant contains just two organisms. It is a symbiotic community made up of a yeast called Saccharomyces florentinus and a bacterium called Lactobacillus hilgardii. Nothing more.
How the ginger beer plant ended up with just two organisms in its mix is a mystery, but it may have developed from kefir grains, which often contain the same two species in the ginger beer plant. Ginger beer plants are more difficult to obtain than either kefir grains or kombucha mushrooms, but they are available. If you cannot find one locally, check online. In the appendix of this book, you will find some good resources, including a list of website sources for live cultures. At the time I wrote this book, two of them sold ginger beer plant.
Ginger Beer (Authentic)
• Ginger beer plant
• 1 quart water
• 1–2 inches ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• ¾ cup to 1 cup sugar
Combine all ingredients in a large jar or container. Cover loosely and let ferment at room temperature. Check it after 24 hours, and move it to the refrigerator when ready, but it may take 2–3 days to ferment to your liking. When it’s ready to cover and move to the refrigerator, then strain out the ginger beer plant and put this in your next batch of ginger beer. It is a fairly sensitive culture, so I do not recommend trying to store the it in the refrigerator; just save at least a small amount of it and keep a continuous culture going.
Rejuvelac
Rejuvelac is a fermented beverage made from sprouted cereal grains, such as wheat, barley, rye, oats, triticale, millet, amaranth, quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, or buckwheat. People have been making fermented drinks with grains for thousands of years, but the raw food advocate Ann Wigmore is credited with popularizing rejuvelac as part of a holistic health diet. It’s pretty sour and definitely qualifies as an acquired taste unless you add some sugar, honey, or other sweetener. Alternatively, this makes a great base ingredient for sodas, or you can mix it with juice, and it can be used to culture anything else in this book.
• ½ cup organic grains such as wheat, rye, barley, or oats (whole-seeded, not ground or cracked)
• Water
• Optional: 1 tablespoon yogurt whey or water kefir
Rinse the grains. Put them in the jar or container and cover them with water. Let them soak overnight. In the morning, drain the water from the grains, rinse them, and put them back in the jar. The rinsing prevents mold. Continue to rinse twice per day for 1–2 days, until grains form small white tails, indicating that they have sprouted. Rinse them once more and put grains in the large container. You could use the same jar if it’s big enough (be sure to rinse before reusing).
Cover the grains with one quart of water. Add yogurt whey or other culture, if you choose to use this (if not, the natural yeasts and bacteria on grains will ferment the water). Cover the container loosely, checking it by tasting every 24 hours. This fermentation normally takes 1–3 days, and the later you let it go, the more sour it will be. Then pour out the liquid, which is the consumable part. The grains have left the better part of their nutrition in the liquid and are spent, so you can compost them. Feel free to add some sweetener or combine the rejuvelac with juice to make it drinkable.
