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Ginger Beer
Ont.
Put in a kettle 2 ounces whole ginger, ½ ounce cream of tartar, 2 lemons cut in very thin slices, 2 pounds white sugar, 2 gallons boiling water. Simmer slowly for about 20 minutes. Take from fire and when nearly cold stir in 1 yeast cake (dissolved). After it has fermented-which will be in 24 hours-bottle for use. -Mrs. A. St. Laurent, Heffley Creek, Kamloops, B.C.
A contributor recipe from British Columbia, and a genuine live ferment rather than a syrup-and-soda drink. The whole of the technique rests on how you handle the bottles once the yeast is working.
- The bottling is the hingeTwenty-four hours of fermentation leaves plenty of unfermented sugar, so the yeast keeps working in the bottle and pressure keeps rising. Use swing-top or crown-capped bottles built for carbonation, or plastic soda bottles where you can feel the firmness, keep them cold once fizzy, and open over a sink. Never use screw-top wine bottles or recycled glass jars.
- Whole gingerThis means dried whole ginger root, sold in pieces, not ground ginger and not fresh rhizome. Two ounces is about 60 g; crack or bruise the pieces before simmering to open them up. Fresh ginger can stand in but tastes brighter and less resinous, and you will want roughly double the weight.
- One yeast cakeA yeast cake of the period was usually compressed fresh baker's yeast, roughly ½ to ⅗ oz, though dried yeast cakes were also sold. Modern active dry yeast at about ½ teaspoon is ample for two gallons; more simply speeds the ferment and raises the pressure risk. Ale or champagne yeast gives a cleaner flavour than bread yeast.
- Cream of tartarHalf an ounce is roughly 4 to 5 teaspoons. It acidifies the liquid slightly, which helps the yeast and keeps the sugar from tasting flat, and it was also thought to give a livelier fizz.
- Scale and vesselTwo imperial gallons is a little over 9 litres, more than most stockpots hold. Halve the recipe, or simmer the ginger, lemon, sugar and cream of tartar in a concentrate of about 4 litres and top up with cold water in a food-grade fermenting bucket.
- "Nearly cold" mattersPitch the yeast below about 30C/86F. Much warmer and the ferment runs fast and can throw off harsh flavours; genuinely hot liquid will kill the yeast outright.
- AlcoholThis is a real ferment and will contain alcohol, generally under 2% if bottled at a day old, more if left longer. It is not a soft drink in the modern sense.
- Yield and keepingAbout two gallons, or sixteen pint bottles. Drink within a week or two and keep refrigerated; strain the ginger and lemon out before bottling so the flavour does not turn bitter.
Ginger beer is generally traced to Britain in the eighteenth century as a household ferment, and by the nineteenth it was being made commercially in stone bottles and sold as a temperance drink alongside root beer and spruce beer. The distinguishing thing about the domestic version is the yeast: unlike a modern carbonated soda, it was carbonated by fermentation in the bottle, which is why so many old recipes end abruptly at "bottle for use" and say nothing about the pressure this produces. The Five Roses Cook Book, issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, was assembled from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, and the attributions -- here a Mrs. St. Laurent at Heffley Creek, north of Kamloops -- were part of the appeal: the book presented itself as the collective knowledge of the country's kitchens rather than a professional's manual. Cream of tartar in a ginger beer is a fingerprint of that era's home brewing, when a baking cupboard staple did the work a brewer would now get from an acid blend or a measured pH.