Ginger-Beer
INGREDIENTS for 4 dozen bottles.-2½ lbs. of loaf sugar, 1½ oz. of bruised ginger, 1 oz. of cream of tartar, the rind and juice of 2 lemons, 3 gallons of boiling water, two large tablespoonfuls of thick and fresh brewer's yeast. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Peel the lemons, squeeze the juice, strain it, and put the peel and juice into a large earthen pan, with the bruised ginger, cream of tartar and loaf sugar. Put over these ingredients 3 gallons of boiling water; let it stand until just warm, when add the yeast, which should be thick and perfectly fresh. Stir the contents of the pan well, and let them remain near the fire all night, covering the pan over with a cloth. The next day skim off the yeast, and pour the liquor carefully into another vessel, leaving the sediment; then bottle immediately, and tie the corks down, and in 3 days the ginger-beer will be fit for use. For some tastes, the above proportion of sugar may be found rather too large, when it may be diminished; but the beer will not keep so long good.
GINGER WINE. strained, and serve the cream in a glase dish. It may be garnished with slices of preserved ginger or candied citron.
TIME. About 10 minutes to stir the cream over the fire.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A straightforward Victorian small-beer: sugar, ginger, acid and yeast, fermented overnight and bottled young. The whole thing hinges on the fact that it is still fermenting when it goes into the bottle, which is where the fizz comes from and where the trouble comes from.
- ScaleThree gallons filling four dozen bottles is a household brew of the old sort. Quartering it gives roughly 3 quarts, which is more manageable: 8 oz sugar, about 3/8 oz ginger, 1/4 oz cream of tartar, half a lemon.
- Bottle pressure is the real hazardBottling a live ferment and tying the corks down builds carbonation fast, and glass bottles can burst. If you make this, use plastic soda bottles so you can feel the pressure by squeezing, keep them cool, and refrigerate as soon as they are firm. The Victorian household expected to drink the lot within days, and so should you.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a cone and broken up as needed. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent, weight for weight.
- Bruised gingerDried whole ginger root, cracked with a rolling pin or the flat of a knife so the pieces stay large enough to strain out. Ground ginger is not a substitute; it will not settle and the beer turns muddy.
- Cream of tartarHere it acidifies the wort and helps keep the ferment brisk, rather than acting as a leavener. Still sold in the baking aisle unchanged.
- Brewer's yeast"Thick and fresh" means the wet slurry skimmed off a working beer, no longer sold to households. Use about ¼ teaspoon of dried ale yeast, or ordinary dried baking yeast, for the full three-gallon batch. Two tablespoons of a modern yeast would be wildly excessive.
- "Near the fire all night"A warm spot. A modern kitchen counter away from draughts does the same work; a radiator or oven with the light on will run too hot and throw off harsh flavours.
- Strength and timingThree days in the bottle after an overnight ferment leaves a lightly alcoholic drink; it is not alcohol-free. The text says only that reducing the sugar means the beer will not keep so long.
- A garbled entryThe last two lines, about stirring cream over the fire and garnishing with preserved ginger, belong to a neighbouring recipe and have run into this one in the printing. They have nothing to do with the ginger-beer.
Ginger beer as Mrs Beeton gives it is a domestic small-beer, brewed weak and drunk within the week, the same class of drink as household spruce beer or treacle beer. It belonged to a period when ginger arrived dried and whole from the Caribbean and India and was cheap enough for a cook to keep a jar of it by, and when a household could reasonably expect to bottle three gallons of anything and get through it. The commercial trade ran alongside the domestic one: stoneware ginger-beer bottles, with the maker's name stamped on the shoulder, turn up constantly in Victorian rubbish tips, and the drink was pushed hard by temperance advocates as an alternative to the public house. Some Victorian versions relied on a "ginger beer plant", a symbiotic culture of yeast and bacteria passed between households; this recipe takes the simpler route of borrowing barm from a brewer.