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Ginger Beer, Old Fashioned
Boiling Water, 2 gallons; Sugar, 2 lbs.; Cream of Tartar, 2 ounces; Ginger Root, 2 ounces; Lemon, cut up, 1. Let ingredients stand until milk-warm, then put into a stone jar. Add large slice of stale bread and two cakes of compressed yeast. Allow to remain and two cakes of compressed yeast. Allow to remain over night in a warm place. Strain and bottle, filling bottles only two-thirds full, and fasten corks. Bottles with patent corks are best. In from three to four days the ginger pop will be ready for use.
A household ferment rather than a fountain syrup: this is small-beer technique applied to ginger, and the whole thing hinges on how long you leave it sealed.
- The pressure questionCorked bottles of actively fermenting sugar water build real pressure, and glass can fail. Use swing-top or heavy pressure-rated bottles (the "patent corks" the book prefers), keep them out of the way, and move them to the refrigerator at the three-to-four-day mark to stall fermentation rather than letting them ride at room temperature.
- "Milk-warm"Blood heat, roughly 95-100F. It matters only in that the liquid should be down to about 110F or below before the yeast goes in; much hotter and you risk killing it.
- Compressed yeastCake sizes were not standardised; the familiar modern fresh cake is 0.6 oz, so two cakes is somewhere in the region of an ounce or more of fresh yeast, with dried yeast substituted at roughly a third of the fresh weight. Bread yeast is what the recipe intends; an ale or champagne yeast gives a cleaner result.
- The slice of stale breadUsually explained as a raft for the yeast and a source of nutrient for it, echoing older barm-and-bread practice. It is not required, and it is one more thing to strain out.
- Cream of tartarTwo ounces in two gallons acidifies the wort, which favours the yeast over spoilage bacteria and sharpens the flavour. Some modern recipes reach for extra lemon juice instead.
- Ginger rootTwo ounces of root, bruised or sliced (the book does not say whether fresh or dried), in two gallons is a mild ferment by current tastes. Slicing it and letting it steep in the boiling water before cooling extracts considerably more than dropping it in whole.
- Two-thirds fullThe headspace is deliberate: it gives the carbon dioxide somewhere to go. Do not top the bottles up.
- Yield and strengthAbout two gallons of liquid; filled only two-thirds full, as the book directs, that is appreciably more than sixteen pint bottles. Fermented three or four days it is lightly alcoholic - likely around one percent or less, though it depends on how far the yeast gets - but it is not a soft drink in the strict sense.
- KeepingRefrigerated it holds a week or two. Left warm it keeps fermenting, keeps building pressure, and turns dry and sour.
Ginger beer began as a domestic ferment in Britain - usually placed in the middle of the eighteenth century - and travelled to America as one of the family of "small beers" - spruce, birch, molasses, root - that households brewed weekly because they were cheap and mildly alcoholic. By the time this book was compiled, the soda fountain had largely displaced that work with carbonated water and bottled syrups, and a yeast-raised recipe appears in a fountain manual under the label "old fashioned" - a taste associated with a stone jar in the pantry rather than a marble counter. The slice of stale bread and the cakes of compressed yeast place it precisely - compressed yeast became widely available to American households in the 1870s and 1880s, and its use here marks the moment when a brewer's barm was replaced by something you bought at the grocer's.