h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to make this with my mother when I was a child!

It tastes fantastic. I'll definitely try making some again now I've got the recipe.

The only problem we ever had was when we didn't use strong enough bottles. The fermentation process makes the ginger beer mildly fizzy. We stored the bottles in a big cupboard and a few of them exploded one after another! So make sure you use strong bottles with secure caps!

Anyway, it's a great recipe, exactly as I remember it to be, so I'm definitely going to try it again. Thanks for writing it Snowman.

This is so : We were given the half of the plant by someone years back and made some for quite some time... Very nice drink for having on the patio in early evenings in teh summer... Only: we (my father and me) never knew how to start off and create the "plant" as we had been given it by a friend, who also didn't know how to start off as they had been given the "plant, and the person who had given it to them didn't know because they had been given it,...... but now I know so and all i have to do is find out if my father still has all those crates of beer bottles we purchased from boots in order to provide something suitible for putting the brew in ahhh, that was the annoying bit as i remember, putting the crown caps on the bottles, would take an entire sunday up almost... then waiting a couple of weeks wasn't easy either...

Our family made the stuff as well

My abiding memory is the day I released one bottle top by about a half turn, and the pressure inside straightened the thread out and blasted the bottle top into the kitchen ceiling. Quickly followed by most of the ginger beer.

And to think, we used glass bottles as well

Would I be able to use the 2 liter coke bottles for this recipe? I'm interested in all types of alcoholic refreshment and I've never had ginger beer before.

I have been looking for this recipe for a long time - I had it, or a very similar recipe back in the 1970's, written on the back of an old envelope - the only thing is that I am almost sure the instructions were to leave the bottled beer at room temperature for two or three days, and then to put them somewhere cool.

I used brewer's yeast to start it, stored it in the bottom of the fridge, and got a very fizzy result, but no exploding bottles.

Anne

I have been trying to reproduce the Ginger Beer as I used to make it - and although I thought I used Brewers yeast, I now have a strong suspicion that I might have used a wine making yeast - even a champagne yeast, or contaminated the Ginger Beer Plant by using the same equipment as for the Gooseberry champagne I made about that time.

The Ginger Beer I am trying to make now is proceeding much more slowly than the brews I enjoyed back then, particularly now it is bottled. I expected lots of fiz in the bottles in days, and now it is over a week and although the bottles are slowly expanding the contents are still very sweet - I tested the hardest one yesterday and thought 'bleaugh!!'

I will leave the first lot as it is, but am tempted to look for some champagne yeast to see if my suspicions are correct.

Anne Croucher

I use Lager yeast and it is excellent. I have also experimented with ginger powder and grated root ginger as an alternative in two separate batches (with new yeast for the alternative method).

I actually prefer the root ginger - it also seemed to be far more active, though that could simply be because the yeast was 1st generation.