Ginger Beer Plant

Well I just finished a round of brewing and was about to throw away the old yeast, don't worry I'd already recycled it twice! My mum phoned and I was talking to her about how much yeast I had left when she told me about ginger beer plants! I'd never heard of such a thing but she said she used to make them all the time. Armed with a half remembered recipe I decided to give it a go!

I used about 3.5 oz brewer’s yeast which had already fermented two different beers, both were 40 pint batches, the first an all grain ruby Christmas Ale, the second a honey ale. My mum used to use baker's yeast but brewer's yeast is all I have :)

I put the yeast into a demijohn and added half a pint of lukewarm water, one level tablespoon of sugar and one level tablespoon of ground ginger.

I added one more tablespoon of sugar and one more tablespoon of ground ginger each day for the ten days.  The "plant" (yeast culture) grew each day and was busy producing CO2, hence the demijohn.

Once this was done, I strained the mixture into a clean demijohn and added the juice from two lemons, a further 1lb of granulated sugar and 1 pint of boiling water. Then I gave it a good shake in the demijohn until all the sugar has dissolved and watered it down with cold water, it made about four litres.

I bottled it up leaving a gap at the top and letting it settle for a couple of hours before capping. After another 10 days before it was ready. It was quite fizzy and tasted great, not too strong, just nice.

The yeast cake left over from straining can by recycled again, although my yeast had been worked pretty hard by now so I retired it to the bin.