Put a Lid on It!

Text + Recipe by Michaela Hayes

Photography by Paul Lowe

Under Pressure

The essential guide to canning and preserving

Our own Michaela Hayes shows you how to make ginger beer at home that will knock your socks off—safety goggles optional

WILD FERMENTED GINGER BEER is alive! And after years of making it, my wife, Jane, and I have come to respect the process and approach it with the appropriate caution. The result is worth any risk.

Our ginger beer adventure started, as did many of our early fermentation efforts, with the book WildFermentation by the wonderful Sandor Katz. Every available corner of our tiny apartment was filled with bubbling crocks and jars. We put our first attempt at ginger beer in a cardboard box between the kitchen table and the worm composting bin.

About a week and a half later, sitting in the living room, we heard an explosion from the kitchen. One of the bottles had literally blown its top. Because we had wisely kept the bottles in a box, the glass shards and gusher of ginger beer were mostly contained, worms unscathed. We moved the remainder of the batch to the refrigerator and, after it had cooled down and was safer to open, we discovered it was delicious.Undeterred, our ginger-beer-making love affair grew. We bought a bottle capper and a bottle brush so we could repurpose used beer bottles, cleaning and filling them with individual portions of ginger beer.

In 2010, Jane and I moved to SantaCruz, California, where she was one of 33 apprentices at the UCSC Center for Agroecology and Sustainable FoodSystems (CASFS).In the afternoon, the cooking team would be the “cookiefairy,” bringing a much-welcome energy boost to the farmers working in the fields and gardens.

On one of Jane’s days to cook, she and her friend Claire, decided to make a batch of refreshing ginger beer to revive their peers working in the hot sun. We dutifully scoured the recycling bins for recappable beer bottles, started a thriving ginger “bug” in the farm center kitchen, and bottled up dozens of bottles of ginger beer well before the big day.

Claire had heard our story of exploding bottles and was understandably nervous. Claire andJane decided they would don the plexiglass safety shields from the farm workshop—as much for the drama as for safety. But, by then, the ginger beer was appropriately chilled, and the apprentices were delighted.Like many fermented foods and drinks, the process for making ginger beer is relatively simple; it just takes time. So be patient. It’s worth the wait.

Ginger Beer

YIELD 1 GALLON

1 cup ginger “bug” starter

4 to 6 inches fresh (preferably organic) ginger

2 cups sugar, plus more to make the bug

1 gallon, plus 1 cup water

2 lemons, juiced

bottles with tight lids, such as growlers or those with bale-and-wire, swing-top caps

FOR THE “BUG”

1. Stir 2 teaspoons grated ginger and2 teaspoons sugar into 1 cup of water. Cover with a towel or cheese cloth, and put in a warm place overnight. Add another 2 teaspoons of ginger and sugar every day or two, stirring to combine. When bubbles appear (after2 days to a week), your ginger bug is ready to go.

FOR THE GINGER BEER

2. Grate the remaining ginger (we like it spicy and strong at our house, so we use at least 6 inches). Heat in a large pot with sugar and water. Bring the potto a boil, cover, and lower to a simmer for 15 minutes. Allow the pot to cool to body temperature.

3. Add the lemon juice and ginger bug starter to the cooled ginger liquid.

4. Strain the liquid gently through a fine strainer. Pressing on the solids will give you a cloudier ginger beer.

5. Pour liquid into bottles and seal. Allow bottles to sit at room temperature for a few days to a week (until tiny bubbles appear at the top of the bottle), and then put into refrigeration.* The ginger beer will continue to ferment slowly while in refrigeration and become more bubbly and less sweet as it sits.

6. Chill the ginger beer well before opening. Once open, enjoy immediately. **

* This step can be a bit tricky and sometimes dangerous. Wild bacteria and yeast feed on sugar, and turn it to carbon dioxide, creating bubbles. There are several options to minimize risk of overcarbonation. First use heavy glass bottles meant for carbonated beverages (such as beer growlers). Second, use plastic bottles. When the plastic bottle becomes taut from expanding gases, you know it is time to put everything in refrigeration. A third option is to keep your bottles inside a box, while the ginger beer ferments. Just don’t forget about them! Cooling the bottles before you open them slows the live activity inside the bottle and will help keep your bottles from gushing when you do open them.

** Save a portion (a cup or more) of your ginger beer in the refrigerator to use as your bug the next time and cut down on your lead time for the recipe. We have kept that thriving ginger bug starter culture from the CASFS farm center kitchen alive and well over the past eight years.