This recipe makes three 1.25 litre bottles of ginger beer, which is ready to drink in 3 to 4 days from first making - depending on the temperature. As live yeast is used for the brewing, the temperature needs to be at least 20C for the yeast to work.

In a large container mix together:

• 5 pints of cold water
• 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of active dry yeast
• 1 large heaped teaspoon of powdered ginger
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 teaspoon of tartaric acid
• Grated rind and juice of one lemon

Leave stand for at least 12 hours and upt to 24 hours. Longer gives a drier ginger beer.

Strain through muslin, and bottle in well sealed, strong bottles. The PET softdrink bottles are quite good, as they are easy to gauge the readiness of the beer in. The plastic bottle will be soft and easy to deform when first filled, but after a day or two of warm weather, the bottle will feel extremely tight. Then it is time to put the beer in the fridge! Make sure you leave an air gap of at least 2cm below the bottle neck when filling the bottles, or alternatively, deform the bottles to remove all this otherwise air gap. THe important point is that there must be somewhere for the gas (produced by the ginger beer) to go.

Be sure to open the bottles with care when ready to drink the beer, as it can fizz up to the extent that you get ginger beer everywhere but in your glass. With really fizzy bottles, it is not difficult to undo the screw top just enough to relieve the pressure in the bottle without the fiz rising, and leave it like that for some minutes. The secret to success is patience. After a while you get a feel for whether the fiz is going to be faster than you can pour the beer!

The science behind this recipe

The science is simple. Yeast cells use the sugar as their energy source, in the process converting the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide. (The yeast cells multiply at an enormous rate during this process, as they reproduce via cell division). When the beer is sealed in the bottles, the carbon dioxide builds up in the air gap above the liquid, and remains dissolved in the liquid. The greater the pressure in the bottle due to gas build up, the more carbon dioxide remains dissolved in the beer. When the bottle is opened and the pressure relieved, the dissolved carbon dioxide starts to come out of solution, hence causing the bubbles and the fizzing of the beer.

Happy drinking

Various websites provided inspiration, but the motivation was to start my own ginger beer plant using the yeast Kombucha yeast. The theory is that with ginger and sugar in water, after a few days 'Saccharomyces florentinus' yeast is naturally produced. Apparently Saccharomyces includes a number of yeast strains that produce alcohol and are one of the most common types of yeast found in kombucha. They can be aerobic or anaerobic (requires an oxygen-free environment). They include Saccharomycodes ludwigii, Saccharomycodes apiculatus, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Zygosaccharomyes, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

From Delishably:

1. Dice a tablespoon of fresh ginger root into small cubes and place this into a sterilised jam jar three quarters full of dechlorinated or mineral water.
2. Add two teaspoons of white sugar.
3. Leave the jar in an exposed place at room temperature, e.g. a kitchen shelf.
4. Every day for about a week add two teaspoons of sugar and two teaspoons of fresh diced ginger root.
5. If after one week the mixture is frothy with a pleasant odour it is ready to use.

My own version with kombucha yeast:

• 250ml water
• Use the water to rinse out the "dregs" left in the bottom of Kombucha bottles, save to a 375ml or so clean glass jar.
• Add 1 tablespoon of white sugar, and 1 tablespoon of powdered ginger.
• Cover with a cloth and leave for a day or so - be sure that it starts to ferment. Small bubbles form on the top, an you can hear the bubbles as well.
• Start adding a teaspoon of powdered ginger and a teaspoon of sugar every day, or twice in three days.
• After a few days I split the brewing bug over 2 jars, and started adding organic crushed ginger to one, and powdered ginger to the other, an experimental comparison being the aim.

After about a week of letting the "plants" mature, I made the first 2 batches of ginger bear

1. Boil 2L of water, and dissolve 400g of sugar. Leave to cool, covered with a cloth.

2. Pour syrup into a large brewing vessel

3. Add the Rind and Juice of 1 lemon

4. Add 2 teaspoons of crushed ginger

5. Leave to ferment for 2 or 3 days (shorter time for warm weather, longer for cool weather - in my case a week, even with the brew pad to warm in occasionally over the last few days)

6. Strain into plastic bottles, up to about 5cm from the top.

7. Squeeze the air out of the bottle, screw on the lid.

8. After a few days at room temperature the bottle should be hard - carefully let the pressure off

9. Reseal and place in the fridge or squeeze the bottles again before resealing and leave for another few days for a drier ginger beer.

The gelatinous substance that remains when you strain your ginger beer into the bottles is the Ginger Beer Plant

• Return the plant to its jar in a warm place, two thirds fill with dechlorinated water, feed as in the next step, and cover with cloth.
• Feed daily with a teaspoon of sugar and half a teaspoon of ginger.
• Keep the level of dechlorinated water topped up until you use your Ginger Beer Plant next.
• As the plant gets bigger to halve it, and either give some to a friend or discard it.