Ginger Beer

Today's cookbook.

We're trying our hand at making ginger beer today. Thanks to Sandor Ellix Katz's book Wild Fermentation, we are expanding from our initial ventures into cheese making and see sauerkraut on our horizon. Since reading The Untold Story of Milk, I have learned about the Weston A. Price Foundation and become a fan of its director, Sally Fallon Morrell. She keeps appearing in places where I am conducting research; she wrote the foreword to Katz's book, she presented a the 2010 International Raw Milk Institute and a recent conference of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and she wrote Nourishing Traditions--just one of many books on my wish list. So, when I read the conclusion to her foreword in Katz's book: "Wild Fermentation represents ... a road map to a better world, a world of healthy people and equitable economies, ..." I knew I had found a winner. Settling down with a tall glass of fresh milk, I nestled onto the couch and did not stir except to grab a handful of paperclips with which to mark pages of recipes to try.

Ginger beer in process. (Clockwise from top: once filtered base, dregs of ginger bug, ginger filtered out of today's beer.)

I am starting with the ginger beer recipe. It began with a "ginger bug" started some days ago--a mixture of water, sugar, and ginger--then left to ferment in a warm place. Situating it beside the crock pot worked remarkably well. (I tried to start with making raw milk yogurt, but could not locate the packet of starter that I had so carefully tucked away. I found it this morning: marking the recipe page in Wild Fermentation.) After obtaining jugs from a master gardener friend earlier this week, I was ready to try the recipe.

This morning I boiled a mixture of water, sugar, and ginger. Cooled and strained it. Added the strained ginger bug and lemon juice, and then strained that lot into jugs to be set aside to ferment. Not having been a science major can be a handicap in the kitchen. As the photograph illustrates, I had the second straining set up to wick nicely onto the stove top instead of into the jugs. Although I recognized the potential, I was unsure of how to address the problem. The funnel system in the rear is made from a Real Lemon juice bottle. (Yes, I cheated. I purchased enough lemons for the recipe as written, then chose to double it this morning. Luckily we had lemon juice in the fridge.) When I scooped the once-filtered ginger mixture into it, air bubbled up and the liquid poured into the jug quite nicely. The front funnel is made from the top of a two liter soda bottle and fits more snugly into the mouth of the jug. No air bubbles resulted in a slower-moving transfer of liquid.

Ginger beer in process. The second filtering.

My eyes are not as keen as they were once. By the time figured out that--yes--the clear liquid was being wicked from the tightly-fitted funnel setup, the stove top was swimming in about a pint of wasted ginger beer base. Once I loosened the funnels from the bottle necks, allowing for a ready transfer of displaced air, why--the process was completed in a jiffy! After mopping up the stove, I was ready to top off the jugs with water, then nest the jugs on either side of the crock pot where they will sit for a couple of weeks.

Crock pot maintaining bone stock with fresh vegetables.

This week we have been enjoying a hearty bone stock with fresh vegetables added periodically. That the crock pot serves this double duty in the kitchen pleases me to no end. That the nutritional wisdom I have gleaned over the past couple of months allows me to enjoy animal fats without guilt, makes devouring the bits of fat and gristle what originally clung to the bones all the more pleasurable.

Praise be for the bounty of this marvelous earth. (Here's hoping for a successful outcome to our first adventure making ginger beer.)

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