Homemade Ginger Beer

By Toby Cecchini

Published August 22, 2010

  • Tony Cenicola/The New York Times; Styling by Toby Cecchini
Media 1 of 1
Rating
5(477)
Comments
Read comments

To get the full aromatic flush and fizzy burn of fresh ginger, you have to make your own ginger beer. It is amazingly simple. There’s no sterilization needed, and this method is forgiving — you can actually play about with the levels and ingredients. Moreover, the resulting ginger beer blows anything else you’ve ever had straight out of contention. Take a pinch of packaged yeast and something acidic for the yeast to thrive in (like lemon or lime juice or cream of tartar) along with some sugar syrup and grated ginger, lob it all in a plastic bottle of distilled or spring water, shake it up and stash it somewhere dark and warm for two days. After two days you stop the fermentation by chilling it in the fridge. That’s it. The result is a cloudy, dry mixer with pinprick carbonation and a straight-up goose of fresh ginger. That is thrilling come dark ’n’ stormy hour, not just for its authenticity and superior flavor but also because you can now brag about your homemade ginger beer.

Featured in: Case Study | Cloudy, With a Chance of Ginger

  • or to save this recipe.

  • Subscriber benefit: Give recipes to anyone

    As a subscriber, you have 10 gift recipes to give each month. Anyone can view them - even nonsubscribers. Learn more.

    Subscribe

  • Share this recipe

  • Print this recipe

    or to print this recipe.

Advertisement

Ingredients

  • 2 ounces freshly grated ginger

  • 4 ounces lemon juice

  • 6 ounces simple syrup

  • ⅛ teaspoon commercial baker’s, brewer’s or Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast

  • 20 ounces non-chlorinated water (filtered, distilled or spring)

  • 1 to 4 grams cream of tartar (not necessary, but traditional, to help the yeast and bacteria thrive).

Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving

72 grams carbs; 268 calories; 1 gram fiber; 66 milligrams sodium; 1 gram protein; 64 grams sugar

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

Powered by

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Take a 1.5-liter plastic bottle of spring water and empty it into a clean pitcher. Use some of it to make simple syrup by stirring ½ pound sugar into 1 cup hot water until fully dissolved.

  2. Step 2

    In a large measuring cup, mix all ingredients and stir well. Funnel back into the plastic bottle and cap tightly. Store in a warm, dark place for 24 to 48 hours. (I put mine inside a box, to contain it if it should blow.) The top of the bottle will expand and become tight. Check it and very slowly release the pressure if it’s looking groaningly tight. Some people ferment it with no top, or with the top on loosely, to allow gas to escape. I suppose if you wanted to get fancy you could spend $1.50 on a fermentation lock and stop worrying about it. If the temperature is quite warm, above 80F, a single day may be sufficient. The longer you let it ferment, the drier the final mix will be.

  3. Step 3

    After 48 hours, refrigerate it to stop the fermentation. Once chilled, you can strain out the pulp and dead yeast, which will have made a sediment on the bottom. Makes 1 liter and will keep up to a week in the refrigerator.

Private Notes

Leave a Private Comment on this recipe and see it here.

Ratings

5 out of 5
477 user ratings
Your rating

or to rate this recipe.

Have you cooked this?

or to mark this recipe as cooked.

Comments

John yancsek

Instead of capping the bottle, put a balloon over the neck, then put a pinhole in the balloon. Cap after fermentation.

John

I'm confused. The recipe calls for 6 oz of simple syrup but gives instructions for making twice that much if you really use 1/2 lb sugar (~1 3/4 c. of brown sugar or ~1 1/8 c. granulated sugar) as it states. Are those amounts correct? 1/2 lb of sugar? 6 oz of simple syrup?
Does the recipe assume you'll save the simple syrup for the next brew?

Ashley

First time I made it as written and thought it was more of a lightly gingery lemonade than a true ginger beer. Second time I doubled the ginger and used half lime, half lemon juice and thought it was EXCELLENT! Looking forward to experimenting more in the future...pineapple juice maybe? I burped the bottle once a day and had no problems with fermentation/explosions. I find Reed's to be extremely sweet (33g of sugar per serving!) so this was a wonderful alternative.

Jillk

Best to read up on ginger bugs (there is so much online!)— this is basically a ginger beer starter, not unlike sourdough starter. It’s easy to make with organic ginger, sugar, and water. Once you get this going, you can make the best ginger beer, as well as an infinite number of natural sodas and bubbly drinks! No need to add yeast or cream of tartar if you make your own ginger bug.

Maggie

Hi, could you share what kind of spices you have added with good results. Thank you! Im having fun learning how to make great beer. @My New Go-to For Ginger Beer

Jasmine

This is an excellent and easy recipe for a delicious lemony ginger ale written in the most needlessly complicated way. It could have listed, in the ingredients list, the sugar and water needed to make the amount of simple syrup actually called for, rather than list, weirdly, in the instructions, the amounts for double the amount of syrup needed. It could have listed the cream of tarter in fractions of a tsp like the yeast is, instead of expecting people to pull out their precise scale to measure 1 gram of an optional ingredient. And it could have listed everything in cups or in weight instead of a mix of, I’m guessing, ounces, fluid ounces, teaspoons, and grams. The reasoning behind the writing does not make any sense, but, if you can muddle through, it does result in a delicious product.

Private comments are only visible to you.

Recipe Tags

or to save this recipe.