Quarantine Activity - Make Ginger Beer at Home

[Music] hey welcome back to zero waste TV I hope you are staying healthy and safe here in California we have been on lockdown for about seven days and I am starting to get some serious cabin fever and I imagine if you have any kids at home it's probably even tougher so not only did I need to find an activity to entertain myself with but the stores around here have been out of ginger beer for the last few weeks luckily making it is pretty easy and all I needed four ingredients was water sugar and ginger for materials I use a mason jar some swing top bottles and a sprouting lid though I kind of recommend cheesecloth in hindsight start by finely chopping two tablespoons of the freshest ginger you can find leave the skin on and don't wash it because you actually want that naturally-occurring yeast on the ginger skin which is going to help make your ginger beer nice and fizzy next we will mix together two tablespoons of sugar with 2 cups of room-temperature water and just stir it until it dissolves I'm using a 64 ounce mason jar in this moment mixing the ginger and give it another quick stir seal the jar with a piece of cheese cloth or sprouting lid like I'm using here just be careful I have had really good luck with sprouting lids so far but I have heard stories of flies getting through them so you might want to stick with cheesecloth now store the jar at room temperature and feed it the same amount of ginger and sugar every 24 hours it's kind of like having a pet that you can drink and and not feel guilty about after 2 to 3 days you're gonna start to see some fizzy carbonation on the surface of the liquid once it looks fizzy you're ready to move on to the next step to prepare the ginger for the ginger beer you can chop it up as finely as you've been doing so for the last few days or you can use a food processor and really blend it down into a nice ginger paste it'll take a little bit less time if you process it just mix in a little bit of water to help it blend and the flavor is gonna be a lot more intense which I prefer it's kind of like a slap in the face and how do you do now in a large cooking pot bring 8 cups of water to a boil then mix in your ginger pull two half cups of sugar you can use as little as 3/4 of a cup of sugar or as much as 2 cups depending on your personal preference for sweetness then simmer the mixture for 10 minutes after 10 minutes remove the pot from the heat and allow the liquid to return to room temperature this is really important if it's too hot we risk killing that fizz-eee stand the mixture we've been feeding for the last three days and if it's too cold we could shock it by the way that fizzy mixture is called a ginger bug if you've ever made kombucha it's kind of like the ginger beer equivalent of a Scobie then I strain the solids from the liquids into a large bowl and add 1/2 cup of our ginger bug [Music] then taking a spoon I just pressed down on all the solids to try to get as much juice out as possible now would be a great time to add four tablespoons of lemon juice which I forgot to do while I was making this so I had to go back and add it to the bottles later now using a funnel fill your swing top bottles about an inch from the top with your ginger beer mixture and then after I filled the bottles I remembered the lemon juice so I added it last and it still worked out okay now once you've bottled your ginger beer there's something very very important to remember you must burp the ginger beer every 24 hours or the bottle will explode that's right explode so set your alarm to go off every 24 hours and all you have to do is just open the top of the bottle to allow a little bit of the gas to escape and then you won't have anything to worry about now depending on how intense you like your ginger beer you can let it sit on the counter for one to three days or a little longer I usually keep mine at room temperature for one week and remember the longer you wait the more carbonated it will become but it's also important to note that the alcohol level will also increase but usually it's still pretty nominal after a week I put the bottles in the fridge which slows down the carbonation process drink the ginger beer within a few days [Music] thanks though who

Channel: Zero Waste TV

Views: 1,800,796

Keywords: bored, boredom, zerowasterecipes, quarantine, zero waste recipes, zero waste ginger beer, ginger beer, easy ginger beer recipe, quarantine activities, activities for quarantine, activities for selfisolation, activities for isolation, isolation actitives, boredom actitivies, zero waste tv, zero waste california, easy ginger beer, easiest ginger beer recipe, make ginger beer easy, make ginger beer at home, what to do with extra ginger, what to do with ginger, ginger recipe

Id: IpgSS7moEzI

Length: 6min 18sec (378 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020