The Deep Historic Roots Of Ginger & How To Make Your Own Homemade Ginger Beer
Ginger has long roots in our history (pun very much intended) and has been cultivated by humans for over 5,000 years.
Today, many of us view ginger as an ordinary ingredient that is used in exotic dishes and as a mere flavouring for some drinks or confections.
But if you look back even just as far back as the medieval period you will see that ginger was used heavily, along with many other exotic spices, in the dishes of the day and to show off vast wealth in a world where symbolism was everything.
A cookbook written for Richard I, King of England in 1399, shows that a staggering 55 of 142 ingredients featured are herbs, spices, or botanicals.
These herbs and spices, including ginger, were used to create expensive and punchy flavoured sauces to accompany roasted meats. For example, check out this potent recipe for Verde Sawse that uses green herbs, ginger, and wine amongst other strongly flavoured ingredients:
“Take parsel. mynt. garlek. a litul serpell and sawge, a litul canel. gyngur. piper. wyne. brede. vynegur & salt grynde it smal with safroun & messe it forth.”
Ginger was also used to flavour spiced wines and gingerbreads in the medieval period.
These precursors to mulled wine and gingerbread biscuits were a bit different and much more fiery than what we are used to today. These would have been recipes and ingredients for the upper classes only at that point as it had to be imported at great expense from Asia and India.
With the growth of the sugar industry in the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries, sugar was now more readily available and cheaper than ever before. This sparked a trend for gingerbread akin to what we eat today and it was molded into shapes before being baked.
This trend carried on right into the Victorian period and made for a very traditional festive treat in both Europe and America.
Today ginger is readily available in root and powder form across the globe and is used in a variety of savoury and sweet dishes.
You Can Use It For Drinks Too
Another popular use for ginger is ginger beer.
First brewed in England in the 1700s, this popular fermented drink was exported to the British colonies in America, where it also took hold as a favourite beverage.
This naturally alcoholic drink eventually became a non-alcoholic one due to a couple of factors. The Temperance Movement in Britain and Prohibition in America led to a demand for alternative drinks, better manufacturing methods meant it could be carbonated without the need for fermentation, and other general market demands led to it becoming a non-alcohol based drink.
Homemade Ginger Beer
Did you know that it’s extremely easy to make your own naturally fermented ginger beer? This naturally probiotic soda is fiery and delicious, good for your gut, and is made with no nasty chemicals.
To create our naturally fermented ginger beer we need to follow two recipes — first we will create a ginger bug! Think of it like a sourdough starter but for your ginger beer.
The ginger bug takes the naturally occurring ambient yeasts present in the air and on the skin of the ginger and mingles it with the sugar to start the brewing process.
Next we will then create the naturally fizzy ginger beer that’s so good you’ll never want to buy store-bought soda ever again.
Ginger Bug Recipe
400ml Water
100g Ginger
100g Sugar (I used brown for a deeper flavour)
Chop your ginger finely and leave the skin on, as that’s where all of the magical yeasts can be found.
Pour your water into a large mason type jar that you can loosely cover and keep somewhere safe while the fermenting magic happens.
Add one or two tablespoons of ginger and one or two tablespoons of sugar to the water and give it a good stir before covering.
The next day you can add a further one to two tablespoons of both ginger and sugar to the mix, stir, and loosely cover again.
After three or four days it should start to look bubbly and lively. This is your ginger bug!
When you use your ginger bug, strain it out into a clean vessel the same as the one you used to ferment it in. Once you have taken the amount you need, you must top it back up with the same amount of water and give it a fresh tablespoon of ginger and sugar before leaving to ferment again.
Top Tip
Never freeze your ginger, or you will kill the wild yeasts!
Ginger Beer Recipe
200g Chopped ginger
1 Litre Water
120ml Ginger bug
3 Tbsp Sugar
1 Lemon Juice
Bring a litre of water to boil with your chopped ginger, sugar, and lemon juice, and leave to simmer for five minutes.
Leave to cool to room temperature before straining through a fine muslin to remove any flotsam and jetsam.
Add your ginger bug to an scrupulously clean bottle designed for carbonated drinks, before filling up with the cooled ginger tea.
Leave a good amount of headroom at the top of the bottle to prevent explosions later on.
Burp your bottle daily until you start to see tell-tale bubbles rush up the sides of the bottle. This means it's ready.
Keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to drink as not only does it make it more enjoyable, it also calms down the bubbles a bit so you don't end up covered in lashings of ginger beer.
Top Tips
Always open the bottle away from your face, as these home-made ginger beers can be rather lively!
This should have negligible amounts of alcohol, but if you fancy trying something stronger, you could experiment with a pinch of Champagne yeast at the bottling stage.
You can change up the flavours of your brew by adding some chopped fresh pineapple and a good slosh of its juice when making up the ginger tea, before making the rest of the recipe.
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History references
Original Masters degree dissertation research by author
The Forme of Cury — Cookbook written for Richard I and held at the British Library