Organic Cultures
General Delivery
Buckley, MI 49620
United States
ph: 1+ 231.631.1012
Old style ceramic bottle of ginger beer
There are two types of ginger cultures, one from the UK, known as a ginger beer “plant’ and a ginger ‘bug’ formed from wild yeast. Make home made soda just like grandma used to make. Before commercial soda drinks like coco-cola, people made their own soda at home. Ginger brew is fun and easy to make right at home! Restart an old tradition and bring the family together to make ginger soda without the artificial colors, dyes, or flavorings.
With this ginger brew yeast culture you can make a great tasting carbonated drink in about a week’s time. The recipe is simple to make with easy to find ingredients of ground fresh or dried ginger, cane sugar, and lemons.
Ginger Brew makes a very nice vegan replacement to commercial soda drinks that contain HFS. You can very the sugar to taste and amount of fizz desired.
The ginger beer plant is not really a plant at all, but a combination of yeast and bacteria that live off a mixture of ginger and sugar. The 'plant' simply looks like wet ground ginger and sometimes contains water kefir like crystals. It’s make up seems to be a cross between water kefir and kombucha tea, as it has crystal grains and may also grow a translucent layer over the top of the liquid solution.
The starter we sell is a mix of the true UK Ginger Beer Plant and wild American yeast strains. We do NOT sell the UK ginger beer plant at this time. The taste of the UK ginger beer plant has a sharp taste and strong bite. We think that our ginger brew starter has a more mature taste and mellow flavor over the UK type. We have maintained and stabilized this same culture since 2009 and it's still going strong!
This is a new culture for us and we have been having much fun playing with flavors and adding herbs during the bottling stage. This culture ferments quickly, produces a wonder beverage, and is easy to work with!
Note: This culture requires a second step of bottling and aging for 3 to 5 days to produce high amounts of carbonation. Contains lactobacillus culture and wild yeast.
Happy Culturing !
Caring for this culture is easy and only requires a bit of sugar and ginger each day for 7 days. After which the start is mixed into a recipe and bottled. The ginger brew is held at room temperature for another 3 to 5 days and then refrigerated. Comes with active culture and complete instructions.
Level 2 difficulty because of the bottling aspect only.
See complete instructions here
History of...
No one has ever worked out where the first ginger beer plants came from, but the mystery of its identity was solved by a pioneering scientist in the late nineteenth century. Harry Marshall Ward studied how plants and microorganisms live together in symbiotic relationships. He became curious when a friend at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, gave him a ginger beer plant. As the years passed, he built up a whole collection of ginger beer plant specimens and painstakingly identified, separated and attempted to grow the different organisms within the mixtures.
His analyses revealed that it was a type of organism new to science. He described it as a 'composite body', consisting of many microorganisms living together. Not all of these microbes helped in making the beer, but two organisms were present in every sample, and seemed vital to the production of ginger beer. One was a fungus he named Saccharomyces pyriformis. The other was a bacterium, which he named Bacterium vermiforme, and is now called Brevibacterium vermiforme. Together, they produce the essential ingredients of traditional ginger beer: carbon dioxide and alcohol.
The popularity of the ginger beer plant died out. The commercial, bottled ginger beer of today is very different. It does not contain alcohol and is there is no natural carbonation by fermentation. Try our blend of the UK 'plant and american yeast strains for a great refreshing beverage!
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Organic Cultures
General Delivery
Buckley, MI 49620
United States
ph: 1+ 231.631.1012