Food + Drink

The Righteous Path to Making Good Ginger Beer Yourself

When living in Jamaica, do as the Jamaicans do.

There was no small amount of ink spilled over the past nearly two years of involuntary lockdowns, enforced apartment time and general inward turning, by and about people who filled their free and not so free time in the kitchen.

There are countless reasons why we did that. Something about the solace found there, the ability to have some sort of control over our lives, the desire to create something good or simply because we felt the pressure to use this time usefully that is drilled into many of us from birth. For those of us living abroad, it also presented an opportunity to explore a bit more into using only local ingredients to make good things. That just felt right.

I was living in Tanzania at the time and am now in Jamaica, and like a lot of people, I found and still find myself in the kitchen far more often than I ever was before Covid. Initially, I had no goals beyond learning how to make delicious things simply and of a better quality than what was on offer on the shelves at my grocery store. Oh, and also to see if it really was as easy as I was constantly being told it was.

My first experiment was with pickles. I followed a YouTube video and they really did turn out the first time. The second time, less so and the third time, even less than the second. But now, I’ve figured it out and we are back to delicious, crunchy pickles stored in a big jar in the fridge. Feels good. Feels right.

The next was barbecue sauce. I toy with that one weekly and I am glad to be able to tentatively say that it’s getting there. My jerk sauce is coming along nicely, but don’t tell any Jamaicans. I’m not ready for that yet.

The added bonus of attempting this is that it ends the giving of money to large corporations for an industrialised, inferior product that has likely travelled thousands of kilometres to get to where I am.

There have been other things that through trial and error, I have gotten to where I want them, most of the time. You will notice here that I did not say anything about anything being perfect. Sure, there’s that pressure too but I have found that it is best ignored in this regard. Just make it and change it next time if it doesn’t turn out as hoped for. Guacamole. Hummus. Yoghurt. Granola. Honey syrup (for cocktails, instead of simple sugar). Banana Bread. Jerk Sauce. A Mexican fermented juice called Tapache (pineapple rinds, cinnamon, cloves, water, sugar — easy). Bloody Caesar mix. Cucumber yoghurt mint soup. Chimichurri. Paneer cheese. Guasacaca. On and on and on.

Well, now it’s Ginger Beer. There are many options for sale at the supermarket, especially in the part of the Caribbean where I live. All of them are in plastic bottles. In Tanzania, where I lived previously, the market was dominated by a local (albeit Coca-Cola owned) product called Stoney Tangawizi which, although a bit sweet for my liking, did provide the serious back of the throat punch of ginger that I was looking for.

Truthfully, I don’t like ginger in food. I push it to the side of the plate when it shows up in chunks in dishes. That box of Pot o’Gold at Christmas? Guaranteed the last man standing was always the chocolate covered candied ginger. Biting into one of those, hoping it was something different always ruined my holiday. Every year.

But ginger beer, that’s another story. Beyond refreshing, great in cocktails, fiery and hot. And easy to make.

Here goes: You need a large bowl, you need some glass jars, you need some kind of blender. I use a magic bullet and it goes above and beyond the call of duty. You’ll also need space on the countertop or somewhere to let this stuff ferment for a few days.

You need a few big hands of ginger. These need to be soaked in water for a bit to get the debris and dirt off (assuming you didn’t buy it imported). Once that’s done, you need water, sugar and lime juice. But you won’t need very much time.

You might think about peeling the ginger, but I’ve found that to be an onerous, unnecessary and thankless task. If you have the large sized cup for the bullet, it’ll go quicker. Chop a handful of raw ginger into thumb sized chunks and fill the cup to the max line with cold water. Blast it on the bullet. Not too long though, you’ll kill your ears. Strain this into a large bowl, squeezing the last bits of the juice out of the ginger pulp in the strainer with a spoon. That’s where the good stuff is.

Do this until the bowl is full and then strain the whole thing again, into another bowl. Stir in three to four tablespoons of brown sugar into the juice and the same amount of lime juice. Finally, get all this into 2 or 3 clean glass jars. Don’t fill them to the top and don’t put the lids on….fermentation is about to get underway and it needs room to operate. Cover the jars with a loose towel and marvel at the golden brown liquid you have just created.

You could put it in the fridge the next day and stop whatever fermentation has begun. You could just leave it like this for a few days and see what happens. (Let me save you the suspense: it will go bad.) Or, you could feed your creation. The fermenting process requires sugar to feed the microbes that cause the fermentation, create the fungus and release the alcohol (or something like that), so I stir in another two tablespoons of brown sugar to each jar each of the next three mornings. Lest you think that the addition of sugar will make it too sweet, it won’t. The sugar is being consumed.

Because science, I guess.

By morning number 4, this stuff will need to go into the fridge so it doesn’t go bad. Each jar will need one more tablespoon of sugar when you move it there. I can’t explain scientifically what would happen if you kept it on the counter, but I would imagine that fermentation would continue such as to eventually make it an undrinkable sort of sulphuric smelling vinegar.

At the refrigeration stage, I would guess that the alcohol content would be about 1–2%, based only on the fuzzy feeling it gives me when I drink it. Apparently, the maximum you would be able to create here is 4%, but don’t quote me on that. The purchase of a hydrometer is my next step, because I’m curious to see what is actually happening here.

You’re all set. This stuff is not meant to hang around in the fridge for a long time. It should be consumed relatively quickly. That’s not too difficult if you are enjoying that punch of ginger at the back of your throat. But if you really want to go to the next level, then how about a Tropical Christmas Cocktail (which you can have any time of year)?

3 oz. of your new Ginger Beer

3 oz. of Sorrel juice (as it is called in the Caribbean, Flor de Jamaica in the Spanish speaking world and Hibiscus everywhere else) — made with dried fruit in a coffee press with hot water, as a tea. (Let it cool)

2 oz. of Dark Caribbean Rum

Combine these over ice in a separate mixing jar, stir them (don’t shake) and strain them over ice into cocktail glasses.

Enjoy. Happy hour has arrived!

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