Making your own alcoholic ginger beer is simple, quick and very cost effective.  We have detailed the River Cottage version below which is our favourite.

This is a cloudy and very lively beer, so we only make about five bottles of this in one go.  By the time you get round to drinking the last one, it has built up enough pressure to get to the moon! (We advise checking bottles daily and releasing some of the pressure).

Before you start, you will need;

Minimum of two empty plastic 2 litre lemonade (fizzy drinks) bottles.  DO NOT use glass as the expansion during the fermentation process will shatter them.

A cludy refreshing ginger beer takes only 2 days to make

You are going to use one to make the beer and one to filter and decant it into in a couple of days time.

• Wine/brewers sterilising solution
• A medium to large funnel
• Some muslin (for straining)
• A grater (fine)
• A glass mixing bowl

Ginger Beer Ingredients (per bottle)

• 1/4 teaspoon of wine yeast (we used Gervin No1 – strain GV1)
• 1 tablespoon of runny honey
• 1 cup sugar
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 decent sized root of fresh ginger (if it’s clean don’t bother peeling it)
• 1/4 jalepeno chili (if you like it hot)…this is our recipe tweak

Sterilize the bottles you are going to use to make your brew.

Grate the ginger to a pulp using the fine side of a grater and mix with the lemon juice and honey in a bowl.

To each bottle add:

1 cup sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of yeast, then add the ginger mixture (sharing larger quantities between however many bottles you are making).

Fill about one third with tap water, put on the bottle top and shake to dissolve the sugar, then top up with more water to the shoulder of the bottle where it narrows. (This space will be needed for expansion…it’s going to get a bit wild!)

If you are quite partial to ginger beer with a kick, then simply add about quarter of a small jalepeno chili or similar to the bottle.

Keep at room temperature for 2 days and then you are ready to filter it.

To strain;

Sterilize an equal quantity of bottles.

Line the funnel with the muslin and place in one of the bottles. Open one of the fermenting bottles of beer (careful, it’s lively) and pour through the funnel into the clean bottle.  The muslin will filter out all of the bits which you can then just put on the compost heap.

Repeat for the other bottles, but again leave room for expansion at the top, as the beer will continue to ferment slightly and pressure will build up.

This beer has about a 3-4% alcohol level when finished but will depend on the type of yeast used.  If you like your drinks sweet, then it may be wise to double up on the sugar as this is more of a refreshing finish than a sweet one.

You will also notice that as you use the last bottle, the sweetness has diminished slightly further, this is due to the yeast using up the sugar in the fermentation process which still keeps going slightly once bottled.

We get most of our wine, cider and beer making supplies from;

Brew UK  - Wine, cider and beer making supplies.

Ascot – Country kitchen and smallholding supplies.

Visit the River Cottage website

In our goal for self sufficiency, we have introduced a yoghurt maker to the kitchen and the result has been excellent.

We purchased our yoghurt maker from Lakeland, it is very simple, compact, easy to clean and for those not familiar to making yoghurt, contains a simple instruction leaflet.  This unit can make 1.5pints at a time, enough for a family! 

Lakeland Yoghurt Maker

Yoghurt can be made from a variety of milk types, such as pasturised, sterilised, UHT and evaporated.  The Lakeland leaflet states that UHT makes the best but we tried ours with pasturised semi skimmed milk.  My preference will be to use Jersey milk of which we have a few local suppliers in Cumbria.

The standard pasteurisation process is not sufficient to render milk fit for yoghurt making, but simply bringing it to the boil then allowing it to cool at room temperature until it reaches 47 degrees Celcius works well.

Jam thermometer used to check milk temperature

A small amount of starter yoghurt (a couple of teaspoonsfull of natural unsweetened, LIVE yoghurt) is placed in the base of the container and the cooled milk is gently stirred into this, being careful not to stir too vigorously.

Small amount of LIVE starter yoghurt

Gently stir milk into starter yoghurt

The container is placed in the heater unit and switched on.  left for about 7 hours, so ideally overnight, you will have lovely creamy yoghurt to which you can add fruit, cereals or even herbs and spices to make some wonderful dips.

This is certainly a cost saving exercise and the result is just as good as bought yoghurt and will keep in the fridge for around five to six days. When it’s nearly finished you can use a few spoon full to start off your next pot.

Further interest:

The Cottage Smallholder – How to make delicious Greek Style Yoghurt.

About.com - How to make home made yoghurt.

Eat Yoghurt.com - For some great recipes using yoghurt.