Rocket Propelled Ginger Beer
Sandy & Denny Troth
Contributed by Sandy Troth, Fries Virginia
As I had been dabbling in a variety of fermentation techniques which resulted in yummy food stuffs and drinks, I stumbled upon Ginger Beer. Denny and I both found it to be very soothing to the tummy and quite tasty and it was relaxing as it has an alcoholic content. And so, I assembled an array of brewing bottles with wire snaffle caps and prepared the initial must according to directions. Just a week prior to leaving for vacation, I prepared the secondary fermentation stuffs and bottled the brew in those brown bottles with wire snaffle caps. See: http://www.amazon.com/
The instructions were to leave the brew to ferment for 1 week and then taste and refrigerate if ready. I was supposed to check the brew on the day of our return.
Forgot.
So, I asked my adorable, long suffering husband to help me take the sample as I had no idea what would happen when we tried to open the bottle after I had let the brew ferment for an extra 3 days. There were 4 sixteen oz bottles.
We brought the first bottle up from the basement to the kitchen. We set the bottle onto the cabinet, and both of us held the bottle while we opened it. KABOOM! Ginger beer on the entire ceiling, the tops of the cabinets and every wall and every surface, including on us. Hmmmmm…. Cursory clean up. Now what to do with the other 3 bottles.
We elected to deal with them outside (we’re quick to catch on, aren’t we!) But my adorable — you are beginning to understand the long suffering part now, aren’t you – husband didn’t want to waste the ginger beer because we tasted the 1/2 inch left in the first bottle and it was amazingly delicious. As good as those expensive, commercial products we had tried. So we wrapped the bottle and cap in 4 layers of cheese cloth and pointed the bottle toward the chili kettle set on the ground and Denny released the second bottle. KABOOM! Bottle slipped out of both our hands, launched directly into hubby’s shin.
Goose Egg
Instant goose egg. Lost all the ginger beer.
Third and fourth bottles. Early 4th of July. We both managed to stay out of the way of the flying wire caps which buried themselves into the earth – we ditched the chili pot and all thoughts of salvage – and we avoided the rocket launch of the bottles which landed 50 feet in the hay field beyond the house!
We have developed a different method for our secondary fermentation (using an air lock in a gallon bottle) that does not build up any pressure and will decant future batches into the bottles after the secondary fermentation is complete and refrigerate after allowing fermentation to continue only a couple of hours.
Denny says that it’s never dull around here. He’s healing nicely.
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