Basic ginger beer

[Gurgle]

Hi I'm bob I'm new to the forum has any please got a recipe for the old fashioned
Ginger beer non alcoholic type (sorry I did say non alcoholic) it's just my grandad made 2
types one was so strong you could only drink about 3 glasses before the room spun
But the other was so nice on a really hot day so if anyone could help I'd be very
Grateful

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

Hello
I regularly see requests for ginger beer on here!
The following were written in my grans own hand writing (old book 1943) and they work!!!
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Quick ginger beer (This one is really for the kids on hot sunny days!)
Ingredients

1lb sugar
1 oz tartar
1 1/2oz ground ginger
1 gallon water pre boil and cooled

Very often old recipes tell you to use previously-boiled, cooled water as boiling was the easiest (and in some cases only) method of sterilisation available. The clean safe tap-water that we take for granted was actually rare outside the very biggest cities until the late 1920s and 1930s. The construction of the wells was driven as much by the need for employment during the Depression as for the health benefits for people in places like Bedford or Brighton, which previously had no safe drinking water. The emphasis on healthy water was so great that many people irradiated their water using radon or other radioactive materials. (This was before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the tens of thousands who died from radiation sickness as a result.)

Anyone born before about 1920 would have grown up with the habit of boiling water before drinking it to make sure there were no bacteria or other microbes in it. "Old habits die hard", as they say.

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

Hi tim
You could be right but thankfully am not that old (yet)
My worst encounter with bad water
Like you say "we all trust our water supply"
I move regular but a few years back, I had to have the water board out due to real water contamination!
Chunky bits in the water!
No not countryside but Nottingham town center almost!
you don't mine a bit of peat or the odd unidentifiable bit now and again But pure black sulfur smelling sludge NNNnoo!!
They took samples and promptly put new pipes in for a whole street 200 house!
Problem was pipe decay!
you would think lead pipes but no old cast iron pipes (1934)
I had six months of boiling water to make basic wines!
cross contamination Pah!

ttfn
p.s
My best one was drinking water in a house with bits in the water, only to find several dead birds in the water storage tank in the loft YuK!

I wasn't saying you were that old, but your gran probably was if she was writing her recipes down in 1943!

The Hotel Cecil in Los Angeles found a dead Canadian student in their water tank a few months ago :sick: