Real Ginger Beer Plant

[simon]

Hi Mack i see you same ginger plants spare have sill got any left many thank simon. ( :

[Hey.randoms]

Hey, I'm a newbie around here-- was just trolling and wondered if anyone had a GBP and would be willing to share some? I've been searching around for q while now, looking for a non-yeast, and it seems everyone's sold out... Ha. Well, much thanks if you see this!

[dixie212]

Hi,
Also a newbie looking for a non-yeast GBP and hoping someone can help out. MarkB, do you still have an active plant you could share please?

[sunshineseastar]

hi folks...
i am also a newbie looking for a non-yeast GBP and hoping someone can help out.... i am looking for the ginger beer plant that looks like water kefir grains..... i can trade wkg or kombuch mother

reward !! for any info leading to a GBP !!!

[Green Aura]

Have a look at this site sss

http://www.rejoiceinlife.com/recipes/probiotics.php

And welcome to Ish

[SaveSomeGreen]

I would be very very keen to get a ginger beer plant.. I have made a couple of batches of alcoholic ginger beer which is pretty good but nothing like the jelly stuff has remained in the bottom of the FV which is what I thought I should use to get a plant going....
if I am missing something let me know

[Ramboline]

Hello All Ginger Beer Fans.
I am just posting this for anyone wanting a real ginger beer plant. I have tried making cultures from various types of yeast and now think I have the perfect strain. Some yeasts seem to produce a slightly sulphurous smell so I abandoned using any commercial yeasts and instead tried making a culture from the root of fresh ginger. It worked a treat and I am sure that the active biological ingredient is a yeast/bacterial symbiotic pair. The texture of the "plant" is more granular and certainly the flavour of the finished product is just what I remember from childhood. I could send anyone a culture but it is easier and cheaper to make your own.
Here's how to do it.
Sterilise a glass jar. You need one with a lid. Wash a piece of root ginger about the size of your thumb. Do not peel off the outer skin. Chop it into tiny pieces and put it in the jar. Add cool boiled water and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Leave in a warm place and after about a week you will see bubbles as the natural yeasts in the ginger root start to ferment the sugar. The mix should have a nice ginger smell. If it smells unpleasant, you have cultured unwanted bugs and you will need to start again. Add a little sugar every day for the next week and when the mix is fermenting vigorously, strain to remove the pieces of ginger. The liquid is now your starter for making the first batch of ginger beer. I did not divide the plant the first time but for each subsequent batch I divided the plant as described in previous recipes.
The above worked for me first try. I think it is important to give the natural yeasts a good head start by trying not to culture unwanted bugs. That is why you need fairly clean conditions at the start.
I have made several batches with my culture and each week the plant seems to improve.
Have fun!
Tony

I want to try this!
I'm just wondering how much water and if the lid should be closed properly or not?

[ginger-nut]

Hi

I read your post with interest.....BUT I have to tell you that it is NOT a real GBP.
The only way you can get a GBP is from someone who has one...... In short, it is impossible to make one.
Unless of course you have succeeded where the botanists at Kew Gardens have failed......
Every batch of ginger beer the GBP is split in two and one half re-used for the next batch, the other usually given to a friend etc.
I suggest that you read the Kew Gardens post on the GBP
http://www.kew.org/plant-cultures/plant ... plant.html

Yes, my Auntie used to make it 50 years ago and I STILL REMEMBER THE WONDERFUL TASTE....

Making ginger beer from the plant requires absolute cleanliness and NO YEAST IS EVER ADDED!
Any kit that uses or requires yeast is NOT a real Ginger Beer Plant........
Hope I have clarified things
Cheers for now....
Fred

[surlymonkey]

There's a decent GBP group over at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GingerBeerPlant/
You might be able to get a free plant here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GingerBee ... Rows&tbl=1

Tony.

[MKG]

Hi

I read your post with interest.....BUT I have to tell you that it is NOT a real GBP.
The only way you can get a GBP is from someone who has one...... In short, it is impossible to make one.
Unless of course you have succeeded where the botanists at Kew Gardens have failed......
Every batch of ginger beer the GBP is split in two and one half re-used for the next batch, the other usually given to a friend etc.
I suggest that you read the Kew Gardens post on the GBP
http://www.kew.org/plant-cultures/plant ... plant.html

Yes, my Auntie used to make it 50 years ago and I STILL REMEMBER THE WONDERFUL TASTE....

Making ginger beer from the plant requires absolute cleanliness and NO YEAST IS EVER ADDED!
Any kit that uses or requires yeast is NOT a real Ginger Beer Plant........
Hope I have clarified things
Cheers for now....
Fred

I read the Kew stuff as per your suggestion, and saw absolutely nothing to suggest that it is impossible to make one. In fact, I think I should suggest that if it was impossible, then the beast never existed in the first place. Tonysuffolk suggested that he thought he had cultivated a yeast/bacteria symbiotic pairing and, although I'm not convinced of the symbiosis, the Kew statement would tend to support his thinking. If I was a ginger beer fan, I think I'd try his method. What has anyone got to lose?

Mike

[Brewers Whoop]

[quote="MKGI read the Kew stuff as per your suggestion, and saw absolutely nothing to suggest that it is impossible to make one. In fact, I think I should suggest that if it was impossible, then the beast never existed in the first place. [/quote]

This is pretty much the way I have been thinking. The yeast/bacteria symbiosis that seems to be the accepted 'proper, old-fashioned ginger beer plant' must have started somehow, from two naturally existing organisms which I think are highly unlikely to be extinct. I'm taking a guess that a prime candidate for the source of the organisms could be the ginger root itself. So I tried starting a GBP yesterday, using only washed and chopped unpeeled ginger root, sugar, and cooled boiled water. The hope is that the yeast and the bacteria are both present in or on the root, and that the culture conditions suit the formation of a GBP.

I'll report back either way: success or failure. Hopefully the former, so I can get cracking making ginger beer. Lashings of it.

[missalison]

Hi.

I've been having a good read of loads of information on GBPs, and was hoping that somebody has a spare bit of one in the UK.
Happy to pay postage, and swap for some German Friendship Cake (Herman) if you like, which has been passed on to me from my mother, who has had it from a friend--- so i don't know how long it's been going, but definitely a while. If you would like some, please give me warning as I will need to increase the feeding quantities.



So, yes, if anyone in the UK has a proper Ginger Beer Plant, I would be very appreciative and i'm sure it would be in good company with Herman and my sourdough.

Thanks, and looking forward to hopefully contributing to the forum.

Alison

[Deed]

Hi,

I'm on the hunt for a real GBP if anyone has some spare please? Please contact me if you have any surplus and I will send you SAE etc

Mark-B have you started your Ginger Beer brewing up again?

Waiting to hear of some news

[itwentbang]

Newbies tonight!

We are just about to embark on the 'great GBP microbiology experiment', following tonysuffolk's guide here and will keep you posted. May there be lashings of the stuff very shortly...

Watch this space (or cheshire news channels!) for updates.

[applegrower]

Firstly, it can't be impossible to make a ginger beer plant or there would be no such thing. Someone must have made one somehow. You can buy it online from that gingerbeerplant.net site but it is outrageously priced and the kefir sites have their own culture that is similarly extortionate. Many people on here have advertised their surplus ginger beer plant and they have given it away for free. ...

You're right, it isn't impossible to make a Ginger Beer Plant anymore than it's impossible to make frogs, but you can't make a Ginger Beer Plant from thin air. You first have to have the right culture just has you have to have the right species of frog if you want to have more of that particular species of frog. It isn't magic, it's just simple biology. Suppose you do manage to get the right culture because you got a glass of real ginger beer made with Ginger Beer Plant. You now have to get the culture to make the blobs so you can strain it out. It took the biologist Harry Marshall Ward many years to figure it out how to get the culture to combine and he was a biologist with a lab at Kew, UK. It isn't impossible that you get the right cultures together in your kitchen under the right conditions for them to combine and form the blobs, it is just astronomically improbable. Much easier to get one from someone else as Ward did in the first place.

By the way, http://www.gingerbeerplant.net/ are not outrageously priced at all they're very competitively priced when you consider what is needed to produce excess Ginger Beer Plant to make it available for others add to that that they only do Ginger Beer Plant so you don't get hybrids they're very cheap. By the way I got mine from them and they are very good and have helped me on many occasions with tips and gave a good deal when I wanted more plant. Most people sharing on here have other cultures so how are you going to know that you've got only Ginger Beer Plant and not a mixture and how are you going to know where they got it from and the person before? The Ginger Beer Plant were there at the start of the recovery of the Ginger Beer Plant and have only ever done Ginger Beer Plant in the life of the culture that they have now which came from a German lab.