Anyone have experience with Ginger Beer Plant?

I had been reading a bit about GBP, sounds very interesting. Anyone have experience with it and a reliable source??

I bought cultures from www.yemoos.com before (kefir and water kefir). I am looking at buying ginger beer plant from them soon as well.

Cool, thanks. I'll look into them. You never know who you are dealing with online, so I appreciate the recommendation.

*>Read several posts down more more info on this, as there is some controversy surrounding it<*

***FOR ANYONE WANTING TO BUY A GBP*** - IMPORTANT

Yes, you can order them on-line, but right now every supplier that I've found is back ordered. So I decided to take my chances and grow one myself... *WITHOUT YEAST. Naturally occurring yeast in the ginger and bacteria from the air will start to grow in the solution, and the result will be a Ginger Beer Plant.

Its simple and it only took 36 hours till it started bubbling, at 48 hrs its burping and slooshing around a bit. It's going to take awhile till its mature (at least 7 days, but shipping takes that long anyway, right???), but comes with the satisfaction that I grew it myself...

(ratio it out as desired...)

2 Pints sterile/spring/dechlorinated/bottled water
4 tsp fresh grated Ginger (dropped in boiling water for 60 secs to sterilize)
4 tsp powdered Ginger
8 tsp "Sugar in the Raw" or any other organic, unrefined cane/palm sugar, the darker and more moist, the better
1 lemons worth juice

put all in a sterilized jar covered with cheese/muslin cloth, and swirl it around
feed 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp powdered ginger a day
add crushed egg shells, spoon of dark molasses, or a pinch of cream of tartar after 7 days to really give it the nutrients it needs to thrive

Now you grew your own GBP for "free" and didn't have to wait for it to be shipped...

You say you're using naturally occurring yeast in the ginger, but then you're dropping it in boiling water to sterilize it? Wouldn't this kill most of the yeast?

Sure its possible to have Saccharomyces florentinus and the bacterium Lactobacillus hilgardii on ginger in the wild. It had to come from somewhere right? I would guess you would just get some wild yeast normally. Does it form a scoby?

After notifying people of this someone pointed out that this makes a "plant", but not S.f&Laco (a scoby)

*so this was my reply as part of this thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f95/ginger-beer-plant-source-289099/index2.html#post3709708
>
"Yes, a GBP is specifically Saccharomyces florentinus and Lactobacillus.

When I first heard of GBP years and years ago I was taught/learned that S.florentinus naturally occurs in ginger root, and the bacteria Lacto is also just naturally occurring in most homes and the fermenting ginger and sugar gives rise to the yeast which is then a perfect environment for the bacteria to set in via being exposed to the open air.Over time it develops into a scoby.

HOWEVER, I've spent like 4 hrs straight and yet to find anything that proves OR disproves this idea! I can't find any info on where S.f actually comes from, or it's origin. I read several places that state the GBP's original origin is actually UNKNOWN(?). All the research I can find only talks about what it is, how it works, what it does, and how to take care of it, but never where it comes from, other than saying in ginger water. According to the internet, it only exists in yeast banks, or people's kitchens, but it must live somewhere in nature, and have a origin. Everything else is everyone stating that certain strains are fake, or not the real GBP, etc.

So now Im quite perplexed.... Anyone have information on this???

For now, I will continue to mature this plant. It smells exactly like a GBP that I smelled in the past, (at least from memory) and it is supposed to form a gelatinous mass as well. Then make a brew to see what the outcome is, and report back."

ChessRockwell said:

You say you're using naturally occurring yeast in the ginger, but then you're dropping it in boiling water to sterilize it? Wouldn't this kill most of the yeast?

Click to expand...

No, like CHERRYLinND said, it's just sanitizing the surface (bad word chioce).

The root itself barely gets hot, it just kills anything living on the surface without the use of chemicals... The internal yeast definitely isnt killed off, as it only take about 12 hours before you can tell its alive

That makes sense!

There is a culture bank in Germany that actually has the honest-to-goodness GBP, and the only 2 sources that I have discovered that have this same culture are Jim at www.gingerbeerplant.net and the people at www.yemoos.com. Jim is in the UK, yemoos.com in US. There are several threads about GBP and concerns about fake/hybrid plants and people using bread yeast or wine yeast to create a plant that has to be continually fed but never produces the grains that a true GBP provides. Not to be confused with water kefir grains being passed off as GBP (another UK vendor). The yemoos.com site has a great photo showing what true GBP looks like compared to water kefir grains.

I have done a lot of work over the past few years with WKG and GBP, comparing them, side by side ferments and they are 2 distinctly different cultures that produce a ginger-beer beverage similar in taste. I have also "grown" my own "plant" using yeast + ginger & another via capturing wild yeast--those will make a ginger beer too, but they taste quite different than the GBP or ginger water kefir.

From the research I have done of kefir--of which there are 2 types(milk kefir grains, MKG, date way back and were formed by placing fresh goat's milk in a sheep bladder for carrying and over time the organisms did their thing & grain developed, the people of the Caucasus mountain area in Russia discovered this grain cultured their milk & they had a lot of health benefits (those people lived a LONG time, and not due to vodka!). It seems the MKG is loaded with probiotics, and these grains were capable or reproducing in milk. Then there is WKG, water kefir grains, which have been sourced back to a prickly pear cactus--another probiotic rich water beverage that feeds off of sugar-water & reproduces new grains so quickly you end up eating them!) Anyway, Saccharomyces florentinus (formerly Saccharomyces pyriformis) is also found in water kefir & Lactobacillus hilgardii (formerly Brevibacterium vermiforme) is found in milk kefir grains and is known to be responsible for 50% of lactate synthesis. It is probably WAY more information than you ever wanted to know.

I suspect GBP, the granular one that grows and reproduces, was formed by perhaps a storage clutch of ginger getting exposed to the right amount of humidity and the grains forming on the skin of the ginger...and humans being ever resourceful stuck the whole thing in sugar and water and VOILA! the first ginger beer, and then they noticed there were more of those little translucent grains....and there we have it GBP. Just my theory, I would fall over if I were right, but saccharomyces is nothing more than a fungus & Lb. is just about everywhere--they met.

Also, the true GBP is considered a "grain" by those who are very familiar with it; not a scoby (which is typically a disk or takes the shape of the container)...the GBP are small and individual, remind me of cream of wheat, translucent, they take on the color of the liquid they are in, very smooth edges, small and granular.

I purchased mine from the UK. Cost about 15 or 20$ shipped. Only took 5 days to get here and was very fresh...had no trouble making my first batch of ginger beer with it. Purchased from Jim at [email protected]

I purchased GBP from Yemoos (search on the web for them).

The GBP is similar to water kefir grains... but not identical. I've now used both. The GBP is much slower growing. I make about 5 litres of ginger beer a week using the GBP.

I've been making it stronger and stronger each time (using more and more fresh ginger juice) and the last time it had a very very strong bite. I started a fresh batch today, and I'm using about a third of a ginger root to try for a more mild batch (I do like it strong, but some of my guests find it too much for them).

The starter made from scratch is not the same thing, although it is sometimes called GBP --- it's actually a ginger beer bug. Google "water kefir" or "tibicos" and you will see something that looks similar to GBP.

GBP was pretty much non existent until the last 5 or so years when people on the yahoo groups for ginger beer managed to purchase a sample from the German Culture Bank. At first the GCB didn't want to sell it to them because they didn't want to sell it for human consumption. But then one of the list members who worked for a labratory managed to get a sample, and all the real GBP around has now come from the people on the that group sharing it among themselves, and now the British based gingerbeerplant.net site and Yamoos site sell small qty's of it. The amount they sell (about $20 or so) is enough to make 2 to 5 litres of drink.

Apparently this was very popular in England until the temperance movement. While there is very very little alcohol in ginger beer made from GBP, as store bought pop became more prevelant, fewer and fewer homes maintained the culture until it had pretty much died out other than the GCB.

Has anyone else tried mjhszig's recipe or used another recipe to grow their own? I'll be trying it soon, just curious what others have done to try and grow one.

saramc said:

Also, the true GBP is considered a "grain" by those who are very familiar with it; not a scoby (which is typically a disk or takes the shape of the container)...the GBP are small and individual, remind me of cream of wheat, translucent, they take on the color of the liquid they are in, very smooth edges, small and granular.

Click to expand...

The GBP aficionados may make the distinction, but that's the wrong distinction to make. SCOBY is an acronym, and a true GBP is exactly that, a symbiotic colony of bacteria (Lactobacillus hilgardii) and yeast (Saccharomyces florentinus). What you're describing is the difference in structure of which GBP, like Kefir, forms grains, unlike Kombucha which forms a pellicle. The ball of slime in Kombucha is both a SCOBY and a pellicle, and the Ginger Beer Plant is both a SCOBY and a grain (or grains).