Gills?!

[evanos]

I have an old recipe for ginger beer that calls for two gills of yeast. I know that this is 1 cup, but what would the equivalent in dried yeast be? Thanks mucho!

 

[BigEd]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Verdana]"My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"
-Abe Simpson

I think if you just use one standard pack of dry beer yeast per five gallons you will be fine.
[/FONT]

 

[Walker]

can you post this recipe? I'm interesting in seeing it!

 

[QuixoticDevice]

That must be a REALLY old recipe. A gill pot is the equivalent of a quarter imperial pint, so about 4oz.
To be fair, the only reason I know that is from an old drinking song:

~\o Here's good luck to the Hogshead, good luck to the Barley Mow.
Jolly good luck to the Hogshead, good luck to the Barley Mow!
Oh, the Hogshead, the barrel, the half barrel, the gallon, the half-gallon, the quart pot, pint pot, half-pint, gill pot, half-gill, quarter-gill, nipperkin, and the Brown Bowl... *gasp*
Here's good luck, good luck, good luck to the Barley Mow, ow, ow, ow, ow! ~\o

Though I don't think there are that many bars anymore where you can order a brown bowl (that's the amount you can drink out of your cupped palm without spilling).

 

[evanos]

Lol, I'd love to hear a recording of that song!

Here's the recipe. I condensed it from paragraph form to something I could understand a little easier:

4 qts boiling water
1.5 oz fresh ginger (bruised or grated)
1 oz cream of tartar
1 lb brown sugar
2 lemons, thinly sliced

Place the ginger, cream of tartar, brown sugar, and lemons in a large pot or bowl. Pour boiling water over them and stir until "mixed thoroughly". It is "wraught" for 24 hours with 2 gills of yeast, then bottled. If made with loaf sugar, it's appearance and taste are said to be finer.

I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds interesting. I've made ginger beer with table sugar, so I'm pretty excited to try a recipe that uses brown sugar to see what the difference is.

Thanks for the replies!

Cheers!

 

[SumnerH]

I think if you just use one standard pack of dry beer yeast per five gallons you will be fine.

Traditional ginger beer uses Saccharomyces florentinus and Lactobacillus hilgardii--those two species actually grow together in a symbiotic gelatinous mass called a "ginger beer plant".

 

[Revvy]

Traditional ginger beer uses Saccharomyces florentinus and Lactobacillus hilgardii--those two species actually grow together in a symbiotic gelatinous mass called a "ginger beer plant".

There's a cool basic brewing podcast about this;

August 31, 2006 - Brewing with the Ginger Beer Plant

Homebrewer Raj Apte lets us in on the long lost process of brewing with the Ginger Beer plant. This way of brewing soft drinks at home was commonplace decades ago.

Links:

http://www2.parc.com/emdl/members/apte/GingerBeer.pdf

http://www.fermentedtreasures.com/

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast21sep_1.htm

Click to listen, Mp-3

 

[KayaBrew]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Verdana]"My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"
-Abe Simpson

I think if you just use one standard pack of dry beer yeast per five gallons you will be fine.
[/FONT]

That was back when they used to call bananas "yellow fatty beans".
-Abe Simpson