Ginger Beer

We were delighted to discover recently that our local SuperU supermarket sells imported from Australia Bundaberg ginger beer.

Ginger beer in France, yesterday

Bundaberg ginger beer is a brewed ginger beer, using real ginger and a fermentation process that takes several days. The drink is non-alcoholic and comes in a glass bottle with a pull-off cap, and has done for about thirty years. It was really gaining traction in the late 1980s, and we would often use it for making Moscow Mules, once our cocktail of choice.

To make a Moscow mule, you must start by trying to freeze a bottle of vodka for at least two days. It won't freeze, it will go syrupy.

Pour a goodly gloup of vodka into a glass. In a tall glass about an inch (2 or 3 centimetres) will do it.

Add a decent squeeze of lime juice (fresh is preferable), and top up with ginger beer.

That's all you need. Be careful not to use ginger ale or fever-tree ginger beer. (To my way of thinking all fever-tree products make promises they can't keep and are disappointing.) Don't add herbage or (puke) pumpkin pie mix.

You can add ice at any stage, and you can serve in a copper mug (traditional, apparently). Both these will keep the drink cold for longer, but if you need that, quite frankly, you're not doing it properly.

These days we drink our ginger beer straight from the bottle, as evidenced by this photo, which isn't a photograph of Susan looking pleased with herself, or of excellent breakfast burgers. Just remember to invert the bottle for a couple of seconds (don't shake) before opening. The photo was taken at the Marulan Roadhouse (truck stop) in NSW.

As far as I can tell Bundaberg don't use a ginger beer plant. When we lived in Canberra we used to make our own ginger beer using a plant, feeding it daily, etc etc etc. This stopped not long after a number of bottles of made ginger beer exploded: not an uncommon event, but this time we had 2" shards of glass embedded in the solid wood laundry door.