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Stone Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beer made with crushed ginger, citric acid, cream of tartar, saccharin, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Stone Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ginger liquor

  1. Macerate the ginger in 30 to 40 gallons of boiling water for a few hours.

  2. Add citric acid and cream of tartar.

  3. In a separate container, dissolve Saccharin in 2 gallons of boiling water.

  4. Add sugar to the dissolved Saccharin.

  5. Strain the ginger liquor over the sugar to remove fibrous matter.

Ferment

  1. Add water to make the total volume 100 gallons, adjusting temperature to 70°F.

  2. Stir in the yeast and allow to ferment for 24 hours.

  3. Rack off into bottles or casks.

  4. Store cork or bung upwards for about 10 days.

  5. If not shaken, the beer will pour clear with a good head.

  6. Shake if a cloudy beer is preferred.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Jamaica ginger
Supplies the main flavour and aroma of the beer.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing carbonation and alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide for fizz.
Citric acid
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that supports a clean, tangy profile in the finished beer.

The step that matters

Adjusting the temperature to 70°F before adding yeast. Yeast works poorly when the liquid is too hot, and it can stall or die; a cooler, controlled temperature keeps fermentation steady and predictable.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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