Early American Ginger Beer - 18th Century Cooking

I love watching this guys videos he's like the bob ross of 18th century cooking

I just love this guy. He is like a colonial Mr. Rogers. Thank you Mr. Townsend for being so awesome and positive. 😁

If you were my history teacher I would have stayed in school for my entire life.

Industrialization was definitely great in that it drove prices down, made products more available, as well as saved people time, and gave people the chance to buy a known, consistent flavor. The downside is now people rely on mass-manufactured goods so much that we seem to almost be on the brink of forgetting how to do things for ourselves. I think this is why channels like this are so incredibly important, so that we can preserve history, and increase our own self-reliance. Besides, if you know how to cook things yourself, you can actually make food that suits your tastes far better than any fancy restaurant or name brand item. My friends always asked me why I never went out to eat, and so one evening I prepared them a home cooked feast, and all of them had the same reaction of, "OMG... I didn't know food could taste this good!" I prepared each person's meal to suit their particular taste, and afterwards I offered to teach them how to make the dishes they so enjoyed. Best part is, most of it was 1/4th or less the price to make at home you'd pay at a fancy restaurant. They no longer ask me why I don't go out to eat. Especially homemade maki rolls. It's so cheap to make your own, and as long as you have good ingredients and keep your knife VERY sharp and lightly coated with olive oil, it's a cinch to make... actually, that applies to many foods! Get a high quality high carbon steel kitchen knife, learn how to sharpen it with proper high grit ceramic stones (I like 3,000 and 8,000 grit), and hone it on a quality leather strop. If you can't push-slice a tomato so thin that you can read newspaper through it, your blade is dull in my book.

This is the only man that can bring me down to my peaceful place after the worst day of all time

"I really like ginger." Yeah bud, we know that you were thinking of nutmeg when you said that.

In the past it was common to use "ginger bug" as well. A lot of farmers would make this instead of running to the brewers because they lived too far away. Ginger bug is essentially ginger, sugar, and water. Ginger naturally attracts good yeast from the air. Essentially, have a thumb sized piece of ginger with three tablespoons of sugar with about a cup of water. Let it sit 1 day. Then add a small piece of ginger and sugar each day for 3 days. By the third day, you should notice some bubbles. That is the alcohol. You can then put it in the fridge and just add a little ginger and sugar each week. Then you can just use it like the barm. This style of beer is actually a traditional "ale" rather than the lagers most people drink today. Hence where "ginger ale" came from.

I grew up in the Appalachians and my dad used to make sassafrass tea when I was a kid. This video reminds me of him. Thanks so much for bringing back the memory.

if you try this, please learn from (my) mistake: filter well before bottling this. I took a paper towl and strained it through, but only for one bottle as it took a while. For the others i didn't. Now that one bottle was wonderful when opening it, the others however double as a fire extinguisher, as they don't just bubble and foam over, but shoot foam everywhere. in your face? yes. All over your shelf? yes. Across the goddam room all over the walls, and even into the next room? Yes. Did i slip on the floor afterwards? yes.  So it tastes wonderful, try it, its little effort and cheap and easy to make (look for beer bottles with a flip top thingy) i can highly recommend you try this

This recipe is for my metric friends: (I rounded off the values.) 1 gallon water = (3.8) 4L water 8oz molasses = (236) 240ml molasses 8oz sugar = (226) 230g sugar 1oz powdered ginger = (28) 30 g powdered ginger 1 ginger root (diced) 1 lemon and a little bit yeast after the boiling You're welcome! :)

Dad used to tell the story about his grandmother's bathtub beer bottles exploding and making the whole house smell like beer. This was during Prohibition.

This man always flexing on us with the fits

I’ve been on YouTube for most of my life, and I think I’ve just found my favourite channel.

I love making ginger beer and always like new recipes. One of the things I like about it is nothing goes to waste. If you take the pieces of ginger left over after boiling and coat them in sugar, they can be dried and make ginger candy out of them. I have even added the leftovers to ginger bread for a unique twist.

I LOVE this video as I love all of your videos! My family is from Germany and they made their own beer and wine, they actually had a winery. They lived in the Black Forest and apparently they stored all of their bottled beer in a cold stream. This was the beer that was for home use. Germans love their beer. They also had other refrigeration methods that I didn't quite understand using ice and salt in some special cellar. We are talking about the early 1900's and 1800's and cold and rainy Germany. I spoke to numerous old (and since passed) relatives (I am 66) and this was apparently common practice. This may add a little information to "How they did that..." information.

Sarsaparilla Root Beer would be really interesting to learn about!

My granduncle taught me to make malt liquor in a butter churn,with malt syrup and bread yeast.We bottled them up in 6oz glass coke bottles with a capping press! If you got in a hurry and bottled up before the yeast was through , things got LOUD in few days!Sometimes they explode on opening and hose the ceiling lol so we had a yard only opening policy! Do not know the 'proof' when finished but two of those lil'bottles would get you knee walking and climbing the grass lol.

I have tried adding cinnamon and nutmeg to my home-made ginger beer using 50/50 white/brown sugar. It tasted like hot-cross buns in a glass.

Cookery with the possibility of explosions. Exciting!

Recreational brewer here. This recipe reminds me very much of a recipe for small beer from George Washington's notes before he became a general, from the early 18th century. I often used Lyle's Golden Syrup as it was similar to what first molasses/treacle was "back then." I found that in upscale fancy grocery stores. I believe the reason that the bottles don't explode (generally) is because the sugar content of these beers is so low that when the yeast runs out of sugar to eat, it stops producing CO2, and thus will not pressurize the bottle any further. The action fizzles out. Instead, it will just have carbonated the beer. If you want to avoid the potential of an exploded bottle, or a "gusher" (when you pop the cap/cork and the beer forcefully and mightily erupts out in a jet stream) you can simply let the beer ferment for a few days to a week, then when you bottle add a raisin or two (per the original recipe - or a pinch of sugar) for carbonation. The additional little sugar will wake up the yeast and make them produce some additional CO2 to carbonate...and you significantly lessen the chance of exploded bottles or gushers.