Being rather fed up of drinking crappy alcohol in LoS (to say nowt of the bastard chemicals), for the last year or so i have been experimenting with brewing, enjoying various levels of success. Without doubt my best results have been from beer kits imported by friends, but this supply route is erratic at best, so i decided to try and produce a brew made entirely of stuff available locally, including all the equipment.
I'll break the thread into 4 parts; the preparation and initial fermentation, bottling, getting it down your neck, and most importantly, things to do differently next time.
Far from being an expert on this, i am very much a novice, testament being that out of four brews i've started, only 2 (prior to this ginger beer) have survived to the 'drinking it' stage.
The first criticism is that the yeast i used is not available locally, but by looking on the net it seems that any yeast will do the job, so if anyone has or does try it, let us know.
It can't be stressed enough about cleanliness, so clean everything that will come into contact with any stage of the process. For this purpose, i use a baby-bottle sterilising solution from the local chemist. It's supposed to be non rinse, but i use plenty of clean water to rinse it off, just in case.
The quantity of ginger beer i made was 16 litres, and here are the ingredients that went into the pot. The recipe is my own, based on scouring the net.