Ginger Beer With Boots On

Artrockers,
It may come as a surprise to find that I'm a big fan of Victorian Farm (Wiki). I guess it's the deeply buried rural me yearning for a simpler age. Or maybe it's just that I've always wanted to carry off a Bowler Hat with as much aplomb as Alex Langland. One of my favourite editions featured Peter Ginn making ginger beer, alcoholic ginger beer at that. It all seemed so simple, smash up some ginger root, add it to water and dump some brewer's yeast on top, leave it for a bit, get ginger-drunk. So I thought I'd give it a go. I sourced my ginger from the Somalian shop round the corner and drew a large bucket of water from the tap, so far so good. But could I find brewer's yeast in Brixton? I could not. So, being an adventurous sort, I decided to use bakers yeast. I mean, how different could they be? Yeast is yeast, surely? Hmmm! Two weeks later I popped the top off of my bucket of ginger delight to find that an entirely new form of life had been created in my absence - a frothy, smelly form of life that would make David Attenborough thoughtful. I'd created something halfway between bread and hell, a foaming monster with the whiff of ginger. My next task was to get rid of it, but I was hesitant about pouring it down the sink, it might breed down there, or erupt, or form a terrorist cell. So I dug a hole in the garden and buried the whole sad mess.Nothing grows in that part of the garden any more, had The Romans been in posession of my evil brew they could have saved on salt and simply sterilised the soil of Carthage with it, the smell alone would have brought The Punic Wars to a juddering halt.
I don't think I'll try again.
But I don't have to, I've come across a freely available alternative, it's called Frank's, it's made in Sweden, it's gorgeous, it's available in Tesco stores and is apparently coming soon to bars across the country; and it knocks your socks off. I'm hoping it will do for ginger beer what Manger's did for cider. And as I look out at that patch of dead earth that stands testimony to my failure I have no doubt that it will. Yum!

Tom Artrocker