Make your own: delicious ginger ale

Just finishing some nettle beer I made about a month ago - a really grown-up flavoured drink that's very healthy, very refreshing on a summer's day and wildly outdoes champagne in the fizz stakes.  They should really use it to spray all over each other in those Formula 1 podium ceremonies.

Next up in the summer drinks line-up will be elderflower cordial and champagne, but meantime, here's a great, utterly simple recipe for home-made ginger ale that takes no time at all and will wow your friends around the barbecue.

The equipment you'll need is:

• A 2-litre plastic cider bottle (it must have been something used for well-pressurised  drinks, not just an ordinary Coke bottle or similar.  You can use the same one several times over, but not indefinitely because the pressure - see below- will eventually weaken it.  But a great re-use!)
• A funnel 

 Ingredients:

• 200g sugar, either white caster or unrefined if you want the ginger ale to be a bit brown
• A piece of fresh ginger root about 2cm square when peeled (you want to end up with about 2 tablespoons of ginger when grated)
• Instant yeast, 1/4 teaspoon (the kind they sell in supermarkets for breadmaking is fine)
• Juice of a lemon

Method:

1. Funnel the sugar into the bottle
2. Add the yeast and shake to mix with the sugar
3. Grate the ginger finely - one of those microplane graters is perfect for this
4. Squeeze the lemon, add the grated ginger to it, and funnel both into the bottle
5. Fill the container that held the lemon and ginger with water and then rinse this through the funnel so that all the bits end up in the brew
6. Half fill the bottle with with some cool/tepid water (about 20% if you have a thermometer), screw on the top and shake it to start to dissolve the sugar
7. Now fill the bottle to about 3cm from the top, cap and shake again till the sugar is well dissolved.  Pay attention to the bottom of the bottle where the sugar can collect
8. Screw the bottle cap on firmly and, if you have one, put the bottle in your airing cupboard for an hour or two to get the fermentation going.  This fermentation will naturally carbonate the drink, but you do need to ensure the brew doesn't get too gassy, so ...
9. Check the bottle periodically. When you feel the sides getting hard, unscrew the cap carefully to allow a little bit of the pressure to escape, then screw it shut again and leave for another few hours till the sides of the bottle have hardened up again.  All this should take no more than 12 hours, so if you make the brew in the morning it will be done by the evening
10. Put it in the fridge, which will stop the fermentation and chill the ale nicely
11. Drink within a day or two, either sieved to remove the ginger bits, or unsieved, which makes it stronger

Truly delicious!