Nanna Icky's ginger beer (recipe by Pip Lincolne)

This recipes takes three weeks to make.

Week one: Make your plant

1/2 tsp dried yeast

1 rounded tsp ground ginger

1 rounded tsp sugar

250ml lukewarm water

Put ingredients in a jar that will hold about one litre of liquid. Mix and cover with a clean, open-weave cloth and use an elastic band to hold it in place. Don't use a lid. It could go BANG!

Each day add one tsp of ginger and one tsp of sugar. Repeat for one week.

Meanwhile collect and clean plastic bottles (glass could explode). Smaller bottles get a better fizz, but regular 1 or 2 litre milk or water bottles are fine. You're making about 14 litres.

Week two: a bit more fortifying!

Top your 'plant' up with 500ml of warm (not hot) water. Each day, stir through two tsps of ground ginger and two tsps of sugar. Do this for one week.

Week three: It's time to bottle it!

You'll need a 20-litre container, a funnel, some muslin cloth [cheesecloth], an elastic band and your bottles.

Mix 12 litres of warm water with 250ml of strained lemon juice and 1.75kg of sugar, and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Stretch the muslin over the top of the 'plant' jar and secure with the elastic band. Strain liquid into a bowl.

Add the strained 'plant' (not the goop) to the warm water mixture. Stir well and pour into bottles with a jug and a funnel. Leave 2–3cm between the ginger beer level and the lid of the bottle.

Set the bottles aside for one week in a cool spot.

End of week three:

Test your ginger beer — it should be fizzy now. Drink with lots of ice, and with gin, vodka or lime.

Pip Lincolne's latest book, Make Hey While the Sun Shines, features recipe cards and is published by Hardie Grant, $45.