Fiery Ginger Beer

[Vinotinto]

Here's a glass of my Ginger Wine, absolutely stunning, first I've made. Only a week old, 11.5%. Gonna do a 10 Ltr this weekend and go for a 12.5% abv. The Ginger comes through great with an after tingle of chilli.


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CN you link to the full recipe for this or post it up please.

 

[Rockuronium]

Vino, the recipe is up earlier in this thread.


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[Vinotinto]

Apologies, went to the start and it is ginger beer. Being lazy with the 31 pages, will scout through. Ta

 

[Vinotinto]

Just done a variation of this as a wine. Basically a Semi-WOW! :twisted:

To make 1 UK Gallon used:
200g grated fresh ginger
3 X lemons juice & zest ( unwaxed variety)
1X star anaise
2x Chillis with seeds (removed the pith)
800g granulated sugar
1L Welch's WGJ with Apple & Pear ( a real struggle sourcing 100% WGJ)
3 bag cuppa for tanning
1 tsp pectolase
1tsp Youngs Yeast Nutrient
1tsp Youngs Yeast

..................................................
DJ1: Apple & Raspberry WOW
DJ2: Fiery Ginger Wine
Bottled: Brewferm Ambrioux
Bottled: Brewferm Xmas Beer
Drinking: Cooper's Mexican Cerveza

Rock did you boil up the ginger and lemons etc first? Would appreciate some 'instructions' :)

 

[Rockuronium]

Rock did you boil up the ginger and lemons etc first? Would appreciate some 'instructions' :)

Yes Vino, boiled everything including chilli's and sugar in 1 lt of water for 15min. Definitely go for 1kg of sugar though, that will give you at least the 12-12.5%% abv. I also strained everything in a muslin bag when transferring to DJ.:thumb:

 

[braziliain]

Bottled up tonight.
Only ended up with 4L, so next time I think I'll top up the DJ a little. The fermentation was pretty gentle so didn't need as much headroom.

Primed it with a tsp of light brown sugar and 2 tsp splenda per 1/2L.

Now the wait....

 

[Rockuronium]

Bottled up tonight.
Only ended up with 4L, so next time I think I'll top up the DJ a little. The fermentation was pretty gentle so didn't need as much headroom.

Primed it with a tsp of light brown sugar and 2 tsp splenda per 1/2L.

Now the wait....

Is this beer Braz? What's the ABV?

 

[braziliain]

It's the ginger beer from a few posts back. OG 1.040 FG 1.001 makes it around 5.3abv after priming. A bit stronger than I was hoping for.

I think it is that golden colour because I used light brown sugar.

 

[Misneac]

So I'm making this right now; burbling happily away in the basement at 74F on my "fermometer". My recipe is as follows:
825g half peeled & grated ginger root (this is the final weight, I started with a bit under a kilo).
175g dried sweetened cranberries
800ml apple cider (this is the proper NA version that you would get if you smashed an apple with a sledge then squeezed it in a bit of cheesecloth).
1.5tsp powdered ginger
3.8 kilos white sugar
1 sachet Vintners Harvest CL23 (8g)

Heated all of the above together to about 90C for 40 minutes or so, of course not the yeast though. Added to 6.5 US gallon FV (24L roughly). Topped up to the shoulder with cool water, previously boiled to sterilise and remove VOCs. Added yeast at 80F (I'm a Yank, my instant read doesn't have Centigrade increments). OG adjusted for temp was 1080. Yup, really. The yeast is SAID to tolerate up to 18%. I'm shooting for 11-11.5%. That's as far as I've gotten. Plan is to let it ferment until bubbles are very infrequent (~=4mins apart), rack to a secondary vessel, add another 3.8L of apple cider, a pint of honey, and a bit more ginger if it needs it, ferment out then bottle in 625mL bottles primed with 4mL maple syrup. The cider and honey I'm hoping will act A) as a yeast nutrient, B) to keep it from having a "thin" mouthfeel and C) to keep the ABV up there. The maple syrup is just because I have heaps, don't really eat many pancakes, and maybe the trace elements will add flavor.
If anybody has any helpful suggestions as to what I've done wrong, or what might be done better another way on the bits I haven't already done I'd much appreciate it as I'm fairly new at this.

 

[Tanzanite]

I do more or less the same but i get around 12-14 pints of ginger wine then 2 gal of alcoholic ginger beer from the same must. Put the ginger along with some water, enough so it processes in a food processor, i use approx 1 kg more wont hurt, dont peel just scrub clean. then add water to make a ginger slop of around 14 pints this goes into a bucket with 1 campden tablet, just has insurance against nasties on the ginger, its then left over night sealed . I then add a couple of teaspoons of pectalose and leave for two or three days sealed. then strain off the juice into another bucket , add a kettle of boiling water then yeast nutrient , juice and zest of 2 lemons and 2 oranges (zest not the white pith) or citric acid (this is adjusted at bottling) 4lb of dark cane or molasses sugar dissolved in boiling water couple of pints, and a sherry or dessert yeast ,you should have around 18 pints now ferment for 3 days in bucket then divide between 3 demijohns to finish. possibly add a little more sugar has it ferments, you want a sweetish finish to the wine. Then the ginger thats been filtered off is added to a bucket, with a fresh red chillis mashed, 4lb white sugar juice zest of 4 lemons, make up to two gallons with water yeast nutrient and champagne yeast, ferment for a week in the bucket strain , then bottle into carbonated bottles adding a good teaspoon of sugar and a few grains of champagne yeast to each bottle. then proceed as you would for beer, warmth then cold then drink. Makes a nice fiery ginger beer

 

[Misneac]

Good to know. I only roughly peeled the ginger with a spoon, not getting into all the interstices and leaving about half the peel because some early posts in the thread said that the peel made it taste hot and thin. I may add a bit of habanero honey to the secondary for spice, depending on how it tastes. I'm shooting for more dry than sweet. I don't know about Blighty, but in the US there's already too much sweet in everything (alcoholic orange soda is now a thing. BLURGH!). A nice dry *******ized ginger cyser would be a welcome treat. I'm trying to get as close to all natural/organic as I can without being prohibitively expensive. Also: now accepting suggestions for "brand name". Leaning toward Parus Major at the mo. If you have one you're halfway there, have two and it's a good night

 

[HomeOke]

I brewed my first ginger beer a couple of years ago, using this recipe except I misread it and used 5 kg of sugar. Wow, it was potent and I had to sweeten it using Drink-o-pops peach or apple flavors and it was drunk as a wine. Since then I have used the recipe as a base to make various concoctions and had a lot of fun experimenting. I have now made beetroot and pumpkin variants and it is really very simple and cheap.

I use about 350g of ginger shredded, 1 kg beetroot shredded, 1kg pumpkin pealed and cut into chunks, 3 or 4 lemons cut into slices, a dash of vanilla essence and caramel essence, cream of tarter. Add water, bring to boil, simmer for an hour. Chuck in a couple kg sugar, stir until dissolved, pour into fermenting bucket. Add some cold water then add the 200g of dark caramel barley that has been soaking in hot water for a few hours. Top up bucket with cold water, add yeast (20g local brewers high foam yeast used for brewing traditional beer in South Africa).

7 to 10 days of fermenting, filter into another bucket through a sterilized pillow case, add gelatine and bottle in a couple of days

 

[braziliain]

Put a 4.5Ltr batch of this on this afternoon. It tasted pretty nice as it went into the DJ. Like a spicy lemonade with a ginger linger.

140g of grated root ginger
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 lemons (grated the zest, sliced and squeezed)
1 lime (grated the zest, sliced and squeezed)
400g light brown sugar
4.5ltr water

Added it all the the pot cold, brought it up to a boil and simmered for 30min. Ended up with 4.2L in the DJ at OG 1.041. 1 tsp of Wilko Gervin ale yeast pitched at 24C.

Have made a no boil ginger beer before that needed straining when you pour it to drink. That one was lovely, so I hope this turns out as nice.

I opened my first bottle of this last night and was really disappointed. It is not fizzy at all and I savagely bitter. I'm left wondering where I went wrong.

I batch primed it with 1tsp brown sugar and 2tsp splenda per 500ml bottle.

I dissolved all the sugar and sweetener in 500ml boiling water, cooled it and put in the bottom of the bottling bucket, then syphoned the ginger beer on top.

Left the bottles for 2 weeks at 19C and the PET bottle I filled felt nice and firm.

The one I opened last night was a glass Corona bottle.

Should I have stirred the ginger beer and priming sugars together before bottling??

 

[Rockuronium]

Is 19c not a bit low for a 2 week secondary?


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[braziliain]

Is 19c not a bit low for a 2 week secondary?


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Is it? I kind of thought it should be at the same temp as the primary ferment. Have I got that wrong?

 

[Rockuronium]

Regarding secondary temp you are correct to maintain the same temp, but 19C appears low for a Ginger Beer. I don't batch prime anymore, I find the results inconsistent, some flat, and some gushers. I do each bottle using a syringe now, far better results.


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[braziliain]

Regarding secondary temp you are correct to maintain the same temp, but 19C appears low for a Ginger Beer. I don't batch prime anymore, I find the results inconsistent, some flat, and some gushers. I do each bottle using a syringe now, far better results.


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That's interesting. I'll try opening the PET bottle and see if it is any different.

What ratio of water to sugar do you use for the syringe?

I'm going to try again.

 

[Rockuronium]

I've just done 20 Lts of beer going into 40 X 500ml bottles. So used 7g/l (7X20) for priming( 140g total) topped this up to 400ml with water, so 10ml per bottle.


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[wez3323]

Can anyone advise me on my bottle conditioning please ?
Inspired from this thread I made 5gal of ginger beer last week and it seem to have finished in the primary - I used 2kg of peeled root ginger, 1/4 of a pint of ginger powder (half filled a half pint glass) 1kg of brewing sugar, 2kg of white table sugar, juice and zest of 4 lemons, 1 pack of generic sparkling wine yeast (from LHBS)
It fermented like a beast for the first few days and seems to have settled down over the last few days (unfortunately due to small children, my hydrometer was recently smashed)
Anyway, tasted it today and its as dry as ghandi's flip flop - i dumped a spoon of brewing sugar in the cup and it suddenly became bloody lovely - sweet, good ginger kick and some very obvious alcohol.
So now I need your advice - using plastic screwtop bottles Im unsure whether to
A) sweeten with 3TSP of xylitol per gal of ginger beer and about 100g of brewing sugar - then bottle and condition for a few weeks
or
B)sweeten with about 1kg of brewing sugar so rather sweet and bottle, frequently check pressure of bottles with a good squeeze and when firm pasteurize in the dishwasher and hope ive got the sweetness right.......
or
C) any other options ? ?

thanks all, any feedback would be greatly received

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi!
My ginger beer's as dry as a pommie's towel!
I made it for SWMBO to mix with vodka for Moscow Mules, so I plan to add some sugar syrup to the cocktail.
I think either option A) or simply add a little sugar syrup to the glass when you serve.
Perhaps you could keep some of your uncarbonated beer back, oversweeten it with sugar, keep it very cold (to repress fermentation) and use as a sweetener when you serve.