Ginger Ninja - powerful ginger beer

[moke]

Having tried a few cordials, and a couple of traditional ginger beer recipes, I've been having a go at knocking up a really fiery ginger beer. - this is for a 5ltr demijohn.

500g of fresh ginger, chopped extremely finely.
500g of sugar
1 ltr generic apple juice
2 fresh scotch bonnet chillies
200ml no added sugar lemon cordial*

....

other gb's i've tried have ended up too dry - i'm aiming for a sparkling beer with a kick, and the total dryness doesn't sit well with it - so to counter this (and to add some needed acid) i used some cordial with sweeteners. i boiled all the ingredients bar one chillies together with a litre or so of water, til i was satisfied that the preservatives in the cordial were subdued.

cooled off and chucked in the dj, with the spare chills halved and shoved in on top.

the 'wort' tasted great - sharp, gingery, sweet (duh!) and very very spicey.

HOWEVER - i need some advice - i had an aberration while weighing out the recipe, and ended up chucking in a whole 1kg of sugar, meaning a have a 1.085 OG - i was aiming for a 6% brew, not a bottle of fizzy wine!

my recovery plan is to dilute when i bottle, but how? if i dilute with a water and apple juice mix, how much can i use? i want to thin it down, but still add some sugar to carb the bottle......

any advice would be welcomed!

 

[tigerpaws]

What yeast did you use?

 

[wilsoa1111]

To do the dilution u need the s.g of the apple juice- off the top of my head their usually 1.044 plug that into a converter to get measure in brix this is a direct measure of grams of sugar per kilo(ie a litre of water to simplify a bit) 1 degree brix is 1g in 100g
ie 1 brix is 10g sugar in 1l approx-this should allow you to directly sub your aj+water for sugar getting the volume u want at a gd abv...btw yeast was asked i believe as different yeasts finish at different levels of dryness=more booze champagne yeast is the most powerful(attenuates best) and can break down lactose- a normally unfermentable sugar so to sweeten ones with champagne yeast splenda sugar is a gd bet if dont want to mess with cordials again when diluting to keep sweetness

 

[The Goatreich]

Great, I'm going to do this very very soon!

 

[Sideboard]

2 fresh scotch bonnet chillies

OMFG, Thers a bar in calahonda, costa del sol that was called "chillies" they used to steep chillies in vodka, It was pure torture. Have you tried this before.

 

[The Goatreich]

A friend of mine made two ginger beer batches alongside each other, both with a whole chilli in, except one was a dried chilli and the other fresh. He says the dried chilli gave much tastier results.

 

[The Goatreich]

Would this work with Young's super wine yeast or would I be better off buying a more specialist yeast? So far I've made all of my fruit juice wines, mead, cider and fiery ginger beer with it, it's pretty damn good stuff.

 

[spudnic]

Probably a silly question but after adding all the ingredients do you fill the demijohn with water and if it's cool enough then add the yeast

 

[glove81]

The other ginger beer recipes I seem to come across all mention finishing up quite dry. What is it about this recipe that will keep some sweetness? Very keen to find a gingerbeer recipe but would prefer one with some sweetness.

 

[jamesrt2004]

The other ginger beer recipes I seem to come across all mention finishing up quite dry. What is it about this recipe that will keep some sweetness? Very keen to find a gingerbeer recipe but would prefer one with some sweetness.

The cordial has artificial sweetners in it basically =)

 

[pittsy]

next time i brew this ill be using dme and an ale yeast , using an ale yeast will help it ferment out not as dry and dme will give it needed body (ive brewed the other version twice now )

 

[The Goatreich]

Good tip Pittsy. Something like Windsor, or SO5? I have these cultivated in my fridge ready to go see :) Would you swap the all sugar for DME?

 

[pittsy]

I would yeah , remember though it will ferment out around 1010 ish and not 0990 so not as strong but not as dry if using ale yeast , ps don't be frightened about lots of spice , it loses lots once conditioned

 

[The Goatreich]

Nice, I'll give it a bash with my recently harvested Windsor yeast then.