Smooth Ginger Beer

[danbriant]

What did it taste like?



Yer im due to bottle this soon. Its matured nicely after racking. Cleared up nice to.

Going to double bottle the ginger and the ginger and orange one this week to free up two demijohns :) Then set some more batches on but with less sugar :P

 

[cheshirehomebrew]

havent tried mine yet dan, and have yet to bottle the ginger lime version as its still bubbling away in the demijohn.

I might wait 4 weeks until i sample it, and if half decent will make a mental note to brew up 5 gallons of it next feb/march as i think 40/60 days maturing will really make it special and just in time for the summer.

 

[Baldilocks]

So mine has had 16 days in a darkened shed and I think it has finished. No airlock activity whatsoever, and the ginger strands, which were being held up by the CO2 have all sunk to the bottom.



It's lovely and clear, but then it pretty much was all the way through fermentation.



Gonna give it a taste tomorrow evening when I have some time. So what do you reckon guys ? Should it be straight into bottles now ? and to prime or not to prime ?

 

[danbriant]

I just started a test batch using 600g Golden Sugar, 8 Peaches, 2tsp mixed spice and 300g Ginger. Wanted a nice Autumn warmer at 5.5% Gives a nice golden colour spice flavour and a subtle peach flavour.



If there is no airlock activity and you have a stable SG then I would prime a bottle with around 1tsp of sugar per 500ml bottle.



Leave at room temperature for a week then move to cooler place.

Fridge for 24 hours before serving.

 

[Mountford]

Hi all when you say white sugar did you use caster/granulated or brewing
Also what yeast would be best as a few ppl have used different kinds and what was the final % of the 1kg of sugar brew was it too strong thanks

 

[ruckinfight]

Hi when you bottle your ginger beer do you prime the bottles with sugar

 

[danbriant]

I used 1/8 of a teaspoon per 280ml bottle and half would do for a 500ml. This was for slight fizz to it. I don't like to overprime my bottles. Would not want to clean up sticky ginger beer :P



I used standard granulated sugar from sainsburys. Next time im going to be using golden granulated sugar. Ever so slightly less refined than the white stuff. But has more flavour and body to it.

The 1kg in a gallon gave me 10%.

It was strong tasting as well but nothing harsh. Went down a treat at work.



I used gervin ale yeast from wilkos. However youngs ale yeast works well to.

Both seem to drop out of suspension nicely

 

[Mountford]

Hi I need a little bit of advice as well as the ginger beer I'm also going to start a turbo cider how would I go about back sweetening before bottling thanks for the help

 

[danbriant]

You can use splenda as a direct sugar replacement. Keep adding until taste is what you want. Keep adding a little at a time and see how it goes.

Splenda does not affect the overall taste as far as I can detect.

You could always take out 1 litre sweet it to taste then upscale for the whole batch.



That's how I do it others may have extra input

 

[astraman1]

here what i do when i make let it ferment out strain it off into bottles with one and a half to two teaspoons of sugar per 1l bottle to prime it leave it for 3 to 4 days then bang it in the fridge it will cool the yeast off and stop it from fermenting resulting in a fizzy ginger beer and if its not sweet enough i just add abit of honey to the glass before pouring

 

[faustino123]

Think I'll give this one a go. I made the fiery ginger beer and it isn't really my thing. too dry.

 

[startv1031]

I usually make Ginger beer using the following ingredients:
Sugar, 4-5 cups per gallon of water(I have seen some use 6 cups per gallon of water)
1 lemon peeled, the juice from the lemon
1/2 orange peel, (optional) as it effects the color of the beer
1.5 ounces of Ginger per gallon
4 ounces of raisins per gallon of water(it is recommended to chop up the raisins, but i don't since they stick to the knife, so i just toss them in with the Sugar.
The last item added is the lemon juice.

I boil bottled water in a small pot with the Ginger and the peels for about half an hour and pour it over the sugar in the fermenting tank, mix the sugar in till the liquid clears up, keep the temperature of the whole batch at 75 to 80 degrees F, pitch the yeast. Let it aerate for a couple of hours and when the yeast is taking off the container is covered.

Been making this recipe for a few times and found that ambiance temperature has a lot to do with the length of fermentation. The last batch made took 12 days in warm weather which tells me, it is best to make this wine during warm summer days and bottle for consumption.

I do have proper equipment to measure Sugar gravity and ABV, but don't use any so, i cannot give you any feed back on that...

Side project i have not attempted is to run this beer through a Pot Still and taste the outcome.

 

[marc]

Well i have made this up as directed but only 600gms of brewing sugar ( all i had at the time ...lol) starting OG =1.064 just transfered into another demijohn and FG = 0.998 so i iwll be leaving it alone for a fe wdays to settle then bottle into 2Ltr pop bottles with 1 teaspoon in each for secondary

Will be drinking it at the harley rally at bisley this year with a few m8's :) (first weekend in aug)