Ginger beer

[hong]

Right, was wanting to kick off a batch of this, seen a recipe fiery ginger beer somewhere. Thing is, i have noticed that none of the recipes i have seen use anything to give the brew a bit of added body, i.e raisins,sultanas, spraymalt malt extract etc. Is it simply cos it just doesnt need it? Please any views on this or any tried & trusted recipes very welcome!
Cheers for any feedback!

[Paddy Bubbles]

Might do one of these myself Hong. Any chance you'd post the recipe?

[saxon]

Hi hong just be very careful as ginger beer is extremly volatile and will easily explode.

[micmacmoc]

I was in Azdah t'other day, they have some frozen 100% ginger, its in the frozed world foods bit, its called TAJand its £1( i think) for 400g, a BARGAIN.In fact I'dbetter do a post on the for sale bit.
I made some ginger 'beer', it was basically turbo cider with ginger flavour, thin, strong and a nasty hangover. I'm going to do an all grain ale and put a pack of this ginger in, philistine that I am.

[second2none]

I love to keep things cheap and simple.

I had the best batch of ginger beer so far by throwing the rule book out of the window.

Get 4L of DIET!!!!! ginger beer
Simmer it in a pan with 500g of sugar and 3tsp. of ginger powder for 20 mins
((secret ingredient - a few sprinkles of cayenne pepper, depending on how spicey u like it))
P.s This smells amazing!

Let it cool to below 15c
Top up to 5L with water and yeast starter

Ferment out (it will take longer than a week in the colder than 20c)
Rack off into a clean container
Add 40g of suagr to 100ml of boiling water and mixx and make up to a pint with cold water and add to the ginger beer
Bottle.
After about 2 weeks it should be ready.

If you dont use diet ginger beer, the yeast will ferment out all the sugar leaving you with a bitter strong ginger beer, just like every other moaning post about ginger beer.
DIET ginger beer has all the artifical sweetners you need to keep your brew the right sweetness without it getting too dry!!

I have tried so hard to make a natural G.B but it has always been lacking. This is fast and simple if you have a free demi john then you cant really go wrong!!!

Total cost £2.45 for 10 pints of nice sweet ginger beer.

[Paddy Bubbles]

I posted this a few days ago in another thread. Thought it might be of interest here also.

Right Brian, this is the recipe, pretty much verbatim from the book. I love the vagueness of some of the instructions but it might be of use to you:

- 5.5l boiling water
- 500g sugar
- 28g whole ginger (bruised)
- 2 lemons
- 8g cream of tartar
- good tablespoon of yeast

1. Remove rinds of lemon as thinly as possible.
2. Strip off every particle of white pith.
3. Cut lemons into thin slices removing pips.
4. Put the sliced lemon into an earthenware bowl with sugar, ginger and cream of tartar and pour on boiling water.
5. Allow to cool to blood heat, stir in the yeast and leave covered with a cloth in a moderately warm place for 24 hours.
6. Skim yeast from the top, then strain ginger beer carefully from the sediment.
7. Bottle. In two days the beer will be ready for use.

The recipe doesn't specify what kind of yeast to use? Bread yeast? Ale?

I like the fact that the recipe makes a small batch - I don't want to use up 40 pint bottles on ginger beer. But remember, I haven't tried this so can't vouch for how good it is.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=37676

[sofa-matt]

That's quite a confusing recipe Paddy, 500g in 5.5l initially seemed like a strong brew, but with a fermentation of only 24hrs I cant see that much alcohol could have beed produced resulting in a lot of residual sweetness. Also, if you dont manage to 'skim all the yeast from the top' then surely there is potential to be making a lot of bombs?

I haven't made any ginger beer, but I am looking to do so,does anybody else think that this recipe is flawed or am I just being a little stupid?

[fatnurse]

Might have a go at this, my other half likes that Crabbies stuff, if I put it in a plastic keg will that be fine to not make it turn into a bomb?

Cheers

Matt

[Paddy Bubbles]

That's quite a confusing recipe Paddy, 500g in 5.5l initially seemed like a strong brew, but with a fermentation of only 24hrs I cant see that much alcohol could have beed produced resulting in a lot of residual sweetness. Also, if you dont manage to 'skim all the yeast from the top' then surely there is potential to be making a lot of bombs?

I haven't made any ginger beer, but I am looking to do so,does anybody else think that this recipe is flawed or am I just being a little stupid?

Don't shoot the messenger Matt. It would be useful to compare against other ginger beer recipes to see if the amount of sugar is excessive. I'd be careful to ensure that fermentation has finished, thereby eliminating the possibility of bottle bombs, but as I said - I haven't tried the recipe myself. It's copied verbatim from the book.

[sofa-matt]

I wouldn't shoot the messenger. Couple of ginger bombs through the letter box perhaps

[SamWise]

Ginger beer is no more given to "bottle bombs" than anything else. This occurs when the drink continues to ferment in the bottle, so the rules are exactly the same as for any other drink. Don't bottle it til fermentation has finished (or you've stopped it properly with wine stabiliser), and only prime with a max of 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar per 500ml for fizz. It's no more "volatile" than anything else, it just has that reputation because more people down the years have brewed it without knowing what they were doing, or have bottled it in wine bottles or something else not designed to hold pressure.

[Gordonmull]

ginger beer isn't so hard. I'm still perfecting this but currently using the keep in the fridge method to allow priming and still have it nice n sweet. Last batch (8.5%, ooopsy) was consumed in saturday's 20C sunshine by the missus and i. Next time shooting for a lower ABV and probably clearing it in bulk in the fridge for 2 days before bottling (500ml PETs) and allowing fermentation to continue. The bulk clearing step is a new one I introduced after the previous batch had way to much sediment in the bottle.

One option i'm thinking about is ferment to dry, allow to clear a bit, prime as for beer but over prime a bit - to the point it's too lively to serve but not turning my PET bottles into sausages. Let it do it's thing until clear and then sulphite and sorbate it, the over priming allowing for some gas loss in putting it back into an FV and adding the chemicals, sugar to taste, stirring, rebottling etc.