Ginger Beer

[Damfoose]

Just finished throwing some ginger beer together with SWMBO well she pretty much did all the work ( would not let me near it ) Demijohn is full and in another bowl just incase of spill overs.

Used 1kg of ginger 2 lemons and some cream of tarter I like my ginger beer and if this is proper ginger then all the better.

Now for the few days wait I shall be bottling this stuff on monday night.

Editd because I cant spell tonight

[WishboneBrewery]

here's mine... its been bubbling away for ages, though its had a second feed the other week... Must be getting pretty strong!

"Ginger Beer / Wine bubbling away in a Demijohn, originally started as a Ginger Beer plant from which I made a few bottles of Ginger Beer, the remainder plant was put in here with a load more ginger powder and about 800g of sugar..." - http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdtnc/3107172172/
I'll add some lemon Juice when it comes to bottling.
The bottles I made to start with took a somewhere between 1-2 weeks to carbonate (with me keeping releasing pressure) and are now in the fridge with a fair amount of settled sediment from the conditioning... Fizzy as anything!!!!

and a video! http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdtnc/3162058871/

[Damfoose]

Nice picture

After 2 days in the demijohn this has now been racked off to 8 500 Ml plastic bottles and will be left in the warm for a few days then bunged outside in the cold for a few more days before it is drunk. Smelled great and the cheeky sample I had said the same.

[WishboneBrewery]

when you say you used 1Kg of ginger, was it Fresh or Powdered? and whats the Cream of tartar do?

[Damfoose]

I used fresh ginger and grated it. The cream of tarter is a smoothing agent takes the harshness off the ginger as far as I understand.

[WishboneBrewery]

ahh, OK...
I've never done ginger beer with fresh ginger, though my latest batch has a bit of gratered fresh in it too.

This http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A634664 is basically the recipe I use though my recipe is from my mum who has had it from a newspaper cutting years ago, so its probably older than me.. so pre- '74. The difference in the recipe I do is you use boiling water from the kettle to disolve the sugar before adding cold water to cool it down before straining in the contents of the Ginger plant.

The stuff in my demijohn is more of a take on a recipe from http://duramecho.com/Food/NoveltyWines.html soit might end up at about 15% ginger wine.

[Damfoose]

Nahh I did a variation on the recipie used 8 pints of water boiling droped the ginger into the boiling water then turned off the heat added the sugger and the lemon zest stired for a few min and left it to cool down stiring every 20 min or so, a few hours later the pot with the ginger in it was down to an acceptiable 24C started rehydrating some yeast when the pot was at 80C by the time everything went into the demi the yeast had been started for about 3 hours so it was ready to go. I quite litterally poured everything into the demi pot full of water sugger and ginger the ginger looked like it filled 1/4 of the demi in went the yeast and cream of tarter the lemon used a sterile rubber glove to cover the end of the demi and gave it a darn good shake got a sarnie bag bunged that over the opening and used a rubber band to stop it comming off as I dont have a stopper and bubbler for the demi. That was pretty much it.

[Damfoose]

Update
Just opened a bottle of this, Had a very nice hiss and is extreemly fizzy, Not a sweet as I would have liked but its good , Loads of ginger flavour and then it hits you with a huge firey heat at the back of the throat..... Fan blinking tastic

[WishboneBrewery]

Good stuff...

[sam c]

hello everyone,

just started brewing and am interested in doing some ginger beer. can anyone tell me how much ingredience i would need to make a gallon? and the method to do so? i had a read of one of the recipies from this thread but it was for 10 litre i think. maybe i could just half those ingredients but i wasn't sure if that would work for making the plant.

[Ska_J]

Sam c, there are a couple of recipes on this topic from last november: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=15586

I've just started one too, but its my first and I have absolutely no idea if its going to work:

250g ginger, grated and bashed up (the amount of ginger people use seems to vary hugely! This seemed like a good start),
juice of a lemon,
450g sugar,
5cm bit of cinamon,
4 cloves,
2 tbsp cream of tartar
water to volume ( ~ 4 litres to start. I was planning to top up with more once I'd decided it wasn't going to end up all over the place. I might just leave it at that though)
Yeast (this was supposed to be a packet of kit yeast from my last beer, but then I realised I'd used it in a hideous attempt at cider. So it's bakers yeast. I'll be intrigued to see if that comes out ok)

Its been going a couple of days now. I'm thinking about getting it into some plastic bottles as I want it alcoholic, but not too dry. It started at 1055, so I recon somewhere after 1025 should be ok, then leave it another day in the bottles (checking pressure!) and then into the fridge.

Fingers crossed!

[sam c]

thanks very much for that. looks prety straight forward so i think i might give it a go soon. one question though, tel me if i got this right. the longer you leave it to ferment, the more alcoholic it will be and therefore less sugar so less sweet?thanks again.

[Ska_J]

Sam c, just to reiterate, the one I've put there hasn't been tested yet, so I'd advise one of the ones in the link (or any others you find, a quick search for 'ginger' in this other brews section brings up quite a few past topics). On the other hand if you were waiting a few days (till the weekend) I'll probably be able to tell you if it's any good or not

With regards to your question- yep. The yeast is busy converting the sugar to alcohol and should continue to do so until not much is left (and I imagine would leave me with quite a dry ginger beer- not to my taste, although it would probably be fairly strong). There are chemical ways to stop it (usually done in wine making) but it'll slow down enough not to worry about with these ginger beers if they're put in the fridge. They'll be drunk before it gets much further.

(Another option is to use non-fermentable sugars alongside the fermentable ones, which the yeast won't be able to turn into alcohol, one of those recipes has lactose in it, which does exactly this.)

Good luck, any questions, feel free to ask!

[sam c]

thanks once again ska_J, i was thinking about trying the first recipie on that link.what is cream of tarta? is it brought from brewing shops or the supermarket? im in thaialnd so any alternative would be good if only brought from the brew shop as there are none here.

sorry one more question. could i rack off the brew at say 1.015 into another dj with some lactose in the bottom to make it sweet and then into bottles? and if so roughly how much lactose would i add? for a normal sweetness. not too sweet, not too dry. i you see what i mean.

[RatboyOllie]

Hello,

Cream of tartar can be bought from any supermarket, i just bought some myself for this recipe. It is used for baking cakes and scones and stuff like that so you should be able to get hold of some. In Asda it was along side the bicarb of soda, those sprinkly things you put on the top of buns and the the cake mixes and flour. I'm sure you'll find it, it was about £1 for a little pot thatll probably last forever !