Ginger Beer Advice

[will]

I'm pretty new to brewing - I've brewed from kits which is fine, but I've also been experimenting with some ginger beer recipes. I started out using 5L mineral water bottles but have now switched over to a demijohn. I don't have a very scientific approach and each batch has been... varied. I've had some great results and some bad results, but all have been drinkable.

I'm wanting to improve and expand the recipe and I've decided to knock out my own special Christmas brew, but I'm after some help refining the quantities and techniques. This time round I've decided to add some hops, which I've never used before, as well as cranberries.

Here's the ingredients I have:

50g Fuggles hops
1kg Granulated white sugar
420g Ginger
300g Cranberries
1 lemon
Young's wine yeast

I was planning on filling my biggest pan (about 3-4L) with the ginger, cranberries, lemon juice, spices (probably chilli, cinnamon and cloves) and around half the sugar and boiling for about 20-30 minutes, taking off the boil and adding the hops as it cools and leaving for 10 minutes. Strain the wort through some muslin in to the demijohn, then topping it up with cold water. Once this has dropped to around 30 degrees C, adding a teaspoon of yeast, placing the air lock and leaving until bubbles have stopped, then racking off and bottling with some more sugar.

I'm really unsure on what quantities I should be using here. Especially when it comes to the sugar and the hops. In the past I've used the entire kilo of sugar and it's been a little too much. Other times I've used less and it hasn't been enough.

Would 750g of the sugar be too much? Also, how much of the hops should I use? The entire 50g packet or less?

I've seen some calculations out there for working this stuff out, but I don't know if it would really apply here or where to begin even.

I really appreciate any advice on this

[mooj]

Hi Will - I'm afraid I'm no expert on ginger beer. There are plenty of threads here on ginger beer though. Have a look at the 'other brews', section or do a forum search for ginger beer. You may find your answer. Personally I would be inclined to swap the ginger / sugar for some freshly brewed all grain wort.

Good luck with the brew!

[wetdog]

not exactly advice but I'll share my thoughts on this, might give you some perspective..
firstly if I were going to make some ginger beer I'd do a search for a recipe and at least use that as a starting point rather than randomly throwing ingredients in as you could be hopelessly out of balance and ruin the batch
try searching for 'ginger beer' on this forum in the 'other brews' section
secondly my first thought on the hops is it seems quite a lot to put into a gallon, I've used far less in 5 gallons of beer.
sounds like you've had some experience of brewing this in the past with mixed results so I would suggest you keep a log of every step so in the future you know what to change to improve your batch.

[will]

I've found a few recipes which give me a better idea of quantities, such as this one, but I'm still stuck on how much hops to use. I have seen similar recipes that use hops before, but Google still isn't providing any answers

[wetdog]

at the top of this page on the right hand side there are nine link bars. click the one called 'Links'
go down to the heading 'other homebrewing websites'
click on 'Spencer's' beer pages
now there is a link called 'Cat's Meow'
click the index button at the bottom and find 'ginger beer'
that may help you

[hoppingMad]

You may well be at the cutting edge of ginger beer brewers with your hops. I would start with a small addition the first time, and increase once you have a "handle" on adding hops in ginger beer.
I have been experimenting with my lemonade by gradually reducing the sugar amount each batch because I felt there was far too much at first. I'm down to where I think its nice n sweet without being as sweet as commercial lemonade. And of course its way nicer too.
I suggest starting with what you know ( you must already know quite a bit having done seberal batches) and making gradual adjustments to each batch.

[will]

Thanks for the pointer Wetdog - looking over these I can see most of the recipes use around 60g (2oz) of hops for 5 gallons, so I'm going to try 15g of the Fuggles as a late hop in one gallon.

I'll let everyone know how this goes

[will]

This is fermenting now. So far so good

[ADDLED]

Hey i love ginge beer but i didnt know you used hops in GB so Im intrigued to know how they affect the flavour.
Best of luck and pls post ure results and the recipe if it turns out ok.

[will]

So here's the final recipe that I used:

150g cranberries
420g grated ginger
750g white granulated sugar
15g Fuggles hops
1 lemon
4 teaspoons cinnamon powder
6 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
2 heaped teaspoons of Youngs Super Wine Yeast Compound

The wort tasted absolutely great - just the right amount of sweetness and bitterness and beautiful colour. As it began to ferment a huge amount of sediment was created and the colour drained.

I bottled this yesterday and had a little taste. The good news is that it did ferment and the gingery-ness was perfect. Downside was that it tasted pretty disgusting

I think the problems here were threefold:

1. There was no residual sugar in the brew i.e. it was far too dry and watery
2. Cranberries aren't sweet enough and ruin the flavour with a plastic-like after taste
3. The yeast was of the wrong type and the fermentation happened at too cold a temperature (below 18oC)

Two is an easy fix: Remove the cranberries and either leave them out or replace them with cherries. Three also: Get some champagne or larger yeast.

One, however, the lack of residual sweetness once fermentation has stopped, not so easy. I've read somewhere that dextrose doesn't readily convert to alcohol during fermentation and will provide for a sweeter brew. Is this true and if so what is a good source? Malt extract?

I'm keeping a log of these ginger beers and I hoping to, eventually, absolutely nail it!