Ginger Beer

[Dan]

Does anyone here have a recipe or process for a succesful non alcohol ginger beer using root ginger?

I started a couple of weeks ago with a kit, threw it in the kettle and added some lemons and about 100grams of root ginger for 10 minutes, 150 grams of sugar chilled decanted pitched the dry yeast supplied and bottled.

It came out ok, quite lemony with only a hint of ginger even with the additions, very mild, but quite drinkable.

Last weeks one was no kit, 1.3kg's of root ginger, a few lemons and water, enough honey to carbonate a projected 25 litres.
I boiled half of the ginger for 30 mins and boiled the other half for 10 minutes, chilled decanted pitched wyeast 1968 yeast and bottled 25 litres.

Its taking along time to carbonate, its fiercely gingery but thin and tasteless, like water with ginger in it, not a good outcome, im wondering how to leave residual sweetness to balance the ginger.
Ive read about these ginger beer plants, kinda like a yeast starter, it seemed unnecessary to me, when ive got gear to boil and ale yeasts to condition.

Any ideas?

[Mark]

I've been experimenting with ginger beer for the last couple of months and have had some great results.

The basic recipe I've come up with is something like this:
1.5kg ginger root juiced in a juicer
5 or so lemons squeezed
lemon rind (optional)
about 2.8 kg sugar (am currently making a batch with some demure.. demureae.. dark sugar)
US05 yeast (can use a starter, or even dregs from a bottle of HB, yeast cake etc)

All I did was juice the ginger (discarding the leftovers) and heat in a pot with about 5L water, add the sugar, lemon juice and lemon rind. Brought it briefly to the boil, cooled in a sink then added to water in fermenter to make up to 25L and pitch yeast. After a day or so the yeast should be active enough so you can mix the yeast through (to get even distribution) and bottle. When the bottle is firm enough you have to refrigerate to halt the fermentation process (plastic bottles, or at least one plastic bottle, comes in handy for this). You can pretty much drink it straight away but it really improves and clears after a week or two. Mine was sensational and seriously 1/20th the price of commercial products.

The only frustration is not being able to stop fermentation when bottled. I attempted some homemade experiments in "pasturising" with disastrous results, nearly blew my head off! Basically you have to have lots of fridge space, although if you're using plastic bottles you can release the pressure every now and then, although they will become more alcoholic over time. I tried to give the yeast very little to work with in terms of aeration and yeast nutrient so it will act slowly and only really serve to carbonate. I tried lactic sugar once, but it's not sweet enough to be really effective.

[Stu McKinlay]

Thanks Mark.

I've just had a crack with this -

1kg of sugar
10 lemons
A large piece of root ginger, grated.

Boiled about 3L of water - stirred in sugar and all lemon juice.
Poured that into a corny keg. Topped up to about 15L with tap water. Added S04 yeast.
Placed all 10 lemon rinds and the grated ginger into a muslin bag. Tied a piece of floss to the muslin bag and dropped it into the fermenter. "Dry spices"?.

I tasted after nearly 24 hours and it was tasting very nice. Just a little light on ginger to be a real "ginger beer" (I'm a big fan of Hardie Boys Dry) but I'm not sure if it will become more gingery in time. Tasted bloody good. I'm figuring I'll have it in the fridge after 48 or 72 hours. Drinking this weekend at a family get together.

[Mark]

Should be interesting, I think steeping or boiling the ginger with the sugar etc would enhance the ginger flavours, but that looks like a refreshing drink.

I'm a fan of the stones alcoholic ginger beer, will attempt to make it sometime. It uses hops and some malt, I might try it with some DME, low alpha hops and yeast nutrient to get a reasonable alcohol yield, then dump sugar at bottling time for sweetness. A fridge keg would be ideal for making this.

[Ally Mcg]

Made a ginger beer the other week. Having read a few forums i figured adding some Pale Malt might leave a few unfermentable sugars so it wouldn't get too dry.

250g Marris Pale Otter
1.5kg Chelsea White Sugar
.5kg mix Demerara and Muscavado
juice and zest of six lemons
100g of grated ginger
For 14 litres

Mashed the grain, then added the sugar and ginger to the wort then boiled for 15 mins. Added the zest, the lemon juice at flame out. Dry 'hopped' with some more lemon rind and some more grated ginger. OG = 1.058. Put in my fermenter with some kit yeasts I had lying about

After 4 days bottled in 2lt plastics, letting some pressure off on a daily basis. Drank some at 1.024 and let the rest ferment out to 1.012. Really tasty, maybe a bit lemony and reminded me a lot of a properly dry cider. Finished the last of it today whilst brewing but thinking about making another batch.

Not quite non alcoholic but was so nice i thought i'd share

[Mark]

sounds nice... how did the malt affect the flavour? stones use malt and hop extract in their (alcoholic) ginger beer, is a great drop but pricey

[Ally Mcg]

Good question - I'll need to make it again without the malt to be more sure of exactly what it was doing. It didn't taste overly malty, but the whole thing tasted quite balanced in the mouth, which I'm guessing was the malt

[Reviled]

Yeah I reckon the malt would definately lend quite a good mouth feel as opposed to just a dry ginger beer.. Hops in a GB tho, now thats interesting!

[Mark]

haha yeah, i think they use hop oil and probably in small amounts. it's also a sweet ginger beer (despite being alcoholic) which counters the bitterness a bit

[martin w]

mark, did you ever try making stones green ginger? i agree, its a real nice drop and i'd be keen on making some myself

[Mark]

hi martin
yep i did, the main issue i had with it was retaining sweetness, the stuff would dry out and become increasingly more alcoholic. so it was a bit drier than stones, but nice none the less. if you can pasturise the stuff (or use sodium metabisulphite) to stop it fermenting and pressurise in a keg it would be much closer to the real thing.

[martin w]

any chance of the recipe? ;-)

[Mark]

can't remember exactly, think i did something similar to the one i posted above and added a small amount of hops. lactic sugar doesn't seem to get sweet enough, but does work to some degree