Why is my ginger beer non alcoholic

[Cain Harland]

I've started putting a keg of ginger beer on for the kids made basically how I used to make it as a kid but adapted for kegging. I will post recipe below. I know it is probably minimally alcoholic but I guessing under the 0.5% that a retail non alcoholic drink needs to legally be, because you can drink buckets of the stuff and feel no effects of alcohol.

The bug is basically a yeast starter thats being fed up on sugar for a week so I'm guessing a fair number of cells. My question that I thought one of the clever people on here might be able to answer is: Why does the yeast not just chew through the 6 cups of sugar and leave me with a dry alcoholic drink rather than a sweet non/barley alcoholic one?

Here is the recipe. I double it and this time round I have condensed the weeks feeding into 4 days on the stir plate.

Bug
Warm water
2 tsp active dried yeast
2 tsp raw sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
1. Fill a large glass jar, ¾ full with warm water. Add the yeast, sugar and ginger. Cover loosely with a lid or tea-towel – do not screw tight or it won’t be able to breathe. Sit in a warm place, such as the kitchen table or similar.
2. Feed your bug every day for seven days with 1 tsp raw sugar and 1 tsp ground ginger.
3. After a week, you are ready to make your first batch of beer.

Ginger beer
3 cups raw sugar
2 tsp cream of tartar
1L boiling water and
5L cold water
Juice of 2 lemons, strained
1. Dissolve sugar and cream of tartar in boiling water.

2. Add to keg with cold water

3. Strin the bug through a cloth into the keg and add the lemon juice.
4. Ferment in keg for a week or so to 15PSI at 18c

5. Chill tap and drink

RESTORE AND REUSE
Take the jar with the sludge in it and fill with water to the top. Tip out half or give to a friend so that they can make their own bug. Fill back up to ¾ and feed for another week.

The first time I decanted the liquid (as internet recipe suggested) and got no yeast and very little ginger flavour so had to force carb and added a hop bag or grated fresh ginger, it turned out pretty good in the end but this time I will stir up the bug and strain it (as I remember doing when I was young) to get a bit more of the yeast and ginger into the keg.

[Cain Harland]

The other thing I'm wondering about is the bottle of forbidden fruit yeast I have in beer fridge. I'm thinking it would bring some interesting flavor to a ginger beer but I wonder if it would create a lot more alcohol that the bread yeast.

[Grant R Baker]

Not really sure... use your hydrometer to see what the OG and FG are.

I think beer yeast would turn your recipe into a 4.5% brew. We use to use bread yeast.

[Cain Harland]

I don't even own a hydrometer. I just use a refractometer and run the numbers through a calculator, would have to let some go warm and flat to use either. I have herd of people making wines and meads with bread yeast.

According to a distilling calculator 6 cup sugar in 12L water = 1.044 and produces 6.7%. I'm assuming a thats turbo yeast and about the time I would ferment for. Wouldn't want to give that to the kids but it would taste and smell like crap and they wouldn't drink it anyway.

Maybe a combo of ginger and/or citric and/or tartaric acid and/or pressure have the effect of stopping fermentation early on a yeast thats already not very alcohol tolerant or productive. I think I won't try the beer yeast unless I can figure it out. Its quite nice to have a tasty non alcoholic beverage on tap for summer.

[Grant R Baker]

Well you could always use 1 part sugar and 2 parts back sweetner (stevia) which won't ferment.

[Cain Harland]

Good call.

The other thing I just thought of is if the fermentation of the forbidden fruit yeast is limited just enough for carbonation its probably not going to contribute much in the way of flavor anyway.

I took the OG going into the keg at 1.041 so I will find out if it really is non alcoholic soon enough.

[jt]

I'd been keen to put a ginger beer on tap for the kids, and to be honest, me too. but wasn't confident about scaling up my couple of litre recipe to keg size. So I made up a keg of Sodastream syrup instead. Nowhere as good as I'd hoped but does the job and real easy. Maybe I should think again

[Cain Harland]

That batch was a bit different. First one 7 days feeding 3 weeks no carbonation.

This one 4 days feeding in warmer weather (last one on stir plate) It was chewing through its sugar from a feed in about 10 hours so I saw no reason to starve it overnight for the sake of tradition. 2.5 days fermenting at 18c and it up to 15psi already chilling and will be tapped tomorrow. Will let some go flat and warm and post FG, ABV and what I think of the taste. Hopefully its like the stuff I made as a kid but without the explosive bottles and sticky mess.

[Cain Harland]

Initial readings a bit surprising.

According to the calculators

OG = 1.041 10.4 brix

FG =  7 Brix

FG calculated from OG and final Brix = 1.019

ABV from current brix and extimated gravity = 2.8% and OG estimated at 1.041

I will confirm that with another reading a few glasses in as that first one had a fair bit of yeasty crap in it but it was also a bit flat so I probably should have left it cold for a few days to re absorb a bit more of the CO2 before tapping so I will check pressure and leave it for a few now before letting any more out.

At 2.8% abv it may not be the best children's drink.

[Cain Harland]

I left some to go flat before and got 14 brix having only started with 10 that wasn't right so I'm putting that down to evaporation. So to stop it evaporating I put some in a soda bottle squashed some of the air out and left it to get warm and flat shaking every time I walked past to get the CO2 out. Now I'm getting 8.5 brix which translates to 1.234% ABV. Its far from a definitive reading but I'm Happy enough to serve that to the kids.

[Grant R Baker]

... if yer wrong they wont complain. LOL

Hydrometer would work here... just easier at the end.