Ginger Wine to ginger beer?

koomber · 07-27-2009, 03:36 PM

I've just started a ginger wine recipe and a rough back of the fag packet style calculation shows that the ABV should be about 10-11% Give or take. If I'm right though this won't be enough to kill the yeasties.

So I was thinking, if I bottle these in beer bottles, could I charge it with a little sugar and make and fizzy ginger wine? A super stong ginger beer. Possibly a Ginger Fear? I like the sound of the idea myself

twzdfirestrtr · 07-17-2011, 01:46 AM

sounds tasty :-P and it depends on the type of yeast you used it may kill the yeast... i liek to use a champagne yest for various types of wines and it usually has a kickass around 15 16 ?

CoffeeSnob · 07-18-2011, 05:52 AM

MMm..... that may make a killer Dark and Stormy.

**oldmate** · 07-18-2011, 10:46 AM

Might need to age it out for a bit longer than usual to let it smooth out.

modF · 07-22-2011, 05:06 PM

Sounds interesting.. How did you do the ginger wine? I have a 35# box of candied ginger at home that I'm trying to decide what to do with.

elambers · 09-30-2011, 04:19 AM

I make ginger wine all the time. It's fairly easy. I slice up about a thumb of fresh ginger and use 2.5 cups of sugar in 4L of filtered water. I pitch in a half a pack of EC1118 wine yeast and let it ferment for about 3weeks - 1 month. You can filter it or let it be. If you don't use an actual ginger beer plant (which can only tolerate up to 5% or so alcohol levels) and use the wine yeast instead, the alcohol content get ups to 10-14%, but you'll have to add some citric acid or lemon juice to taste. The ginger beer plant contains a bacteria that gives the ginger-beer a real bite and nice flavor without any additives, but the only draw back is the low alcohol tolerance. Here's a recipe using a plant [url]http://thegingerbeerplant.com/FAQs.html. I actually force carbonate my own (it's takes less trial and error) but I'm sure that charging it would work out fine. Have you tried it?