duganderson

Recipes 

Hello,

I'm looking for a scratch-made Ginger Beer recipe (non-alcoholic). I love the Ginger Beers with strong and spicy flavor. The recipe I tried was very weak.

Any recipes or tips?

--Doug

KevinM

Recipes 

1: Which recipe and process did you use. We can help modify it.
2: Have you looked at our recipes in the forum and in the recipe subforum for sodas?
3: There's a good chance we'll just be saying to use more ginger, grate it/juice it, and don't heat it.

duganderson

Recipes 

I found a recipe that involved boiling water, adding grated ginger (and lemon) and sugar, taking it off the heat and letting it sit for an hour. Then bottling it.

Now I have a carbonating system.

A few questions....

1. How much ginger do you use? Can you just leave the skin on and put it in the food processor?

2. If you don't heat it.....how long to you let it sit. Do you let it sit in fridge or room temp.

3. What else do you add to give it that spicy flavor (lemon, other things, etc.).

4. Before you bottle or carbonate it.....do you stain it.....if so what do you use to strain it with (how fine of a strainer)?

Thanks, Doug

duganderson

Recipes 

Where do you find the recipes in the forum and in the recipe subforum for sodas on the site???

KevinM

Recipes 

If you look at the main forum and scroll down, just past soda, you'll find a section for recipes. Inside there is a part for soda recipes which will bring you here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f171/
The soda area is a somewhat recent addition to the forums so there's only a few recipes right now. I combined a few which I mentiond somewhere where I made a syrup to combine with soda water.
750ml of syrup that consisted of some raw cane sugar (can't recall how much, but I'm sure I followed the amount in the recipe for a syrup) the zest and juice of a lime and a pound to 2 pounds of ginger. I might have only used one, and said I was going to use 2 the next time.
I had just tossed it (skin and all) into a juicer. I simmered the sugar, pulp and some allspice, then turned off the heat and added the zest for a bit, then strained (plain strainer since the chunks were big enough), then added the lime juice and ginger juice.

There's better details on what people have done both in grating or just chopping ginger and the various ways they've processed theirs in the other forum posts.

novafire

Recipes 

I can only answer #1 and I have only ever made ginger beer WITH alcohol, but what I do is:
1. Wash the ginger root.
2. Peel some of the dirtier parts of the rind, but don't worry too much about getting everything off. I used to worry more about getting every little bit peeled off, but I have seen no difference in quality with leaving some/most on.
3. Slice the root into thin chunks and run them through the blender with hot water until all your root is completely pureed. Sometimes there are a few chunks that never want to blend out, so I pour the puree off and hit the chunks again with the blender.
4. Heat the puree until close to boiling and let it steep for 5-10min. Then strain through a course strainer, collecting the liquid in a fermenter(or whatever vessel you are mixing in). I like to allow the pulp to give up as much liquid as possible by giving it a good press with a large spoon from time to time.
5. I will also augment my ginger beer with dried ginger powder. I have seen some recipes using just the dried form and I think it provides an extra kick to the fresh form.

Hope this helps a little.

RobWalker

Recipes 

You might wanna try adding some other ingredients. Ginger is very spicy but thin, imo. Try Cinnamon, Honey, Chilli, cloves, and citrus (orange/lemon/lime.) They might give it a much better flavor.