Ginger wine (sparkling wine, ale, whatever)

I'm just looking for some feedback on this recipe, informed and off-the-cuff opinions are both welcome.

I debated the nomenclature of this experiment to some degree, but the process I'm using seems closest to wine or cider, so I'm posting this here (since there are no apple or pears in it).

This was my plan for 6 gal:

2.5 lbs fresh ginger, washed and grated (peeled?)
.5-1 lbs ginger cubed
10 lbs sugar
3 lemons/juice, chopped and squeezed
3 cinnamon sticks
4 cloves
1 tsp allspice
1 vanilla bean, split
1 packet EC-1118

Est. OG: 1.080

Process:
1) Boil 2.5 lbs Ginger for 30 minutes and drop in rest of spices and lemon at flame-out (to sterilize, etc.).

2) Cool to 70F or so, extract 1 gallon of must and freeze. pitch yeast in other 5 gallons.

3) rack after primary fermentation onto fresh ginger (that has been soaked in camden tablet solution for 12 hrs). 'dry-hop' with ginger for 2 weeks.

4) backsweeten with reserved, thawed must, add normal amt priming sugar, and bottle in beer bottles.

5) let carb to normal carbonation level then bottle pasteurize.

What do yall think?

any fancy math to pre-determine FG after backsweetening, assuming fermentation goes to 1.00 or slightly less?

~15 oz ginger lightly simmered and fermented five days gives three galleons of wine plenty of ginger bite. And if you make a seconds wine out of the same ginger, the ginger bites even stonger. The amount of ginger you are talking about would give you a wine that taste like pure raw ginger, alllllll burn, no putting the fire out type of burn. If thats what you want go for it! Me, I prefure just the sharp bite.

jensmith said:

~15 oz ginger lightly simmered and fermented five days gives three galleons of wine plenty of ginger bite.

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Really? I thought it would take much more.

I'm looking for a burn, yes, but not overpowering. I want it to taste gingery--like a sharper version of Crabbies. THat's why I thought boiling it for 30 minutes would maintain the taste but maybe not the full bite.

Not sure what "crabbies" is or taste like. However honey mellowes the ginger bite, white shuger makes it sharper and agave is in the middle. If you take the bag of ginger and make a seconds wine with it, it will have a stronger ginger bite then the first batch. If you make it to New England I'll give you a taste of all three.

Point taken. I started a version of the OP recipe today against your better advice. It's cooling now, and it has a strong bite, but not too much.

Again, it is still the must, not the final product so we'll see.

Just FYI, Crabbies is a famous ginger beer made in Scotland. Here's a link to the website. Buy some its good.

Lets us know how it turns out! If it ends up too strongly ginger flavored you can always add plain white wine or vodca to it. If nothing else it will be a wonderfull homeopathic remeidy for something. Ginger is a great antibiotic and stomach soother.

I have made a ginger dandylion beer. Not the same as Crabbies but it was really good

Just curious, but why did you choose to boil the ginger for 30 minutes? Why not just toss in primary, peeled?

StoneArcher said:

Just curious, but why did you choose to boil the ginger for 30 minutes? Why not just toss in primary, peeled?

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I originally thought about it in terms of hops... but did some more reading and found that if you want a sharper bite, to boil it less.
I just threw everything in at 'flameout'.

I also didn't extract the gallon of must, I'll just make some more to backsweeten it.

I didn't peel the ginger either, I just washed it and put it through a food processor and steeped it for about 3 hours with the other ingredients. more surface area for absorbtion and less work peeling the damn things.

I also love Crabbies and make a hard ginger beer each summer, this year I'm adding some yellow hot peppers for an extra bite. I love your recipe, and I sort of get the reason for cloves, but why allspice ?

Nice! Mine is bubbling away now, I just checked the gravity and wowza, its got some bite to it.

Are you thinking like habaneros? I'm not really diversely informed on peppers, which ones are yellow.

The allspice is to round out the taste a bit. Everything else is sharp, the allspice is more earthy. I'm just guessing here, we'll see how it works.

Are you thinking like habaneros? I'm not really diversely informed on peppers, which ones are yellow.

They are Peruvian peppers, heat is less than Scotch bonnet and packed with a lot of flavor. Used in most Peruvian sauces.