Ginger beer??

Hello all

Newbie brewer here giving it a go.

I decided to give ginger beer a go.... I don't know if i'm making ginger beer or ale or wine how do you tell the diff?

neway this is what i've done:

1.7kg of ginger root minced up into my barrell
4 lemons zested then juiced/chopped up into barrell
1 kg of sugar
poured boiling water over and left for a while then toppe id up to about 17l of boiled/warm water.

left for 2 days before adding campden tablets
24hours later added latvin ec1118 yeast and wine nutrent within 24 hours had a good steady bubble from the airlock.

once the airlock slowed right down I added another 500g of sugar..... done that twice so I have in total added about 2kg of sugar.

now the questions:

is my methods sound i.e. should I have boiled the ginger??

I didn't measure the OG or FG so abv is gonnar be a guess at best correct?

I have tasted the brew and it's not anywhere near as gingery as I would like what can I do to bring the flavour out?

i'm still getting bubbling from the air lock.... at what point do I filter out and bottle or am I better to filter out into another brew barrell and wait till the bubbling stops?

any suggestions pls....

Rob

Looks like you are making some kind of beer or alcohol . . . These forums are for soda.

If you're trying to make ginger beer (soda) you may be overfermenting. A couple of days really is all it takes for soda. If you start boosting the alcohol, it becomes pretty cloying.

I only do small bottle batches of ginger beer so I don't really know about your whole process. What I can offer though is my ratio for a pretty solid ginger flavor. In a 32 ounce bottle, two ounces are ginger, two are lemon, six are simple syrup, and the remaining 22 ounces are water. 1:1:3:11. I find that the lemon really seems to help the ginger flavor become more pronounced so staying close to equal proportions there is typical for me. I very a bit, but always end up back at that ratio. It's way to gingery for my wife, but most of my ginger-loving friends dig it.

The only cooking involved in my process is in the manufacture of the simple syrup.

If you DO want an alcoholic ginger beer, I can vouch for the recipe in Strong Waters. I used S-04 instead of GBP but still turned out amazing.