Beginner's attempt at Alcoholic Ginger Ale

I wanted to try something different from the kits I have been brewing and after looking at several different recipes I went with a mix of all of them:

6 lemons, zested and juiced
about 5-6 cups of cane sugar
2 Vanilla Beans in pods
2 cinnamon sticks
1 large piece of ginger about the size of your hand
1 tsp cyanne pepper
1 tsp ground cloves
t tsp yeast nutrient (just because I had it)



Mixed all of that in a food processor and then boiled it for about 15 minutes. Then I strained it and put it in the fermentor...brought the level to 8.5 quarts and allowed to cool a bit.

Pitched champagne yeast and closed it up. It's been going crazy for about 6days now and I think that's about enough. I will bottle it or throw it out tonight depending on the answer to this question :

Will it kill me?

I have seen lots of posts of similar, high octane recipes that used the entire lemons....but I wanted to avoid the bitterness of the rind....so I used just the zest and juice/pulp. I'm really worried about botulism....but don't know if I should be or not in this case....

Thoughts/criticisms? Bad jokes?


Thanks,


Steve

No, it won't kill you.

You need to let it ferment out, rather than trying to stop it when you think "it's about enough." It's not going to be sweet. It's going to be sour and dry. All of your sugar is sucrose and champagne yeast eats that well. If you want to back sweeten it, you'll have to use lactose or artificial sweetener (nasty, imo).

If you bottle now, you will most likely get bottle bombs. Shrapnel plus all that lemon and cayenne will cause for much pain upon cleanup.

That sounds like a really interesting recipe. I am not sure about the pepper, where did you get that idea from? I would be afraid it would end up a muddy mess with all those spice additions.

Like Captain said, it will ferment out dry but you can back sweeten it if you add some stuff to kill off the yeast first. I did it with a hard lemonade and it worked really well.

bknifefight said:

That sounds like a really interesting recipe. I am not sure about the pepper, where did you get that idea from? I would be afraid it would end up a muddy mess with all those spice additions.

Like Captain said, it will ferment out dry but you can back sweeten it if you add some stuff to kill off the yeast first. I did it with a hard lemonade and it worked really well.

Click to expand...

I read thru a bunch of recipes and I think I saw pepper in one of them....it looked interesting so I tried it...

How do I carb it if I kill the yeast? My plan was to bottle it while still sweet, let it carb for a day or two, and then put it in a very cold fridge... wouldn't that stop the fermentation?

Yeah, the cold will stall out the yeast. You would have to force carb it (keg it) if you killed the yeast.

shannonsj said:

I read thru a bunch of recipes and I think I saw pepper in one of them....it looked interesting so I tried it...

How do I carb it if I kill the yeast? My plan was to bottle it while still sweet, let it carb for a day or two, and then put it in a very cold fridge... wouldn't that stop the fermentation?

Click to expand...

I've never done this but it is common practice when bottling into plastic bottles to let them carbonate until firm (rock hard) and refrigerate. They also have kits to attach one 2 liter bottle to another via a tube in the cap and drop a measured amount of baking soda into vinegar. I'm sure you could always fill one with water and double the amount of sugar to carbonate 1 bottle, kill off the yeast in your soda, and let it ferment out. Not sure how well that system holds up under pressure for extended periods of time though.

bknifefight said:

Yeah, the cold will stall out the yeast. You would have to force carb it (keg it) if you killed the yeast.

Click to expand...

Well, it tasted really good yesterday so I bottled it in 1/2 liter plastic bottles...put it in the laundry room to carb up....I think it will only take a couple of days based in how firm the bottles were this morning...

I did think the pepper was a bit strong when sampling at room temperature...I'm hoping that it will be just right when ice cold.

Did you at least check the gravity to see if its stable? It sounds like a red flag with how fast the bottle is carbing up. A 7 day fermentation seems fast. Doable, but wouldn't think it was safe to bottle until I knew the gravity was stable.

I make a ginger beer. Basically it's a low-hopped (<20IBU) light pale base beer with a lot of fresh ginger in the boil and as a dry hop (the ginger is soaked in vodka for a few days, ginger + vodka go into the beer). It comes out well and is easy to make. But it's only barely sweet, and you'll never mistake it for anything other than beer.

I know you're already fermenting this, so I'll suggest for the future: why try and make this as a fermentable recipe at all? Why not make it up as a tincture or liqueur that you add to seltzer water? Mixing your spices and sugar with vodka or Everclear you can easily calculate how much alcohol you're mixing into your drink. You won't have the problem of trying to backsweeten a beverage with live yeast in it. This is essentially the same thing I suggest to people asking how to make a sweet hard lemonade.

Do you have to have red hair to drink this stuff?

Captain Damage said:

I make a ginger beer. Basically it's a low-hopped (<20IBU) light pale base beer with a lot of fresh ginger in the boil and as a dry hop (the ginger is soaked in vodka for a few days, ginger + vodka go into the beer). It comes out well and is easy to make. But it's only barely sweet, and you'll never mistake it for anything other than beer.

I know you're already fermenting this, so I'll suggest for the future: why try and make this as a fermentable recipe at all? Why not make it up as a tincture or liqueur that you add to seltzer water? Mixing your spices and sugar with vodka or Everclear you can easily calculate how much alcohol you're mixing into your drink. You won't have the problem of trying to backsweeten a beverage with live yeast in it. This is essentially the same thing I suggest to people asking how to make a sweet hard lemonade.

Click to expand...

For me, it's about learning something new...and the coolness of watching the primary bubbling away There is a geeky appeal to naturally carbonating the stuff too. I've only been home brewing for a little over a month so doing it the hard way still seems fun

I used to get this commercial ginger ale called Northern Neck that had a real spicy bite to it. They were bought by Coke and now it tastes like Sprite. I thought I would try to recreate that on my own and give it a little bonus

I'll chill it all for a few days and let you know how it turned out...

dcarter said:

Do you have to have red hair to drink this stuff?

Click to expand...

Nope....but it might make my hair turn red

msujack said:

Did you at least check the gravity to see if its stable? It sounds like a red flag with how fast the bottle is carbing up. A 7 day fermentation seems fast. Doable, but wouldn't think it was safe to bottle until I knew the gravity was stable.

Click to expand...

Nope....I'm using plastic bottles...and (just in case) to control the carnage I put the bottles in a closed container while carbing up. I just got home and checked them, and the bottles were rock hard. So I put the container in a very cold fridge. I'm hoping that will put the yeast to sleep so I don't end up with a sloppy mess.

I will sample some of it on Saturday. To be honest...I haven't learnt how to measure the OG/FG yet...I have another kit recipe for a nice ale where I'm going to pay attention to that. I need to do that though if I'm going to keep tweaking recipes because several of my recent batches were rocket fuel...tasted OK to terrific, but way too strong.

Thanks!

Well, it didn't suck

It was actually pretty darn good. I think next time I will leave out the pepper and the cinnamon. The cinnamon sticks wouldn't grind and I don't think I boiled them long enough to get any real flavor. It's got just the right amount of heat as it is.

thanks for all the help!