How do you avoid a medicinal taste when using ginnger in a beer

Many home made ginger beers that I have tasted have had medicinal flavor
Some have not and the brewers I have talked to do not know why they had it or how the avoided it.

The commercial ones I have tasted have not had this flavor just the spicy after taste.

Does anyone have a thought??

I don't think it comes from ginger. Medicinal flavours have two sources:

- chemical imputities - residuals of bleach (or sth. similar) in fermenter - smells more like a hospital
- bacterial or wild yeast infection - smells more like a dentist

I am not using the right term then. Between the initial general spicy flavor you get with a ginger and the final lingering bite there is another flavor that dominates the middle to end of the taste in many home made ginger beers and not in commercial ones. I have not tasted in any other beer and the beers seem clean an well constructed other than that so I do not think it is a cleanliness issue.

The best advice I have gotten so far is to go very light or mask it with orange or some other spice.....which begs the question.

I thought it might have been that they left some of the bark on the root but that does not seem to be the case. I am wondering if it is a freshness thing or a kind of ginger root thing or whether it is process issue - Include it in the mashing but not the boil - only leave it in for a short period of time but use more and add it after the boil or at the end of the boil.

One of the reasons that ginger is so linked with beer (even though it is not so used today is because it contains enzyme that can help break down starches in beer. So before Amalayse (sp) and light toasting was possible it helped boost alcoholic yield.
(I am into trying to recreate some of the flavor components of older beers )

Actually I am wondering if that is it- people are including in the boil or too long in the soak too long and some of the woody components of the root are being transferred along with spicy notes.(In home beer making and all ale making before the introduction of hops there was no post mash boil just cool the beer down and let the indigenous yeasts find the food source)

Any thoughts? If not at least that seem reasonable enough to try

I made a gingerbread beer this past holiday season that i think came out pretty well...one of my favorites that i have made. i used a generous amount of brown sugar and cinnamon. for the ginger, i used crystallized instead of fresh and put it in the secondary...none in the boil. not sure if it would be the flavor you were looking for, but i sure liked it...

I put mine in the boil and it really takes some time (weeks/months) for the ginger bite to subside.

to me ginger in beer smells more like lavender...

Ive found that roasting the ginger mellows the slight bitter piney bite fresh ginger has.

How long do you roast it and do you skin and slice it first or grill the whole thing. (All the other input is great as well.) The description of some kinds of lavander and a Piney /bitter woody note may be what I am trying to avoid

I leave the skin on that way any burning or browning occurs on the skin which is discarded later so you don't get any strange flavors. I don't know how long I roast it for, I do it at 350f until its softer and the smell is sweet kind of an intuition based judgment I guess. its similar to the way people roast pumpkin for pumpkin beers, roasting mellows certain flavors and makes it taste sweeter creating caramel which leaves residual sweetness after fermentation.

medicinal can kind of encompass a lot of flavors... menthol? cough syrup? bandaids? sterilizer?

I think some others tried to describe it above - In addition to the traditional ginger flavor and nice spicy bite you get in a Non alcoholic Jamaican Ginger beer or the Blandon Fly alcoholic ginger beer from Badger Brewing, there is often a woody -piney herbal flavor that distracts from and in some cases completely over powers the malt flavor of the beer

A couple people had solid suggestions but I would definitely appreciate any additional insights you might have

I've not done anything with ginger, but I argree with the previous posters that either the candied ginger in the secondary or the roasting would be your best bet... candied ginger still has a nice bite and good flavor, but it's actually somewhat edible by itself.. it's not as in-your-face as fresh ginger. I can only assume that roasting would do something similar.

Thanks to all your input I was able to decide on my approach - I smoked a pound of grain and the Ginger over a fire using Grape Vine Prunings as my smoke wood. Basically I have take Papazians Vagabond Ginger Beer recipe and added a mini- mash to it

I used 4 oz ginger and cut it in chunks rather than gating it - I think I have the intensity I want but I froze the rest of the ginger in case I want to go back and add more in the secondary

This is my Amended Recipe that I am calling Ancient Vagabond. I am trying for a slightly stronger smokey variant on Gary Papazian’s Vagabond Beer - I used a lighter sugar and the other grains to make the beer stronger but not heavier. I also added a little Kent Goldings to add to the British Profile- I do not taste the flavor I was trying to avoid but there is a lot of sugar in the way

3.3 lb Breiss Dark liquid malt (122 )
3 lb Muntons Dark Dry Malt(145)
1 lb Muntons Light Dry Malt (45)
½ lb Home Smoked (Grape Vine ) Barley (Nut brown)
½ lb Rye Flakes
½ lb 60L Crystal Malt
1 teaspoon Amylase powder
4 oz home smoked (Grape Vine) Ginger cut into chunks
1 10g Pkt SafBrew T58 ( Peppery notes and ester producer)
5 g Coopers Brewers Yeast( Rounded finish fast attenuating )
1.5 inch licorice root (Optional but aids head retention)
5 grams Mandrake root (Optional gives a dark earthy flavor)
¼ oz orange peel (whole) at last 15 min of boil

Mathematic Spec Gravity 1.063

Hops 1/3 oz Cacade at 60 mim
¼ oz Cascade at 30 min
1/6 oz Kent Goldings at 30 min
¼ oz Cascade at 10 min

Process
1- Add smoked Barley , rye, crystal malt with 4 cups120 degree water – wait15 min for the mash to acidify
2- Add Amylase and gallon hot water and weight wait another ½ hour get temp between 130 and 150 - this is a mini mash because I hate not using as much potential sugar as I can.
3- Add the rest of the water and the remaining sugar and begin heating. Pull the ginger when the malt tastes sufficiently of the ginger. There is a lot of sugar so a little bite now will be a lot more apparent later – you can always add more in the secondary
4- Proceed with hops addition once boil has started
5- Strain hops and barley and rye as per normal

homebrewer_99 said:

I put mine in the boil and it really takes some time (weeks/months) for the ginger bite to subside.

Click to expand...

+1 Melana has made a couple of great ginger wheats and they need some time for the ginger to mellow.

I had a stout that mashed too high because my thermo was broken and leached tannins into the brew. I would call that flavor medicinal.

I've added ginger to many beers. Typically I add it to the boil for the last twenty minutes. I usually freeze the ginger, and then on brew day I take it out of the freezer and let it thaw in a plastic bag. As it thaws the ginger becomes soft and squishy. I find that the flavor of the frozen/thawed ginger is smoother and more pleasant than the flavor from using fresh sliced ginger that is dropped directly into the boil.