Planning my first adjunct adventure, ginger and lemon grass, but many other questions

So I'm bottling this weekend, and I would like to get a new batch started.

I'm still using the complete kits, probably I will go with another one from Festa Brew. I'm definitely tempted to try doing it from scratch, but I don't have the equipment or the time right now. Maybe next batch.

But for the one I'm planning to start this weekend, I would like to try something with adjuncts. I want to make something fairly mild and refreshing, and I was thinking ginger and lemongrass could be nice.

My questions about this:
- Is this likely to be any good?
- What style of beer would you recommend?
- I would like to do this without a secondary fermentation stage, just open the top mid way and toss things in. Any concerns about that?
- How should I prepare the adjuncts, and how much should I use?

Thanks for reading, hope you can help!

Hi,

You answered some of your questions. It should be mild. I would stay low on the hops to not overpower the ginger or lemongrass, but I see there needing to be a nice bitterness and almost no hop aroma.

I can't imagine what a beer would taste like with ginger and lemongrass but I say you should go for it.

Lemongrass needs to be cooked for a fair amount of time, so I'd chop it up real fine and boil it for at least 30 minutes. At the restaurant I made an asian vegetable stock and I used I think about 2# of lemon grass for 3 gallons of broth, and 1 small knob of ginger. I obviously had other ingredients, but I remember there was a nice lemongrass aroma and flavor.

For beer though you may think about making the flavor broth and reducing it, then mixing and tasting at bottling.

+1 on the potion suggestion, Warped. Mixing it with your beer during bottling at varying degrees will give you a good idea of how much to use for your whole batch should you really like it. For example, try a tablespoon to one bottle, 2 tablespoons to another, and maybe just a half tablespoon for a third bottle (or whatever you think will taste good). I would also like to recommend that if you use the spices during boiling that you consider how quickly the aroma will disappear. For lemon flavor (not sure if you're going for that with the idea of the lemongrass or not), Sorachi Ace hops and lemon zest also work really well!

As far as the recipe itself goes, I would imagine a modest gravity with a grainy malt profile would complement the ginger/lemongrass combo (as opposed to bready/sweet/etc.) and a dry finish would keep the beer refreshing -- just ideas, though (and now you have me wanting to make something similar! Thanks!). I'm really curious how this turns out for you. Subscribed!

Well, I tried this with a wheat beer, simmering 3 stalks of lemongrass and about 4 tablespoons of chopped ginger (separately at first, as the ginger was much stronger).

I ended up with about 1 cup of potion, which was quite strongly flavoured, but didn't really make much impact on 22 liters of beer. There is a very faint after-taste that I think comes from the lemongrass, but I think if I was to do it again, I would want to make sure the potion was much stronger.

I think the flavour would work quite well with a number of things, and I'm tempted to try it again soon with a cerveza. If I do I'll post back here.

If you look in my signature, you'll see my last two beers were a lemongrass wheat and a ginger wheat. Needless to say, I think either or both would be great. Both of my recipes had the exact same grain bill and hop schedule.

For my lemongrass wheat, I used 1 oz of dried lemongrass at flameout. Fresh would have been nice, but to be honest it never occurred to me that I could get fresh lemongrass (doh!). The flavor is great; lemongrass is very subtle right now because the beer is still green.

For my ginger wheat, I used 1.5 oz of peeled, diced fresh ginger. I boiled 1 oz for 7 minutes and added the last .5 oz at flameout. That one is still in primary, but from tasting my hydrometer samples I think the ginger flavor is coming through nicely. I don't smell too much ginger with all the yeast still in the beer, but I'm hoping it'll come to the foreground as the yeast settles out. Adding more ginger to add aroma at this point might overpower the beer's flavor. Next time, I might use a little less ginger in the boil and save some for "dry spicing" later.