greggreg66
Well-Known Member
Today I decided at the last minute to brew a ginger beer. I didn't have much grain, just the dregs of a 25kg sack, but I figured this was enough to make a beer so I just went for it!
The last ginger beer I made was only OK, it was 2 kg of ginger, a load of sugar and some lemons and that was about it. Needless to say it was fiery & bitter, needed a sugar syrup upon serving but it ended up okay once sweetened loads.
So I had only 3.5kg of maris otter left and I also threw in about 350g of caramalt (why... because it was to hand)
I wanted to try brewing a simple AG beer but instead of adding any hops I'd add ginger. So, instead of the 60 min bittering hops I used 1kg of finely chopped ginger. Another 500g at 30 mins and a further 500g at 15 mins. So no hops were harmed in the making of this beer.
For some reason I managed to over egg the batch sparge so had quite a lot of wort left from that. I ditched it because I couldn't fit anything more in my boiling pot.
The OG was kind of low at 1.038, but I knew this would happen because of lack of grains to hand. Doesn't matter though, hopefully it'll be quite quaffable and light so I think I actually prefer it that way.
I've only recently got into yeast washing and I used a yeast I washed a few months back so I made a yeast starter (for the first time, I kind of freestyled it with sugar boiled/cooled water). This is the 3rd time the yeast was/is used, I think its Safele S-04. Maybe.
Looking forward to tasting it!!! Will post more pics when its fermented etc.
The last ginger beer I made was only OK, it was 2 kg of ginger, a load of sugar and some lemons and that was about it. Needless to say it was fiery & bitter, needed a sugar syrup upon serving but it ended up okay once sweetened loads.
So I had only 3.5kg of maris otter left and I also threw in about 350g of caramalt (why... because it was to hand)
I wanted to try brewing a simple AG beer but instead of adding any hops I'd add ginger. So, instead of the 60 min bittering hops I used 1kg of finely chopped ginger. Another 500g at 30 mins and a further 500g at 15 mins. So no hops were harmed in the making of this beer.
For some reason I managed to over egg the batch sparge so had quite a lot of wort left from that. I ditched it because I couldn't fit anything more in my boiling pot.
The OG was kind of low at 1.038, but I knew this would happen because of lack of grains to hand. Doesn't matter though, hopefully it'll be quite quaffable and light so I think I actually prefer it that way.
I've only recently got into yeast washing and I used a yeast I washed a few months back so I made a yeast starter (for the first time, I kind of freestyled it with sugar boiled/cooled water). This is the 3rd time the yeast was/is used, I think its Safele S-04. Maybe.
Looking forward to tasting it!!! Will post more pics when its fermented etc.
I've only brewed one Ginger Beer, but it was kind of similar to what you did. I scaled up the recipe from 
