sweet sparkling alcoholic ginger beer

Hi all, and I hope this thread is in the right place?

OK so I'am quite new to all this and wanted to make some quick simple sweet sparkling alcoholic ginger beer as I thought this mite be quite easy but the more I look and read its seems to be a nightmare and my head is starting to spin and freaked out with bottle bombs!!

So can anyone help and give me some sound advice and point me in the right way?

What I have started to do is....

Recipe:
500gms root ginger
skin of 2 lemons and the juice
5x tbsp powdered ginger
2x tbsp stem ginger
1x kilo caster sugar
8x liters water
few spices

Cooked it all up, let it cool added Champagne yeast, took a reading of 1.055
All good Fermentation going well,
BUT.... and hear it is...
its been 5 days and I had a quick taste to see what it was like, very dry not sweet at all, now I know the the yeast will feed on the sugar and turn it in to alcohol and give off CO2,
SO how do I get a sweet sparkling alcoholic ginger beer that i can bottle and not having to worry about bombs!!

I was hopping for a quick and simple method, To start with 1 week in the fermenting bucket, 1 week in the DJ, and 1 week in the Champagne bottles, I get these from work.

Have read loads of pages saying this and that, can be done in a few days, use glass bottles, don't use glass, do i leave to dry out and then add more sugar?? AHhH to much info!! Please help

There are 2 ways to do it, 3 if you can keg. You can either sweeten it, bottle it, and as soon as its carbonated you refrigerate it for the rest of its life - or you can do this but bottle pasteurize it to make it shelf stable. In the cider forum there is a pasteurization sticky.

Thanks BottleBomber,

I don't have a keg so what I can do is...

Make ginger beer to get the alcohol level that I want, rack off add more sugar till I like it. bottle, leave for a wile, keep opening bottles till I get the right fizz, then heat then in hot water to kill the yeast!

Matty2Fatty said:

Thanks BottleBomber,

I don't have a keg so what I can do is...

Make ginger beer to get the alcohol level that I want, rack off add more sugar till I like it. bottle, leave for a wile, keep opening bottles till I get the right fizz, then heat then in hot water to kill the yeast!

Click to expand...

Another method is to bottle one up in a 1 liter plastic soda bottle. When the sides of the bottle are firm, you know it is carbonated. Just be careful that you don't let it over carb, or when you try to pasteurize it the bottle will tend to explode.

You can also back-sweeten with a non fermentable sweetener. Xylitol or Lactose works well for this, and so does Splenda (if you are into that kind of thing)

I made a sparkling spiced hard cider recently that I sweetened with splenda. It sweetened very nicely, (too much,really... I will reduce the amount next time!) and there is absolutely no risk of bottle bombs, because splenda is not fermentable.

DrummerBoySeth said:

You can also back-sweeten with a non fermentable sweetener. Xylitol or Lactose works well for this, and so does Splenda (if you are into that kind of thing)

I made a sparkling spiced hard cider recently that I sweetened with splenda. It sweetened very nicely, (too much,really... I will reduce the amount next time!) and there is absolutely no risk of bottle bombs, because splenda is not fermentable.

Click to expand...

Hi but if it is still fermenting when I get to the ABV that I want and then add lactose there will still be fermentation going on in the bottles so bottle bombs could happen?, and I do it the other way by letting it ferment out and adding Lactose It wont be fizzy as the yeast has stopped and it has no food to give off any C02.
Is that right?

Let it ferment out all the way. I would not try to stop fermentation to control the ABV. It is much safer to let the yeast eat ALL the fermentables before attempting to bottle. The ABV may be slightly higher than you expected, but it is MUCH safer that way. After fermentation is complete, then back-sweeten with lactose, xylitol, splenda, etc. to the desired flavor. Once you have the sweetness where you want it, then prime with a small amount of priming sugar (just like with beer). 5 ounces of priming sugar is a good starting point for a 5 gallon batch. (Use roughly one ounce of priming sugar per gallon of ginger beer.) You will have carbonated, sweet ginger beer, and no risk of bottle bombs.

I'd guess to let it ferment out completely, backsweeten with a nonfermentable, then prime before bottling. There will still be yeast around to provide carbonation, but they will not have enough food to overcarbonate and explode bottles. I'm new at it, so maybe someone else can correct if I'm wrong. But ginger beer sounds good!

Check out my 1 Barter Ginger Beer recipe. One of the times I made it, I continued to vent the C02 every 8 hours. After about 5 days I got it up to 4% ABV but it was pretty dry. Consider making that recipe and then back sweetening with Splenda or even serving it over a sugar cube or two if you want to be theatrical.

I use bail top bottles and/or empty 2 L soda bottles and put them in the fridge when the plastic gets hard (as above, always have one bottled in plastic so you know when to put them all in the fridge).

Any body ever tried this http://www.coopers.com.au/the-brewers-guild/how-to-brew/mid-strength/alcoholic-ginger-beer



I can never seem to keep the yeast out of suspension with ginger sodas and have given up on them until I start kegging. Anyone else have that issue? they jump back into suspension when I open the bottle. they are settled on the bottom until then.

what about a light DME unhopped that should give you body and sweetness when fermented. i have been considering a 1 gallon test batch of root beer with the following:

1.25 gallons water
500g Amber DME
3 grams coopers yeast

ferment out

rack onto a mix of 35 grams raw sugar and 1 oz rootbeer extract (this kind makes about 4 gallons of root beer per 4 oz extract) then bottle in plastic as the resulting carbonation will be over 3 vols.

Thanks for all your answers, have gone down the route of...
Ferment out, back sweeten with sugar and then pasteurization will post back to let you know how it went.

Now as I am using Champagne yeast this will let me get a higher alcohol level then say beer or larger yeast before the yeast cant handle it any more? yes?

If so, could I say use beer/larger yeast add too much sugar to start with so it would get to as high alcohol volume as it can go before the alcohol is to much and the yeast stops working and would still leave sugar left making it sweet and then force carb using a home made co2 pump.
If so how high can beer/larger yeast get too and how much sugar??