This is a link to a recipe that I've used before (when I started playing the home brew game) - http://www.netcooks.com/recipes/Beverages/Dave's.Ginger.Beer.html
Anyway, I tried it twice, and did chop and change certain things here and there. First batch basically came out Dry (I left fermenting too long), and very strong, and I needed to sweeten when serving. Second batch, I kept an eye on, and bottled when I hit my target FG to keep the sweetness, which was much better - but did result in bottle bombs
Anyway, I've been looking at ways to adapt the recipe, as I think it is in the right sort of place in principle, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts/tips/pointers. I'm looking at knocking up a trial batch this weekend, and was thinking about the following (measurements in metric to avoid confusion):
4.5 litres of water
150g ginger root, coarsley chopped
350g sugar
1 lemon
1/5 tsp. cream of tartar
1 packet champagne yeast
½ Habenero Pepper
Boil water.
Squeeze and add lemons.
Add ginger and cream of tartar.
Add sugar & Pepper.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour everything (including the bits) in to fermenting bucket.
Allow to cool to pitching temperature
Dissolve yeast as per pack instructions, then pitch.
Leave to ferment dry in bucket with lid on (no airlock), giving it a good stir to degas regularly given that the PH is likely to already be fairly low with the ginger and lemon.
Rack to secondary (4.5 litre demijohn with airlock), regularly checking for 7 days to ensure that all sugar has fermented out.
Plan is to then back-sweeten with an unfermentable sugar. I was thinking Splenda, as have heard that you need a lot of lactose to get a decent sweetness. Obviously I'll be looking to do this in small measured batches before scaling up. Then give it another 7 days to ensure that everything has mixed well, and sweetness is about right (not a lot that I can do if over-sweetened at this point though).
Bottling & carbonation:
You'll notice that I went for a low amount of sugar for fermentation - reason being that for 4.5 litres, calculations give the potential ABV for this amount of circa 4.6% - I don't want to go too strong, but is also does not take in to account the volume of sugars in the ginger, lemons and pepper (Googling says that ginger root has 1.7g of sugar per 100g and 2-3g sugar per lemon, but can't find anything for the pepper, but would guess next to none), so 4.6% should be fairly on the nose. I'll obviously be taking SG readings to confirm though.
Given that the champagne yeast should have an alcohol tolerance way above target, I was planning on priming the brew with 30g of sugar for the full 4.5 litres for carbonation before bottling in Grolsch style bottles.
Mature in cool and dark place for minimum 2 weeks.
Anyway, this would only be my 5th brew ever, so I'm still fairly new in the world of home brew, so as I say, thoughts/tips/suggestions would be greatly appreciated to try and perfect.
Anyway, I tried it twice, and did chop and change certain things here and there. First batch basically came out Dry (I left fermenting too long), and very strong, and I needed to sweeten when serving. Second batch, I kept an eye on, and bottled when I hit my target FG to keep the sweetness, which was much better - but did result in bottle bombs
Anyway, I've been looking at ways to adapt the recipe, as I think it is in the right sort of place in principle, and wondered if anyone had any thoughts/tips/pointers. I'm looking at knocking up a trial batch this weekend, and was thinking about the following (measurements in metric to avoid confusion):
4.5 litres of water
150g ginger root, coarsley chopped
350g sugar
1 lemon
1/5 tsp. cream of tartar
1 packet champagne yeast
½ Habenero Pepper
Boil water.
Squeeze and add lemons.
Add ginger and cream of tartar.
Add sugar & Pepper.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour everything (including the bits) in to fermenting bucket.
Allow to cool to pitching temperature
Dissolve yeast as per pack instructions, then pitch.
Leave to ferment dry in bucket with lid on (no airlock), giving it a good stir to degas regularly given that the PH is likely to already be fairly low with the ginger and lemon.
Rack to secondary (4.5 litre demijohn with airlock), regularly checking for 7 days to ensure that all sugar has fermented out.
Plan is to then back-sweeten with an unfermentable sugar. I was thinking Splenda, as have heard that you need a lot of lactose to get a decent sweetness. Obviously I'll be looking to do this in small measured batches before scaling up. Then give it another 7 days to ensure that everything has mixed well, and sweetness is about right (not a lot that I can do if over-sweetened at this point though).
Bottling & carbonation:
You'll notice that I went for a low amount of sugar for fermentation - reason being that for 4.5 litres, calculations give the potential ABV for this amount of circa 4.6% - I don't want to go too strong, but is also does not take in to account the volume of sugars in the ginger, lemons and pepper (Googling says that ginger root has 1.7g of sugar per 100g and 2-3g sugar per lemon, but can't find anything for the pepper, but would guess next to none), so 4.6% should be fairly on the nose. I'll obviously be taking SG readings to confirm though.
Given that the champagne yeast should have an alcohol tolerance way above target, I was planning on priming the brew with 30g of sugar for the full 4.5 litres for carbonation before bottling in Grolsch style bottles.
Mature in cool and dark place for minimum 2 weeks.
Anyway, this would only be my 5th brew ever, so I'm still fairly new in the world of home brew, so as I say, thoughts/tips/suggestions would be greatly appreciated to try and perfect.