Ginger Ale (kegged)

Is this something that i could use galangal root in? (i just wanna be different)

Just made a 2 qt batch. Peeled the ginger and tossed it in the blender with some of the sugar water. Didn't boil the ginger. Didn't strain it. It came out delicious and very authenthic.

Now that it is carbonated mine tastes great and the ginger to lemon lime ratio seems right, earlier the ginger was a bit overpowering. Either the carbonation or the week of ageing has mellowed it out though. The ginger is still strong, it is quite spicy but it don't have that raw ginger flavor. I think it is a bit spicy for the girls but perfect for me and my wife.

justineaton,

5 cups of sugar is about 4# I suppose for your 5g keg batch. Was that too sweet or just right? First recipe scaled to 5g would be a lot more than that...

I was going to try 3# but may need more after reading this. I am trying to make a recipe based on ingredient weight instead of cups.. thinking about 10-15 lemons and maybe 3-4# ginger with 3# or more of sugar, but apprehensive to use as much as this old recipe does.

It was just right.

Newest batch I made with a splenda brown sugar mix. It was a lot sweeter than I expected but good though. I want to bottle next time, I used to make it in two liter bottles with bread yeast but I'm not sure with a five gallon batch how much yeast and how long to let it condition before I refrigerate.

I just completed this recipe and was wondering what pressure worked best for force carbonating and what pressure you all would suggest for serving

Just made a 5 gallon batch of this and it's cooling in the kegerator, can't wait to try it. Found ginger for 1.29 a lb at the Korean Market so figured i would give it a try. Went with 4 cups ginger, 2 cups turbinado sugar, 3 cups brown sugar and double the fruit of the original recipe for 5 gallons. Tasted pretty good in the kettle with just the right amount if ginger bite/burn. Can't wait to taste it cold and carbed.

TrainReck said:

I followed the recipe in post #1 except with 3 cups sugar. Turned out great.

Definite crowd-pleaser!

People that don't drink love it.

And people that aren't big beer drinkers have lots of options...
Mix it with vodka for a Moscow Mule.
Mix it with dark rum for a Dark and Stormy.
Mix it with tequila for a

Click to expand...

.....Diablo.

Ideally, you actually want to also add a tiny splash or few drops of a nice pomegranate liquor, good quality genadine or even cherry bitters.
And always with lime wedge.

I'm doing 6 packs for my girlfriends family and wanted to do a 6 pack of soda for her 6 year old nephews. I really wanted to do glass bottles though. Could I bottle most of it and then put some of it in a plastic bottle to measure the carbonation. Once the plastic bottle is carbed then pasteurize the glass? Or is this still too risky for bombs?

As Darth Duane and others have pointed out, check your local Asian market for ginger. It was $4lb at Wal-Mart but only $1.39lb at the Vietnamese market. I've got a 5 gallon batch on the stove now, trying part splenda, part turbinado, and part brown sugar. Also, I'm using limequats rather than lemons and limes because they were free in our yard. I'm hoping this and the sparkling water justifies the whole bar/kegerator to my wife!

I'm trying so hard to clear out a stout so I can fill a keg with ginger ale, and this thread is just... freakin' ... lovely.

When I've done ginger ales in two-liter bottles, I've always added a dash of vanilla extract and it's been a nice, mellowing influence. Any thoughts on adding something like pumpkin pie extract (McCormick's is a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice)? You think one ounce would come through in a five gallon batch?

Also, my kids have a rare congenital condition that prevents them from properly digesting sucrose (table sugar and brown sugar). So I'd like to use honey and dextrose. I'm thinking three cups of honey and four cups of dextrose for a five-gallon batch. Thoughts?

Can't wait to try this!!

Kegged this tonight. Thanks for the recipe!

Thanks for the recipe. I made just over 4 gallons, it turned out really well. I over did the sugar (2.2lbs of brown sugar, 1.8 lbs of white sugar) but as the ginger continues to comes through and get stronger it is getting better and better. For a first attempt I am very happy.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this recipe... Soooo good.
I throw the ginger in the vitamix with water and blast it with enough pulses to mascerate it. Double the lemons and limes and zest them all. For sugar I use a cheap packeage of brown sugar. THrow it all in a food grade bucket and let it sit overnight.
Next day filter it into keg and put on gas... Easiest and best ginger beer Ive ever made!
PS-- I doubled the ginger and halved the sugar. Loved it.

I've posted a lot in the alcoholic ginger beer thread, but missed this one. Interesting and cool to see the parallel thinking over the years in both threads. The base recipe in the OP is more or less the same as needed for alcoholic ginger beer; to ferment it just add champagne yeast and wait a few days before kegging. You can also partially ferment ginger cordial mix/concentrate with champagne yeast, for a more complex mixer. I prefer to partially ferment more for the flavor qualities than any buzz - at around 2-3.5% ABV the ginger really seems to pop more, and it's a more complex flavor overall. But that's for another thread.

A lot of insight in this thread that I wish I'd gleaned years ago. From my many iterations of ginger beer, here are a few pro tips to get the best product.

- This is all about the ginger, so get the best you can find. A lot of it. I do like it strong, so I use 2.5-3 lbs per 5 gallon batch. My test is to go to whole foods or a competitor and snap a small bud off. If it smells floral and delicious, that's it. If it's astringent and off, I'll drive elsewhere. Yellow ginger is preferable to "elephant ginger", the big knotty arms you see for $1.80/lb. Get the $5/lb stuff. It's worth it.
- The 150 degree insight in the OP took me a year to get to. : / I go higher, but the important thing to know is you can alter the ginger taste from raw/pungent to more mellow/warming by varying the water temp at which you add the ginger. I found little change from raw (very harsh/astringent) up to about 150/155, with my favorite around 175-180. A full boil, especially for longer times, mellows the sharper notes (google "zingerones") considerably, leaving an almost all gingerone/mellow taste.
- Vitamix/blending like the poster above described is the best way to get maximum surface area. Top off the ginger with water and blend away, pouring into a hop bag-lined pitcher. Also, most of the flavor is right near the skin, so leaving it on is actually better than skinning it. If you're paranoid about bugs, parboil for 30 sec before blending the ginger.
- I boil 2.5 gallons water + lemon zest, flame out and add the sugar. At my chosen temp (175-80 usually) add the ginger juice from the vitamix and all the solids in the hop bag. I keep at that temp for about 10 min. After that I squeeze the heck out of the bag and discard the solids. I finish by doubling with 2.5 chilled gallons in a keg/fermenter, which gets it to 90ish for the yeast, if I'm using it.
- Sugar mix will vary the taste as well, as many have noted. I like half turbinado half brown personally. More than that and the molasses notes start to dominate. Usually 1814 grams (Two 2 lb bags) for 5 gallons, more for alcoholic (~2200 g will get to a OG of ~1.050 - for best flavor at about 3% ferment to 1.018-1.025ish).
- I prefer much lower citrus, added after the boil. I stick to 1/8 cup each lemon, lime, pineapple juice plus the zest of half a lemon (zest added to the boil). This is way dialed back to keep the ginger front and center.
- Sweeter brews can take more heat from the ginger; both in quantity and temperature. i.e. If you prefer a raw-er brew at a lower temp, add a bit more sugar and it will temper the heat a bit.

Hope these tips help. I've made too many variations of ginger beer/ale, more than 60 at this point, chasing that perfect batch and tweaking here and there. My favorite these days is a fermented, dry hopped (Just .25 oz leaf hops will do) cordial/concentrate, prepared like above but dialed down to ~1 gallon of water. It makes a mean cocktail when mixed with ginger bitters and liquor. Or mix 3:1 sodastream to mix to make a sweet "Ginger Beer" for mules and stormies, or 5:1 for a lighter Ginger Seltzer for everyday drinking. Very tasty stuff. Cheers!

We are making a variation of this today. 2.5# ginger and 10 lemons through the juicer yields ~40 oz liquid. Add that to 4.75g water at 180-ish and stir in 2.2-2.5# sugar and .4oz cream of tartar. Let sit at temperature for an hour or so, chill, and keg!

Cheers,

Did this for our annual Spanish homebrewer meeting (220 people from all around the country) and it was a great success! The only comment was a sulphurous smell which, while not strong, was far from agreeable.

The only difference with this recipe is that I carbonated with yeast, not CO2, as indicated by the original Yooper's recipe. I used Kitzinger Champagne dry yeast:


Some people mentioned that this is the result of yeast being under stress, and that it would be solved by adding yeast nutrients to my mix. Others said the nutrients came from the lemon and lime. Could adding nutrients be the solution to the sulphurous smell? Any opinion on this?

Thanks in advance.

Just made a batch. Need more ginger... but great!

I've got to make another batch of this in time for Xmas.

Just did this recipe using stevia and it turn out great, nice to have a healthy, refreshing option at the kegatator

How much stevia did you end up using for a 5 gallon batch?

I should have measured it but i just did it to taste. i am guessing 4 cups. it says this stevia is one for one compared to sugar.

Well, I made this last night. I had hoped to brew beer but I ended up spending a couple hours at mom's after work fixing her computer. So, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up ingredients for ginger ale on my way home instead.

I used the evolved recipe...

2 gal filtered water
1.5# ginger, peeled, chopped in blender
2 limes, juice and zest
1 lemon, juice and zest
2 cups dark brown sugar
2 cups turbinado sugar

I kegged and through it in the keeper without tasting. I want to let it settle and carb. I hope I don't regret the dark brown sugar. The mix had a strong molasses scent.

Thanks for posting!

It was way too gingery. It was so gingery that you'd get a spicee burn at the back of the throat. I filled with the pints of filtered water. 1# of whole ginger, i.e. pre-peeling and dicing, sounds right.

And I don't regret the dark brown sugar. It worked out fine.

After dilution, it is still sweet enough in my book.

Thanks for the recipe. This is good stuff.

How long did you leave it to rest?

In my experience (only once, I admit) the taste the first 2-3 days was strong and spicy, but it mellowed ~1w after the initial preparation.

Cheers.

guindilla said:

How long did you leave it to rest?

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it was 8-9 days. I waityed hoping it would mellow, and i was waiting for full carb as well.

Then it was time enough to mellow indeed.

Thanks.

I made a batch based on this and it is the BOMB!
My 5 gallon recipe:
2.5# of unpeeled ginger root, blended
6 lemons, zest and juice
6 limes, zest and juice
2# dark brown sugar
1# white sugar

I heated my water to 180F, turned off the flame, and clipped my 5gal paint strainer bag in place. I cut the ginger into big "coins" because my blender sucks, filled my blender with "coins", covered with scooped out hot water, blended and poured inside the bag. Repeated till ginger was gone, scooping liquid from outside the bag and pouring inside the bag. Then I added the juice and zest, swirled the bag around for 10 minutes or so, then pulled it and squeezed all the liquid I could out. Finally, I stirred in the sugar and then poured in the keg.

I took several bottles to work, and a couple to a homebrew club meeting and several people commented that it would make a killer Moscow Mule so I went and bought some vodka. They were right!

Thread Reurrection:

Thinking about mixing up 3 to 5 gallons of this recipe, racking to carboy after cooling, fermenting w/ Champagne yeast a few weeks, then maybe back sweetening based on final flavor. Then force carbing in keg.

Anyone done this? Or something similar?

bleme said:

I made a batch based on this and it is the BOMB!
My 5 gallon recipe:
2.5# of unpeeled ginger root, blended
6 lemons, zest and juice
6 limes, zest and juice
2# dark brown sugar
1# white sugar
...

Click to expand...

I used bleme's recipe and process, with just two changes.
1) I used 3# turbinado sugar instead of the dark brown/white mix.
2) I steeped at 165, and let it sit for ~30 min (most of an episode of Bones). From my own past experience and reading on this and other threads, the lower temp keeps the ginger a little "hotter and raw-er" rather than warm and gingery.

It. Is. AWESOME.

I was hoping for a STRONG ginger kick, but also hoped the limes would come through to make it a more complex taste than just biting into a ginger root. This was everything I hoped for. It is amazing. The 3# of sugar is a much lower ratio than the OP recipe scaled up to 5gal, and it was plenty sweet. My friends LOVED how gingery it was and agreed that it was just sweet enough (some complained that commercial ginger ale is way too sweet).
For those who live in the American South, several friends have compared this batch to Buffalo Rock's Southern Spice Ginger Ale (which I took as HIGH praise, as I LOVE that stuff).

I did not peel the ginger, though I did cut off the really rough "knots" on my roots. I just cut it in chunks and through it in the blender and hit 'puree'. This caused my final product to have a fair amount of ginger particulates in suspension, but so what. If you really want to get that out, you can filter it (maybe run it through a sanitized coffee filter?). Maybe I'll try that next time, but it doesn't bother me at all, so whatever.

I may mess with different sugar mixes in future, just to see what happens, but nothing about this batches jumps out as "this could be better." Absolutely delicious.

Here's brief version of exactly what I did for any interested:

2.5# ginger root, unpeeled, blended
6 lemons, zest and juice
6 limes, zest and juice
3# turbinado sugar
5gal filtered water

- Heat water to 165F, then turn off heat. Place BIAB or strainer bag in pot, wrap mouth of bag around the rim of pot and secure.
- Zest limes and lemons.
- Remove bad/rough spots from ginger, but do not peel. Fill blender/food processor with ginger chunks, cover with warm water and blend thoroughly. If you must blend in multiple batches, scoop water for follow-on blends from water outside bag.
- Pour ginger root slurry into water INSIDE strainer bag.
- Add lime/lemon zest and juice to mixture. Seeds falling into pot are ok because they will strain out with the rest, and they shouldn't affect flavor as you are not heating the mixture at this point (high heat could leach bitterness from seeds).
- Steep at least 10 min. 30-40 min recommended.
- Remove strainer bag. Squeeze extra liquid into pot (clean hands. and gloves recommended as this will be pretty hot). Filter if desired.
- Pour into keg for forced carbonation. If you are going to carbonate with yeast, ensure the liquid cools below 90F prior to pitching. If you carbonate in bottles, monitor CAREFULLY as there is a LOT of sugar in this and unattended bottles WILL eventually explode.

Thanks again to everyone who's contributed to this thread and especially to bleme for the great starting point for my latest favorite homebrew.

Just made this, mostly per OP. Screwed up and used 2 lemons with 1 lime. Still very good, great with bourbon.

I wouldn't suggest the two lemons to one lime like I did though. I'm guessing that it's even better with 2 limes.

I always strain my ginger before adding. The mush is extremely spicy, and settles to the bottom of the tank. Or you can buy ginger juice on Amazon made by Ginger People (big ginger outfit in Hawaii).

I never peel it, but the FDA requirement for fresh juices is a good one to follow— it increases the refrigeration life dramatically:

Defect your ginger rhizomes first to take out any bad spots, obvious dirt or disease. I cut off the broken ends as well, back to wet ginger.

Then soak then in a dub of disinfectant to eliminate any spores or microbes that may be on the surface. FDA recommends 1 TBS of standard strength Clorox (or equivalent) per gallon of water.

Leave the rhizomes completely submerged for one minute (though I can never restrain myself, and go for two minutes to remove all doubt. What can I say, I ride the wild side).

Allow them to air dry before you blend or food process them. This eliminates residual chlorine.


Happy ginger ale!!

I’ve made this recipe several times and have it on tap on my keezer. Here’s my 2 gal version-
2 gal water 160 degrees
2-4 cups fresh ginger root
2 cups cheap brown sugar
4 limes, zested and juiced
2 lemons, zested and juiced

Heat water in pot(s) on stove to 160
Taking turns, place 2 cups hot water and pieces of ginger in blender. Pulse. (I don’t bother peeling it, just toss it all in blender and pulse it up!)
Blend all ginger with water and add to a food grade bucket.
I also blend the sugar with hot water and add to bucket.
Add zest of citrus, plus citrus juice and stir everything well in bucket.
Cover and let sit overnight.
The next day, strain the liquid into a keg and place on gas to carbonate.
2 days later, you’re good to go!

You’ll notice I doubled the citrus and halved the sugar on this recipe. That’s just a personal preference. Everyone who’s tried it has loved it. The key is getting fresh ginger. Sugar isn’t everything, and a lot of people don’t like the super sweet drinks anyways.

bleme said:

I made a batch based on this and it is the BOMB!
My 5 gallon recipe:
2.5# of unpeeled ginger root, blended
6 lemons, zest and juice
6 limes, zest and juice
2# dark brown sugar
1# white sugar

Click to expand...

Just made this in a 2.5gal batch. Holy moly! Super tasty. I’m loving it straight up or mixed in a Moscow Mule like you mentioned. Only change I made was steeping for 60min to extract as much flavor as possible. Thanks and I’ll definitely be making more.

Steeping a batch right now!

Question about the wild yeast on ginger: If I force-carb then bottle this for gifts, will any of the ginger yeast remain viable to start fermentation if stored at room temperature? I didn't "sterilize" the ginger before shredding whole and steeping at 150F.

Thanks all, superb recipe!

Banter'n'Brews said:

Steeping a batch right now!

Question about the wild yeast on ginger: If I force-carb then bottle this for gifts, will any of the ginger yeast remain viable to start fermentation if stored at room temperature? I didn't "sterilize" the ginger before shredding whole and steeping at 150F.

Thanks all, superb recipe!

Click to expand...

150F will pasteurize. There is some debate on how long it will take at that temp but if you steeped for at least 5 minutes, it should be fine.

Is there any reason why a ginger beer made by ginger bug isnt made in a 5g batch and then forced carbed in a keg?

Ive never made a ginger ale or beer in any fashion.

But just curious as to why that hadnt been brought up in this thread

bleme, I used your recipe, but halved the ingredients for a 2.5 gallon batch in the event it wasn't quite what I wanted. It turned out great! I have a decent blender, so I just blended up the ginger root in it (although I still cut it into littler pieces), then I use a muslin bag for the ginger, lemon zest, and lime zest.

After it was force carbonated in my keg, it turned out great! It wasn't too sweet. Plenty of balance of flavor with a strong ginger upfront. Excellent!