Ginger Mead

Hello everyone

A few weeks ago I had a friend that started asking all sorts of questions about mead and how to make it. We talked long about many aspects and eventually he explained that he tried to make a Ginger Ale (Beer) a long while back and failed miserably. He wanted to make Ginger mead but when told to visit this place or that for recipes, he wanted me to come up with one and make him a comprehensive step by step guide. So I did... Well that brings me to tonight. I talked real big but have not made ginger mead before. I have made several meads and wines now and a couple used some ginger but never strait ginger. Tonight I will test out what I told to him and make this myself. (For the record I did tell him I never done a ginger mead before) So below is my shot at ginger mead:

5 gallon batch

12 lb of Honey with two small bricks of honey comb from the raw honey
2oz "4 TBS" of crystallized ginger
1 TBS of powdered ginger
50 golden raisins cut in half
2.5 tsp of yeast nutrients
2 tsp of yeast energizer
Lalvin K1V-1116 Yeast

1) Mixed everything lack yeast and energizer together at room temp "No Boil"

2) Whipped the heck out of it with my home made wine whip.

3) Pitch yeast

4) Plan to add yeast energizer 24 & 48 hours after yeast pitch at 1 tsp each

5) Plan to let ferment dry then prime and bottle for sparkling ginger mead.

My OG is at 1.084 which is right at where I figured it would be. I estimated 1.086 and did not really scrub my honey containers clean so thought it would be just under. I should have 11.5% – 12.0% ABV in the end. I will keep you up to date on progress.

Well the only thing I'd change is to eat the crystalised ginger and replace it with fresh ginger.

As to whether you're gonna get more of a ginger flavour from just fermenting it, or whether you find better guidance on extracting the ginger flavour from the root, I don't know.

My last attempt at ginger wine, I think that the recipe suggested something like 1lb per gallon, but I screwed up when I spotted ginger root on sale and used something like 4lb (so much sediment I had to mix it from a 1 gallon carboy, to a 3 US gallon water bottle, and it still had something like 4 inches of ginger sediment in the bottom).

Yes it did turn out dry, but when I've back sweetened a few bottles, damn it was good......

Ty FB for the input. I wanted the ginger to not be a dominant flavor but have the wild flower honey be a little more prominent. I actually tried to find fresh ginger and could not find any crazy enough. I actually thought in the back of my head that if I wanted more ginger flavor, I hoped to hunt up some fresh ginger and throw that in with the secondary after this clears and I have a good chance to taste it.

Just added 1st addition of yeast energizer & degased with wine whip. It smells like strong honey right now. Could not really pick out any ginger smell. Still rolling strong.

Oh that sounds good, I have done something roughly like this with organic grated ginger, and I will say, it is very very powerful. The taste is a bit rough at only two months out but dang if I haven't gone through the entire carboy pretty dang fast.

Excellent call on incorporating the honeycomb, I fully intended to do this, and forgot completely to ask my honey supplier about getting some. Bits of dead bee, yes, I want that, absolute bonus in my book.

Ginger seems a little funny in the ferment to me, it does impart a flavor, but for some reason it just doesn't seem 'hot' like if you bite into the raw root.

Now I will say, I do firmly believe ginger is a major contributor to the stupefying essence, particularly when some amount of the outer root is included / root 'skin'.

I checked on the mead today and was surprized at how cloudy it is with no real lees at the bottom. I took a gravity sample and it was at 1.052!?!

I added a tsp of yeast energizer and whine whiped / shook it up real good to degass it. The airlock is moving again so lets see how it goes.

Just for info. If you do track down a piece of ginger, it seems that the hotter part of the flavour is in the outer part of the root. So I tend to just rinse and scrub the outer surface to remove any dirt and mud. Then just grate it all, skin, the lot.

Well here is a quick update on the mead. The Damn thing still has some bubbles rising but I noticed today that it looks like it is on the down slope and starting to really clear. This is the longest fermenting mead I have had by far. If I leave it alone I bet in another 2 - 3 weeks it should be clear enough for first racking. I gave this a Half shot sized taste and I must say it is really smooth. Smells of honey and has a wonderful dry white wine kind of after smell. Tastes dry so is probably around the .998 range but I will not disturb it too much until after it is in secondary. However if there is any ginger taste it is lacking a lot. So I will pick up some fresh Ginger here soon and rack onto 2 1/2 pounds of it just washed rinsed and grated skin and all.

So far I am very pleased with the mead and already really like it. But I think it will be better with some more ginger and back sweetened probably to the 1.006ish area. I bet it will be darn good right at bottle with little aging. We will see how it goes in a month.

I thought you were just making a bottle of ginger mead from your first post Your solution to rack onto 2.5lb of ginger is worthy. Part of the cloudiness may come from it being a root and having stored starch down there, a little amyalase might help the clearinup. We usually take all the ginger, bash it up sking and all, pound or more gallon and simmer it down for 20 minutes. Toes have curled and locked in place after 1 swig, so you men of gentler persuaion might need to add a little less then we do out in the countriside. WVMJ

There is a new Asian market opening soon near us, will be very happy if they have lot os fresh ginger, galanga, golgi and someo ftheir better fruit concentrates. How about Betel Nut meads, what a beautiful red that would make! Cruising around in an Asian market offers so many fruits and weird stuff to ferment. WVMJ

WVMJ said:

I thought you were just making a bottle of ginger mead from your first post Your solution to rack onto 2.5lb of ginger is worthy. Part of the cloudiness may come from it being a root and having stored starch down there, a little amyalase might help the clearinup. We usually take all the ginger, bash it up sking and all, pound or more gallon and simmer it down for 20 minutes. Toes have curled and locked in place after 1 swig, so you men of gentler persuaion might need to add a little less then we do out in the countriside. WVMJ

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Well I could have swore I figured up the amounts of ginger to add in my original recipe from a couple different sources but either I was mistaken or they were not going for any appreciable ginger taste at all. From what FB and others have said since I started this I think 2 1/2 lb of fresh ginger is a good minimum for 5 gallons. We will see how it turns out.

There are a lot of pansies out there when it comes to hot, ginger being a hot taste most people feel or taste any and they get excited, like hot peppers, taco bell hot would put some in a stupor while the rest of us cant even taste it yet. If you want ginger taste 2.5 lbs will do it pretty good. WVMJ

OK I just got a whole 2.5lb of fresh washed and pounded ginger in a new Carboy and racked the mead onto it. Ohhhh man fresh ginger smells awesome. Ill give this about 3 weeks, have a taste and see if I want to rack off the ginger for final clearing.

Wow, I thought I was the only crazy one putting 3 lbs of fresh grated ginger in a mead! As WVMJ mentioned, it is a bit hot...I actually have it still in bulk aging, and it's mellowing a bit, and I plan on bottling it sometime in the next couple months. Plan is to bottle some of it just as it is, and the rest of it will be back blended with a straight semi-sweet orange blossom mead. I do think, as FatBloke suggests, that this will be best appreciated with a slight amount of residual sweetness...

Well you see the recipe I started with and really it just kind of had the character of a honey like light beer IMO. It did not really say ginger when I tried a bit at racking. So that affirmed in me that more ginger was the way to go. If it has a spicy note, that will not bother me. I am the guy that does the Homicide buffalo wing challenge at Wings to go every year on my B-day for the fun of it.

Well I just found another reason too make a sweet ginger mead.

I like to have 1 single drink with my evening meal. Normally its 3 or 4 "fingers" of spirit topped up with a mixer. Tonight I decided to try one of my traditional meads with some whisky. But I then thought to top it up with some ginger beer (non-alcholic commercially made soda/pop type stuff). Damn it was nectar. I couldnt taste the whisky, the first taste was the mead but then with an after taste of the sweet ginger beer. Absolute magic.

I'm thinking that I'll have to start planning a traditional mead which is then racked onto shredded raw ginger, but I suspect I'll have to research how to extract ginger the best way i.e. the hottest taste as I want plenty of ginger flavour but also some honey coming through.....

Maybe I want too much....? I just know I want ginger mead !

Well this recipe has plenty honey character now but on the dry side. I am excited to see this in a few more weeks and if spicy enough I'll rack stabilize and back sweeten a little.

I have a few wines I liked back sweetened to 1.015ish but meads have been dry or overly sweet like JAOM styles. What do you think would be a complimenting gravity would be for this?

Arpolis said:

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I have a few wines I liked back sweetened to 1.015ish but meads have been dry or overly sweet like JAOM styles. What do you think would be a complimenting gravity would be for this?

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very difficult to tell.

The one I made with stupid amounts of ginger in it, was, well, gingery as a dry batch but lacked something. It was nothing special.

If you then think of how crystalised ginger, or better still, ginger in syrup tastes, once I discovered that a glass of it with a teaspoon or two of honey in it, made it special, well I don't know. I only found that out with the last bottle of the batch.

Commercially made ginger wine, like "Stones" or "Crabbies" have a finished gravity (measured out of the bottle) in the region of a dessert sweet mead, like the 1.040 sort of area.

I don't fully understand why it should be, but the ginger taste seemed hottest when it was sweet, bordering on the very sweet.

Perhaps it's a regional thing and the familiarity of what I was used to growing up etc ? Just that it was best when tasting as above.

It may be some sort of reaction or just the appropriate mix of sugars and the flavouring chems from the ginger ?

I'd guess that if the batch has gone dry(ish) you'd be best placed back sweetening (with honey of course) with small increments. If you add enough to raise the gravity by 1 point then that'd be the ultimate in control but would probably take a long time, whereas adding enough honey to raise the gravity by 5 points might take it from good to bleargh....too sweet.

It's rather an experimentation as the only person who knows what you'd like with a good balance of honey taste when paired with the ginger taste is you........

All I know is that I like my ginger wines sweet, and also now, with the sweetness being a honey tasting sweetness......

FB, its funny, if you took a slice of fresh ginger and ate it your toes would curl, but if you ate the same size piece of candied ginger you would just smile. We like the crazy amount of ginger and add niagra juice to give it body etc. We have a new Asian supermarket opening near us, finally we will be able to get fresh ginger locally. When I get some honey a ginger mead is on the list. I bet you can push the ginger levels way up to where you can feel the heat as long as you backsweeten with honey when its done fermenting. WVMJ

WVMJ said:

FB, its funny, if you took a slice of fresh ginger and ate it your toes would curl, but if you ate the same size piece of candied ginger you would just smile. We like the crazy amount of ginger and add niagra juice to give it body etc. We have a new Asian supermarket opening near us, finally we will be able to get fresh ginger locally. When I get some honey a ginger mead is on the list. I bet you can push the ginger levels way up to where you can feel the heat as long as you backsweeten with honey when its done fermenting. WVMJ

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I tend to do "nuclear grade" hot anyway. Raw ginger is regularly available here any, but it'd probably be considered the "regular" type. The more specialist type stuff like galangal would have to come via an Oriental market shop though.

I just noticed that when my last batch was dry finished it did taste that hot but once I'd worked out about back sweetening it to dessert wine/mead levels it had an excellent hot taste.

I've yet to work out about how to make an effective extract. My last batch had all the ginger in primary too so the next one is gonna probably have both primary and secondary additions.......

FB, our last batch I froze the ginger, thawed it, sliced it up with a knife, and then simmered it for about 20-30 minutes, added the sugar while hot, but with honey will let cool, strained the chunks out and tossed in everything else. I have not seen the need to add anymore to the secondary to boost the taste, its already in there pretty good. I have not done this as a mead yet but I cant wait for some honey. WVMJ

Has anybody here actually used galangal in a mead/wine? I know the local Carrs/Safeway sometimes carries it fresh...
From the dried stuff I have in the pantry, it seems like it would add a more floral gingery flavour.

Brann_mac_Finnchad said:

Has anybody here actually used galangal in a mead/wine? I know the local Carrs/Safeway sometimes carries it fresh...
From the dried stuff I have in the pantry, it seems like it would add a more floral gingery flavour.

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Yes, I adore galengal in mead. Was originally turned onto it when I received an Ambrosia Farms short mead kit as a stocking stuffer--one of them had galengal in it. I now grow it in containers and the patch I planted in 2011 survived the winter in ground and I hope to harvest some of the root during first part of March. Good stuff.

saramc said:

Yes, I adore galengal in mead. Was originally turned onto it when I received an Ambrosia Farms short mead kit as a stocking stuffer--one of them had galengal in it. I now grow it in containers and the patch I planted in 2011 survived the winter in ground and I hope to harvest some of the root during first part of March. Good stuff.

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Bugger !

Something else to have to find in home brew quantity to try then....

FWIW, one mead that will always stick with me from my judging days is a ginger mead someone entered in one of the KC competitions. This would have been back in maybe 95?

I spoke with the creator after the competition and she said she was making traditional candied ginger (she was a SCA member) with honey and she did not want to waste the honey after cooking the ginger so into the fermenter it went.

To this day it was the hottest ginger anything I've ever had, and also the only mead I ever sent to the BOS table.

OK I got off the Lazy Arss and did some racking today. I racked off the Ginger finally. I wanted to keep this in the Carboy for final clearing cause there was a little sediment that came along off the ginger. There was a lot of headspace so to make that up I emptied the used ginger into a pot with about 2L of water and boiled it about 20 minutes. Oh man there was still a lot of punch in that ginger. I used that to top up and added honey to a gravity of about 1.01. Oh and added Camden and sorbate respectfully to halt further fermentation. Our state fair is in about 4 months. I hope to enter this in it and see where it goes.

I'm coming up with my final plan to bottle/blend/backsweeten my ginger mead. I have 6 gal of straight orange blossom varietal and 5 gal of ginger (again, used 3 lbs of fresh grated ginger in the primary...)

I think I'm going to rack 3 gal each of the ginger and OB into a 6 gal carboy with 2 lbs OB honey, which should give me ~ 12-13 points of backsweetening). I'm going to backsweeten 1 gallon each of the meads by itself with 1/4-1/3 lb of honey. and bottle 1 gal of the ginger and 2 gal of the OB just as it is. It may cost me a bit on the entry fees, but I'll likely enter all of these various combinations in the Charlotte Open once that comes around again (won't be until next May, so should have plenty of time to bottle condition/mellow).

That sounds great. Best of luck in your competition for when it comes around.

It seems you want them to pick the best combo for you? I would say send in your highest level of ginger and your lowest plus a straight OB, they are either going to like one of your gingers or not, I doubt giving them a gradient of ginger tastes beyond a lot of flavor and a little flavor willl give you any advantage. Besides, thats like a gallon of mead to enter and you will want to keep most of this yourself! WVMJ

biochemedic said:

I'm coming up with my final plan to bottle/blend/backsweeten my ginger mead. I have 6 gal of straight orange blossom varietal and 5 gal of ginger (again, used 3 lbs of fresh grated ginger in the primary...)

I think I'm going to rack 3 gal each of the ginger and OB into a 6 gal carboy with 2 lbs OB honey, which should give me ~ 12-13 points of backsweetening). I'm going to backsweeten 1 gallon each of the meads by itself with 1/4-1/3 lb of honey. and bottle 1 gal of the ginger and 2 gal of the OB just as it is. It may cost me a bit on the entry fees, but I'll likely enter all of these various combinations in the Charlotte Open once that comes around again (won't be until next May, so should have plenty of time to bottle condition/mellow).

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Yeah, I guess it will be 12 bottles, some of which will be coming from 1 gal splits. I suppose I will just taste and decide which ones I feel need to go to the comp...honestly, I'm pretty sure the straight ginger should probably be just left for me and friends who will appreciate it...the more subtle blended ones I think will do much better in comp...

Ok here is an update on the ginger mead! When I attempted to back sweeten last when I racked in may I may have added the honey too soon after introducing the sorbate and Camden. Fermentation picked back up. All I could do was let it slowly ferment until done and clear again. I did not get a chance to enter anything in my state fair this year because I had some vacation with my wife about the time I should have been entering bottles and other things just came up. Crazy storms taking my 2 car carport and wrapping it in my 80 year old pecan tree. So my mind was off the brew for a while. So the mead is crystal clear again and I racked into some sorbate and Camden today. I will let a good 12 hours pass before back sweetening. I siphoned off one glass since I need to make head room for honey any way and have it in the freezer chilling at the moment.



I will taste it a bit later and report back. We get to see how a 13+ month dry ginger mead tastes.

Here is a second pic since my IPhone will not post two pics in the same post:

Delete duplicate post.