First GingerAle, smell musty/almost moldy

Saturday morning(1 Sep), very early,

1) 2 tbsp spoon scraped raw Ginger
2) Juice of one lemon
3) Just under 1 cup sugar and small amount of honey
4) 9 Sultanas
5) Pinch of Cream of Tartar,
6) Little over 1/8 tsp of Fleishmann's Active Dry Yeast
7) Enough filter tap water to fill a 2liter plastic soda bottle nearly to top.

Sugar and honey were shaken with 1 cup filtered tap water in bottom of bottle to mix and disolve.
Added the 9 Sultanas to bottle.

Added the pinch of Cream of Tartar to bottle, shook bottle to disolve.
Washed in crushed and mixed Ginger/Lemon juice with cup of filtered tap water.

Yeast was disolved in filtered tap water and poured into bottle.
Vigorous shaking of bottle to get everything mixed and oxgenated and topped off bottle--about 2 inches short of neck.

I squeezed the top of the bottle to push out the air, and put on cap, tight.
Bottle set on table out of sunlight and covered with towel. I kept checking the bottle and it remained flexible late into evening.

Early this morning, the bottle's liquid level was down, and the plastic was hard to the touch. Carefully I placed into fridge and let chill.

After releasing the cap slowly, I finally got to taste the Ginger Ale. Lots of escaping gas. Musty Moldy to my taste. I had my son taste it, he said not bad, his sense of smell is much less than mine. I was afraid the musty moldy smell was from the lemon, but after a few more sips, I know its the yeast.

The Ale has been strained, through a nylon mesh strainer and the liquid is very cloudy.

Can I add more lemon juice, water and sugar to the full amount, pour into two or three 2 liter plastic soda bottles and let it ferment more so I can stand to smell and drink? Or would that just put the carbonation back in that I lost while releasing cap and straining the pulp out? Either way, I want to drink it, even if its more carbonated Lemonade than Ginger Ale.

HollyGayle

After more study in these forums, I believe I didn't allow the Ginger Ale bottle to sit in fridge nearly long enough. So, I'm going to add more lemon juice, sugar and water, divide among three 2liter bottles, allow to sit out on table until hard to touch, and then refrigerate them for a lengthy time.

I make quite a lot of ginger beer (non alcoholic), so I will try to help you out a bit.

1. For any brewing project never, ever use bakers yeast as it will produce unwanted, off flavors. This is a no-no in my opinion. If you live where there is a home brew store, you can get wine yeast, champagne yeast, ale yeast, etc. Personally, for a delicate drink like ginger beer (ginger ale refers to the syrup mixed soft drinks I think...) I would go with Safale S-05 dry ale yeast, which imparts the least amount of yeast flavors, or a champagne yeast.

2. Personally, I don't think the tartaric addition does anything beneficial for ginger beer recipes, and this is just a left over ingredient from old recipes. I've done side by side comparisons and I could not tell the difference at all. I would cut this out of the recipe...

3. Straining this will result in aeration and obvious loss of carbonation. If you use about 1/8 tsp of yeast (which is just enough for a 2 liter), you should not have very much trub in the bottom at all. Beside, most of what falls to the bottom of the vesel is primarily from the ginger and the honey, not the yeast (unless you over pitched with a whole pack).

4. I think that with ginger using limes provide better flavor than lemons.

5. The maximum days I have let this ferment on the counter in a two liter bottle is two days. At two days, the bottle is rock solid and probably sitting near 40-50 psi. Remember, sometimes it needs a little warmth to get going, so based on heat, it may be longer or shorter, etc.

Hope this helps you out! :rockin:

I have an easy ginger ale recipe posted (in the recipe area, or under my avatar on the left) and I would definitely recommend champagne yeast. It's neutral, and cheap.

I'm not sure about the sultanas, and that could be a source of the musty smell. Definitely leave out the cream of tartar!

The last ginger ale I made, non-alcoholic, was disgusting after 1 day in fridge. Drinkable after 4, and very good after 10. x2 on leaving out the cream of tartar and using lime juice.

Thanks for the info. I had to start somewhere, so I used what I had. I love Ginger Ale, and after learning the store bought stuff was fake flavorings and chemicals, I decided to go for the home made kind, from scratch as it were, and do myself a favor. I've been making Kombucha off and on for a number of years, so have a tiny bit of fermenting information. Ginger Ale can't be any crankier than Kombucha to ferment a tasty brew. I thought.

The 3rd of September, I added lemon juice, sugar and shaved/grated Ginger and more water to a pan, mixed and spread it over three 2 liter plastic soda bottles. It took me from early morning to about 9:00AM to get the three bottles loaded, stuff in Ginger pieces when they wouldn't go through the funnel, and try to keep the same level on all three bottles. Ths sugar was boiled to make sure it was dissolved.

Finally, I squeezed the liquid in bottles to the top, set them all neatly in a row, covered them with a towel, and every 30 minutes went to check on bottle firmness. When the bottles were impossible to squeeze, I placed all three in fridge and warned my son not to clip, hit, or knock over the bottles as I didn't want to clean the fridge or my kitchen again. He politely smiled and waved to his gallon of brewing Mead with bright blue balloon attached, went back to his computer games.

Next time I'll leave out the Sultanas, the Cream of Tartar and use a Champagne yeast. Thanks again.
HollyGayle

Ginger ale isn't that finicky. It's more a matter of getting the ginger/sweet/acid balance the way you like it.

Come to think of it, I did have a batch that came out with that kind of musty/moldy aroma. It was a wine I was trying to make out of cherry limeade. I think it is the result of the yeast reacting to the high acid solution. That isn't usually a big problem with ginger ale, but I bet the cream of tartar changed the ph of the mix enough to cause you a problem. With the wine, I degassed the living crap out of it. That helped a lot, though it did not entirely resolve the issue. Conditioning did not fix the problem either. The result was drinkable, but not anything to brag about.

Please let us know how things come out.

My three Ginger Ale bottles have been refrigerated for 3 full days now, and they are still rock hard to the touch. Are the bottles susposed to become flexible, indicating the carbonation has migrated into the juice? I'm concerned about 3 potential bottle bombs sitting in my fridge, but I don't want to lose all that carbonation either.
I now see the reason for a second refrigerator. A place for all those chilled drinks I plan on having; cold Ginger Ale, cold Water Kefir drinks, cold Ginger Beer Plant drinks, etc. It is very difficult to resist sampling that cold Ginger Ale. I hope for drinkable Ale, and will wait for a full week before I crack that first bottle.

This was my first try at Ginger Ale. I'm an experimenter so I'll make more. Thanks for hints and tips about brewing Ginger Ale. I'm very happy to have found this brewing forum.

HollyGayle

No, the bottles will remain hard. If they are soft, it means they aren't carbonated. Just like when you buy a bottle of soda from the store, the bottles are very firm.

I once left a bottle of ginger beer I made (cold-crashed after two days) in the refrigerator for about two months. Upon opening it was so over-carbonated that half of it came out onto the counter top before I could get the cap back on. I think it is quite possible that yeasts will keep on keeping on and slowly fermenting even at 40°F...

I did open a bottle, the musty smell not as strong as before, the taste was okay, so I will drink this "BREW" and study more in these forums.

I removed the bottles from the fridge and set on table to attain room temperature, added more lemon, and kept the lids loose and let it continue to ferment.
This morning the fermenting was coming to an end, I added some of the warm Ginger/Lemon ale to my cold drink bottle in Fridge. Carbonation is very weak but still leaves the Ale drinkable.

I am learning, and will learn more. Thanks for all the help, advise and aid.
HollyGayle