A Screwy Ginger Beer

[seminaryfleming]

Good Morning HBT!

I think I screwed up royally. (REALLY ROYALLY) I made a by-the-seat-of-my-pants ginger beer a while back. I had some ginger that was starting to go bad, so I wanted to try it. I did some research and found a recipe online for a 5 gallon batch, but I didn't have enough ginger nor a big enough fermenter free to go for it, so I cut it down to a gallon.

I think it was the recipe a few posts down here. Anyway, I did my conversions wrong. I divided by 3 instead of 5. I had a kid on June 3, so I'm not entirely with it. I blame sleep deprivation.

Whatever the reason I ended up dumping 6 cups of sugar into (17/3 rounded up a bit) the gallon of water, boiling the whole thing, dumped in some champagne yeast and let it go. I didn't take an OG reading because I was lazy. However the internet tells me I ended up with an OG of 1.135. YIKES!

I took a reading on my snazzy new refractometer last night for it. It gave me a Brix of 11. According to my calculations I have a ginger "liquor" that sits solidly at 49 proof, 24.5% ABV!

I would really rather have ginger beer. So what are my options? Should I just leave it still and add it (in small doses) to club soda to get the carbonated beverage at about beer strength of alcohol?

Could I boil up 3 more gallons of water (that would dilute the alcohol to ~5%) and rack to a secondary with a bunch of "dry hopped" ginger to keep up the flavor?

Other options I'm not considering?

 

[Genacide]

Normal champagne yeast would die off before reaching 24.5% ABV, depending on the strain you may be able to get 15% out of them. How does it taste?

 

[Transamguy77]

Not saying you don't have some high alcohol stuff but if you used a refractometer your reading will most likely be wrong, once alcohol is produced the readings aren't right.

And +1 to Genacide your yeast most likely didn't survive all that alcohol. You could absolutely boil up some more water and dilute it a bit.

What might work is add a couple of cups of sugar to your 3 gallons and pitch a yeast then after a few days slowly start to add your high alcohol ginger beer over a few days so that what sugars are left can be consumed by the active yeast and not have to deal with the high alcohol.

 

[seminaryfleming]

OK, I'll take a Hydrometer reading to get a more accurate understanding of where the beer is sitting. Thanks for the suggestions!