Spiced Ginger Beer

So after much pondering, talking on the chat with people about it, and fruitlessly searching online for an alcoholic ginger beer recipe, such as how it traditionally was brewed, I just decided to throw together a recipe, and will be tweaking and making many 1 gal batches of Ginger Beer until I find something one that's just right. So here's the first one: I shall update with results as they come.

Ingredients:
6" piece of fresh ginger root (5 oz, shredded)
1 c Cane Sugar
1/2c Honey
1/4c packed Brown Sugar
2 key limes (juice of both, zest from one)
pinch of Cardamom, Cinnamon, Clove (cracked)

Yeast:
Safale US-05

Proceedure:
Bring one gallon of water to a boil, turn off heat and put spices in, cover and let sit for 10-15mins (or 'till <160F) Add Sugars, Lime juice/zest and Ginger. Let sit covered 'till mixture reaches pitching temp. Strain mixture into carboy, pitch yeast. Ferment out, secondary optional. Prime like normal, for sweeter ginger beer, add lactose and/or splenda to taste (or kill yeast, sweeten, then force carb)

What do you all think?

 

That's lot of ginger...

I have a recipe...click on the down arrow under my avatar.

 

I like really hot spicy gingerale, like Blenheim Hot Ginger Ale, and I decided on that much after tasting the must untill I got the hotness I wanted.

As for the Gingered Ale, I got that one from you, and I was looking for something that was less actual beer.

 

mmm'kay...

I guess the product you mentioned must be like our Vernon's Ginger Ale...really spicy.:rockin:

 

I don't know about Vernon's but we have Vernor's which is kinda spicy, I use it to make Dark 'n Stormys on a hot day. The stuff I'm talking about is a sipping ginger ale, you'll burn your throat off trying to drink with any sort of speed, although quite refreshing suprisingly

 

At the moment I have a ginger wheat beer in my secondary, I will let you know how it turns out

I am also interested in finding out about traditional ginger beer
Which according to Wikipedia was once brewed up to 11% ABV

I belive it was brew only with fresh ginger sugar and something called ginger beer plant, which is where the yeast came from.

I belive the problem from brewing with bakers yeast or brewers yeast that the alcolhol can turn into lactic acid. Which is why ginger beer generally has low alcohol content.

 

+1

I love Vernor's, but I ALWAYS cough and/or choke a little with that first sip. I seem to forget to not inhale right before sipping! It is really good though!

 

That's kinda what I'm going for, I was totally unable to find any recipes online for 11% ginger beer, mine will likely end up around 7-8% if I did my measurments correctly, it will be dry, but I may sweeten with some stievia.

 

Verner's is what I meant...

 

Have you ever tried it warm?...I don't know if that is a Michigan thing or not. But when I was in college, there was this hippie sandwich shop on campus that always had a huge crockpot of warm Vernor's sitting next to the fountain drinks tap...Great stuff on a cold winter day!

If you want a decent gingery ale, you can do my Ginger Orange Dortmunder and leave out the orange peel...In fact next time I make it I may just leave it out entirely, (it fades to soon anyway leaving just the ginger) and make simply a ginger dortmunder style ale...

Grain Bill
7 lbs.Briess Pilsen Dme.
1 lb Crystal 40
.5 lb Carapils

Hops
1. oz Perle 7.9 % at 60 min.
1. oz Tradition 5.8% at 60
.5 oz. Cascade 6.3% at 20 min.
.5 oz Cascade 6.3% at 5 min.

1oz ginger @ 20
1oz ginger @ flameout

Safale US-05

 

I found a place online www.fermentedtreasures.com which apparently has the original ginger beer plant for sale. Which I am going to order and try out.

 

Taken From
Title: The Book of Household Management
Author: Mrs. Isabella Beeton
First Published in a Bound Edition 1861.

1819. INGREDIENTS.--To 9 gallons of water allow 27 lbs. of loaf sugar, 9
lemons, 12 oz. of bruised ginger, 3 tablespoonfuls of yeast, 2 lbs. of
raisins stoned and chopped, 1 pint of brandy.

_Mode_.--Boil together for 1 hour in a copper (let it previously be well
scoured and beautifully clean) the water, sugar, _lemon-rinds_, and
bruised ginger; remove every particle of scum as it rises, and when the
liquor is sufficiently boiled, put it into a large tub or pan, as it
must not remain in the copper. When nearly cold, add the yeast, which
must be thick and very fresh, and, the next day, put all in a dry cask
with the strained lemon-juice and chopped raisins. Stir the wine every
day for a fortnight; then add the brandy, stop the cask down by degrees,
and in a few weeks it will be fit to bottle.

_Average cost_, 2s. per gallon. _Sufficient_ to make 9 gallons of wine.

_Seasonable_.--The best time for making this wine is either in March or
September.

_Note_.--Wine made early in March will be fit to bottle in June.

 

This looks interesting, dry, and who knows what abv it will turn out to be. I'm thinking about making my next experiment with the fermentables having a high percentage as dark candi sugar and mollassas, in order to give it some character and dept of flavor, maybe throw some non-attentuave yeast and get some risidual sweetness out of it.

 

So for an update on this, I'm going to be bottling today, the FG ended up at 0.980, and actually less gingery than I expected, pleasant, but not very hot, the next one I'm going up up the ginger, or leave the ginger pulp in the brew and let it settle to the bottom, to impart a more ginger flavor.

 

Have you looked at the ginger beer recipe in Pappazian's book? I lent my copy to my brother in law but it didn't look that bad. Does anyone have experience with the recipe?

 

Just received my dried Ginger beer Plant
Which seems to be dried yeast culture. Which needs re hydrating before use.
All the recipes received with it seem to be for low alcohol drinks.

But for a spicy ginger beer it recommends adding cayenne pepper or Tasmanian Peppercorns thought you might like to try this in your experiments as well. The Tasmanian Peppercorns sound intresting.

I am waiting to see how my ginger wheat turns out before I do any experimenting with this culture I believe I may start some 1-gallon trials and will let you know results.

 

Partially inspired by Freezeblade, I decided to make my own ginger ale, or beer, or sparkling wine, whatever you want to call it.

Batch Size: 1 gallon
Original Gravity: 1038

Ingredients
1c beet sugar
1/2c honey
1/4c brown sugar
1Tbsp Splenda
4Tbsp Lemon juice
4oz fresh ginger root, sliced thin (30min)
1.5oz fresh ginger root cut into 1/2" pieces (0min) (cut to fit through mouth of carboy.)
2 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
1 packet dry ale yeast

Process:
Started heating 4.25qt water, when it was hot, but not yet boiling I added the sugar, brown sugar, honey and splenda. Continued to let it heat to a simmer (210 degrees) I then added the 4oz. of sliced ginger, lemon juice, cardamom and cinnamon and let it simmer for 30 minutes. I then removed from heat, added the rest of the ginger. When it had cooled to 80 degrees I fished out the 1/2" ginger pieces that were added at the end of the simmer and put them in my carboy, poured the liquid (would this be considered wort? There are no malt or hops.) into the carboy and pitched the yeast.

I tasted it before putting it in the carboy, it tastes pretty good as is, very sweet at this point, but I would be willing to leave out the beet sugar and serve it warm at a Christmas party.

 

I brewed a honey ginger beer a while ago, and i primed with honey boiled with ginger, and it seemed to turn out pretty well. It ended up having a solid ginger taste.

 

Alright, so experiment 1 ended with satisfactory results, but not quite what I was looking for, as it ended up quite light and I was going for more of a dark complex flavor. This leads me to experiment #2:

Ginger Beer Take 2

Ingredients
1/2 c (about 8 oz) Piloncillo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piloncillo
1 c Darkish Candi sugar (home-made)
1/4 c wild flower honey
6 oz fresh ginger root (grated)
pinch of cardamom, cinnamon, cloves (cracked)
1/2 Tbs pure vanilla extract

Process
Boil Water, add piloncillo and candi sugar, turn off flame once dissolved (the piloncillo will take a bit if not grated) add spices. let cool for 15 mins, then add ginger and vanilla, along with the honey. Strain into fermenter once pitching temp is reached, pitch US-05. ferment as usual, no secondary. prime as per needed, adding lactose, splenda, etc, if a sweeter ginger beer is desired.

 

Hi
I was reading up on your little ginger brewing project. How did Recipe 2 end up?

 

I am new to this site and relatively new to making ginger beer but here is my third recipe, which I am bottling tomorrow. I will let you know how it turns out...

1.6kg Fresh grated ginger
30gm dried ginger
7 Lemons juice
1 tblspn Cinnamon (plus hand full of cinnamon sticks)
1 tblspn Nutmeg
500gm Airbourne honey (Vipers Bugloss)
1.5kg Black Rock Malt Extract (Amber)
1kg Brewblend No. 15 (Dextrose, Malt Extract, Corn Syrup)
500gm Lactose
5gm Yeast nutrient
1 sachet SAF S23 Lager yeast

1. Boil ginger, lemon juice, and spices for at least 1hr.
2. Turn off heat and add honey, Malt, Brewblend, and lactose – mixing well.
3. Pour into fermenting barrel and add water to 21 litres in total
4. Cool to less than 25 degrees.
5. Add yeast nutrient and yeast.
6. Leave to ferment.
7. Bottle and add white sugar into bottle to prime

OG = 1.061 (4 Nov)
FG = 1.022 (21 Dec)
Approx 5.2 ABV

 

So how did it turn out? I am very curious about making a ginger beer of some sort.

 

Hey all,

I recently made two 5 gallon batches of ginger beer.

5 gallon recipe (similar to Moonshae's recipe):

2 lbs fresh ginger (sliced)
6 cups white sugar
5 cups brown sugar
1.25 cups of lemon juice
1 lemon (zest)
1.5 cinnamon sticks
3 cloves
2 tbs vanilla extract
1 packet champagne yeast (Cote des Blancs)

Here's my dilemma - I did not strain or filter out the 2lbs of ginger (or the zest from 1 lemon) before racking into the primary. Its been fermenting for almost a week and appears to be fine but I would like to know what others think.

I realize that this was probably a mistake but my logic at the time was the couple times I've made mead with our homebrew club - some folks will rack directly onto oranges, limes, etc.

Have any of you done this before? Should I strain it immediately or just relax?

Thanks in advance!

 

Hey buddy, if you're still around, how did your recipe turn out?