alcoholic ginger beer

[MAXWONGA]

I am thinking of making of making some alcoholic ginger beer, using the following recipe

5 gallons water
1-1 1/2 lbs. ginger root, coarsley chopped
17 cups sugar
4 lemons, sliced
3/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 packet champagne yeast

It is supposed to give a strength of 5/7% I am wondering if I could somehow get the strenght up to 10%+

Any suggestions welcomed

 

[Asrial]

Sugar is a direct fermentable; it doesn't leave any sweetness behind if fermented. So if you want more alcohol, then add more white sugar!
But you might want to add some unfermentable sugars, else that ginger beer is going to be the beer equivalent to Sahara. And to be fairly honest, I don't think that this would be classified as a beer per se; no malt.

 

[itzkramer]

I just made a 2 gallon test batch at 3%. I dont remember the exact amounts off hand. i have them written down, but here's what i remember at the moment:

2 large ginger roots (made into a paste in blender)
light brown sugar (2 cups)
corn syrup w/ vanilla (1 cup) (couldnt find any with no vanilla)
vietnamese cinnamon
2 lemons
red star montrechet

i was going to add honey but i forgot to buy it while i was out.

its been in the fermentor for 10 days. today i am going to try some and back sweeten to taste, and "dry hop" more ginger root. it will be spicey!

 

[MAXWONGA]

Thanks for the comment,I am new to this so pardon probably obvious questions, I am in UK so maybe another excuse any what is corn syrup and what does dry hop mean...thanks

 

[MAXWONGA]

Oh and where can you get unfermentable sugars

 

[itzkramer]

corn syrup is a thick sugar made from the sugars in corn. its used a sweetener in food.

"dry hop" is a beer term, but im using it in the sense that ill be putting fresh chopped ginger directly in the finished product to give a fresh ginger tatse.

 

[itzkramer]

i kegged this last night. i backsweetened 2 gallons with 2 cups of sinple syrup. its was too sweet. 1.5 cups would have been perfect

 

[shawnbou]

Unfermentable sugars include lactose and maltodextrin, and both are available from most homebrew suppliers. But maltodextrin does not really work as a sweetener - it gives body and mouthfeel to the finished product, but doesn't taste sweet. I've never used lactose so can't speak to its effects.

If you want to add sweetness after fermenting out the sugar, you could use artificial sweetener (assuming you don't have any health reason or other reason not to). I have been working on a test batch of a Crabbie's clone and I just added 1 cup of bulk Splenda per gallon to backsweeten it. It tastes pretty good so far but it's not carbonated yet so I can't say for sure.

 

[itzkramer]

as a personal preference, i really cant stand artificial sweetener. it just tastes bad to me. i crash cooled the ginger beer close to freezing when i added the sugar so hopefully it killed the yeast.

 

[MAXWONGA]

as a personal preference, i really cant stand artificial sweetener. it just tastes bad to me. i crash cooled the ginger beer close to freezing when i added the sugar so hopefully it killed the yeast.

I will be v interested to hear if crash cooling works

 

[itzkramer]

it worked

 

[MAXWONGA]

it worked

thats good i will be ready soon.

so did you wait for fermenting to stop, bottle and reduce temp to almost freezing, for a few hours and thats it,did you put a bit of sugar in the bottles also


thanks

 

[itzkramer]

i waited till it was done fermenting, racked to the keg, then added in the simple syrup and shook it up to mix. then just threw it in the fridge at near freezing.

 

[MAXWONGA]

i waited till it was done fermenting, racked to the keg, then added in the simple syrup and shook it up to mix. then just threw it in the fridge at near freezing.

Very Intersting Itzkramer, I am doing 5 gallons and added an extra bag of sugar, aint stopped fermenting yet, hopefully soon. when u say simple syrup do you mean water and sugar? Gonna put mine in plastic cider bottels as dont have a keg, was thinking of a few tbls per litre.how long did you palce in freezer for assume until almost froozen then removed, thanks

 

[Corrado]

it worked

I'd be interested to know how that worked out long-term. I *store* my yeast slurries in the fridge at about 34F and have reasonable viability after a year, so unless you freeze solid and literally rupture the yeast cells, I would expect that your best case scenario is drastically slowing down the inevitable fermentation (and increased carbonation) of the beer.

 

[Megachimp]

I got nothing to contribute to this conversation other than my great ginger beer story!

A couple years ago I decided I wanted to make some ginger beer. Not alcoholic, but with a real ginger starter/bug. everything went well. Made my bug, made my ginger beer. Added the bug to the beer. Bottled. Let sit for a couple weeks.

When the day came to try it, I opened a bottle. It was very fizzy, but tasted great. We ended up drinking "almost" all of the bottles. I left four bottles in the bottom drawer of my refrigerator and forgot about them.

Fast forward 6-months.

One night my wife and I awoke to our alarm going off. Freaked out, I sprang into action. Grabbed the golf club I had sitting by my bed and ran into the kitchen to face our intruder. What I found was the refrigerator door blown open. Glass and ginger beer EVERYWHERE. Like the entire kitchen was covered with it. The inside of the refrigerator was obliterated. That's the best word I could use to describe it. Half the shelves and drawers in the fridge were no longer of this world. They were disintegrated into nothingness by the nuclear explosion that was apparently caused by my unopened ginger beer.

I spent the remainder of the night and the next morning cleaning refrigerator parts, glass and sticky ginger beer from every corner of the kitchen. I'm still amazed at the force of that explosion. Four bottles of ginger beer absolutely destroyed that refrigerator. I was insanely lucky that one of our cats or, one of us wasn't standing in front of the thing when those bottles decided to go. I laugh now, but it could have been really bad.

I don't make ginger beer anymore.