Experience with fresh baby ginger or lemongrass?

[TNGabe]

Any input based on experience would be much welcome. I've got a rye farmhouse ale in the kettle right now and the fresh baby ginger and lemon grass from our garden are calling my name. Kinda worried it's the dumb voice calling, though. I'm on 'brewcation' so maybe I'll do another batch and compare the two.

I'm shooting for 1.048, hit 1.040 preboil so I think I'm good. I'm thinking .5 gram lemongrass and 3 grams baby ginger for 5 gallons. Lemongrass is crazy strong, but I'm thinking .5 gram in 5 galllons will be fairly subtle. Any ideas?

 

[zhengyi13]

That sounds like an awesome idea. I did a saison over the summer that was intended to be ginger/habanero. I say "intended" because I waaay overshot on the amount of ginger added, and slightly undershot on the habanero - I can't say too much about quantity in terms of weight; I took I think maybe 3 cubic inches of ginger and shredded that up, then soaked it in just enough 151 to cover for sanitation's sake. I did something similar for the habanero; just used significantly less of it

The end result was initially so ginger-heavy that it actually tasted a tad soapy. The ginger's faded enough over the last couple months that it's drinkable, but it's not the glorious nectar I envisioned. I'm not particularly a fan of subtlety, but that may be the lesson I learn from this.

 

[jerkstore]

I put a bunch of fresh lemongrass at flameout and 'dry hopped' in my last saison batch. Good flavor profile.

 

[TNGabe]

I put a bunch of fresh lemongrass at flameout and 'dry hopped' in my last saison batch. Good flavor profile.

How much did you use and what size batch?

 

[jerkstore]

Didn't actually measure. It was one stalk from my Lemongrass plant (chopped and smashed), in the flameout, and one stalk in the dryhop

 

[beergolf]

I did a ginger/ lemongrass Saison that was very good.

i used .25 finely chopped ginger at 10 minutes and 2 stalked finely chopped lemmongrass at 10 minutes. Depending how fresh the lemongrass is you can use more. The lemongrass I used was not super fresh so I would have used some more.

The flavor profile works well with a Saison.