Ginger Wine to ginger beer?

[koomber]

I've just started a ginger wine recipe and a rough back of the *** packet style calculation shows that the ABV should be about 10-11% Give or take. If I'm right though this won't be enough to kill the yeasties.

So I was thinking, if I bottle these in beer bottles, could I charge it with a little sugar and make and fizzy ginger wine? A super stong ginger beer. Possibly a Ginger Fear? I like the sound of the idea myself

 

[twzdfirestrtr]

sounds tasty and it depends on the type of yeast you used it may kill the yeast... i liek to use a champagne yest for various types of wines and it usually has a kickass around 15 16 ?

 

[CoffeeSnob]

MMm..... that may make a killer Dark and Stormy.

 

[oldmate]

Might need to age it out for a bit longer than usual to let it smooth out.

 

[modF]

Sounds interesting.. How did you do the ginger wine? I have a 35# box of candied ginger at home that I'm trying to decide what to do with.

 

[elambers]

I make ginger wine all the time. It's fairly easy. I slice up about a thumb of fresh ginger and use 2.5 cups of sugar in 4L of filtered water. I pitch in a half a pack of EC1118 wine yeast and let it ferment for about 3weeks - 1 month. You can filter it or let it be. If you don't use an actual ginger beer plant (which can only tolerate up to 5% or so alcohol levels) and use the wine yeast instead, the alcohol content get ups to 10-14%, but you'll have to add some citric acid or lemon juice to taste. The ginger beer plant contains a bacteria that gives the ginger-beer a real bite and nice flavor without any additives, but the only draw back is the low alcohol tolerance. Here's a recipe using a plant http://thegingerbeerplant.com/FAQs....ng it would work out fine. Have you tried it?

 

[jimbostarr]

If you don't use an actual ginger beer plant (which can only tolerate up to 5% or so alcohol levels) and use the wine yeast instead, the alcohol content get ups to 10-14%, QUOTE]

Wine yeast instead of the ginger? What happens after 5% abv to the ginger?

 

[Arpolis]

If you don't use an actual ginger beer plant (which can only tolerate up to 5% or so alcohol levels) and use the wine yeast instead, the alcohol content get ups to 10-14%, QUOTE]

Wine yeast instead of the ginger? What happens after 5% abv to the ginger?

You may be confusing "ginger" and "ginger beer plant". Ginger is the spicy root we all love. Ginger beer plant is a symbiotic mass of mold, yeast and lactobacillus bacteria that forms a jelly like substance. It is much like kefir grains as a fermenting agent or the consistency of mother of vinegar. These symbiotic colonies like kefir grains and ginger beer plant seem to always have a low ABV limit of about 3% - 6%.

I have never made ginger beer but ginger mead is very nice. I used 8 oz per gallon of fresh ginger root and it made a very nice mead. I have it at about 13.5% ABV but it took it just about a year to really mellow out and get super good.

To the OP:

Yea priming and carbing up the ginger wine may be good. I mix my still ginger mead with a bit of carbonated water for a nice kick. But I think the mead does best at a gravity of around 1.01 or higher. So give it a taste before priming and you may find you need to back sweeten to just over the perfect taste, then let it carb up and pasteurize to stop feentation.

 

[jimbostarr]

Great advice, thanks!


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[Dominic1920]

I made this ginger wine recipe, and it turned out great, only thing I did different was use champagne yeast which gave it a nice fizz.

 

[ExperimentalBrewer]

when I saw this, I was thinking "Stones Ginger Wine" which is a fortified wine with high sugar content and like 13% alcohol. I guess that is in the realm of home brewing without distilling.... does anyone have a recipe?

 

[Revvy]

when I saw this, I was thinking "Stones Ginger Wine" which is a fortified wine with high sugar content and like 13% alcohol. I guess that is in the realm of home brewing without distilling.... does anyone have a recipe?

I have recipes someplace for it. I did a bunch of research earlier this year and have 2.5 gallons in my MR Beer Keg waiting for me to finish the process. I took different ideas from different recipes and discussions all over the web and merged the best ideas and info.

But basically you make a ginger wine, I think I used Jack Keller's Recipe Except I used a lot more ginger than he calls for... I loves me some ginger.

Then I'm going to kill off the yeast and back sweeten it and then "fortify it" at bottling time with a probably a pint of ginger brandy, the amount I used is going to depend on the gravity of everything combined, to hit the abv of stones.