Making Ginger Beer Extract Kit More Gingery

[FMWarner]

I will be making a batch of ginger beer using the Mangrove Jack’s brand extract kit. I’ve made this kit before, it works great and it’s pretty tasty. However, we like our ginger beer bitey and peppery, and this kit leans more mild.

I presume that I can kick it up using some fresh ginger, but unsure of the method. I’ve thought of boiling some shaved ginger and straining the water into the fermenter, or instead putting the shaved ginger in a cheesecloth bag and adding to the fermenter to sit until it’s time to bottle.

Does anyone suspect either of those methods is a better choice, or perhaps a method I haven’t thought of?

Thanks guys!

 

[AzOr]

Both will work but I’d opt for the latter. By adding to the fermentor, you’d accomplish two things; more aromatic and the ability to pull the hop bag/cheesecloth when it’s to your liking. The first method you would be locked in to that amount of ginger with no ability to adjust.

 

[FMWarner]

Thanks! I'm going to try that, today is brew day.

 

[AzOr]

Also, I would wait a few days after pitching yeast to add ginger. Allow the yeast to get to a healthy population. If possible, soak hop bag in star San to minimize risk of infection.

 

[halo00to14]

There's a few ways to do it, and I'm working on my own hard ginger ale.

One way is to make a ginger extract and use that as the priming sugar. Basically, what you would want to do is figure out how much priming sugar you need, add that to some water (usually like 2 cups worth, depends on how much sugar you are using), some chopped ginger, and lemon juice. l bring that to a low boil and let it cook till the volume is reduced in half. Strain this and add the mixture to the bottling bucket when cooled, or, depending on the volume you are working with, and because of physics, you can dump it directly off the heat and into the bottling bucket as you are racking. Larger volume racked will cause a quicker temperature drop, thus minimizing killing off any yeast.

The other way is to boil ginger in with your fermentables. Chop the ginger up, and either dump it into the boil pot, or use a brew bag. I haven't had much luck with a brew bag due to the small opening that mine have making it difficult to get all the ginger in there. I also feel like the surface area of the ginger might not be large enough in a bag packed too tightly.

Anyways, the key here is to get as much of the gingerol out and some of that converted over to zingerone. The conversion happens via heat and acid. The more ginger you use, the stronger the flavor. By boiling with ginger in the first place, you are imparting some of those oils/compounds. By adding the extract at the end, you'll get that extra kick to help with any loss that may occur.

I'm at work right now, so I don't have access to my notes, but on my last 5 gallon batch, I used 5lbs of ginger in the boil IIRC. I also added clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and some other spices in to help it become spicer. When I get home, I'll post my notes of what I had going in that batch.

Here's a link about making Ginger extract: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/2-ways-make-ginger-extract-brewing/

 

[AzOr]

Wow! That’s a lot of great info.
Thanks for that write up. This will come in handy for my ciders as well.

 

[halo00to14]

A follow up...

Here's my ingredient list for a 3 gallon batch I made that had a good amount of kick to it:

487 grams of Candied Ginger
3 lbs of Fresh Ginger
4 sticks of Cinnamon
5 grams of Fennel Seeds
1 vanilla bean
1 medium sized lemon
1 packet of Levin EC-118 Champagne yeast

1 lbs of Honey
2 lbs of Cane Sugar

Priming:
1 tbsp of vanilla extract
3 - 4 oz of priming sugars depending
2 tbsp of chopped ginger
1 tbsp anise seeds
1 stick of cinnamon
1 medium lemon

So, about the different units of weight measurement... the candied ginger nutritional facts are in metric while everything else was in Imperial at the store. Had to work around that. The reason for the candied ginger (and you'll want candied ginger, not ginger candy, it's two different things) is that the process of making candied ginger concentrates the ginger flavors more so. The amount of sugar that is added is not an significant amount, but should be taken into consideration. For the fermenting "wort," the ginger, spices, and cane sugar are boiled/simmered at around 180F or so. Cooled and dumped into the fermentor, with honey added at this point. For the priming mixture, I mixed the sugar, ginger, and everything else but the vanilla extract into a pot, reduced till about half, strained, cooled, and then added the vanilla. Then dumped into the bottling vessel and has the beer racked onto it. This has yielded me a ABV of about 9% (once as high as 13%... yikes!). Feel free to adjust the sugar amount to your liking.

The cane sugar will make it a light colored brew, a more traditional ginger ale color. I've used turbinado which gives it red color. I've also messed around with inverting the sugars also. And finally, I think I am going to try using malt of some sort on the next go around.