Sanity check my ginger beer recipe?

[z-bob]

I think I'm about to brew this. Scaled the recipe down to 3 gallons so I can brew it indoors in the evening w/o being up all night. (and so I don't have so much to dump if it's awful) OG should be about 1.060. The main question is how much ginger to use. Pale ale malt so I can get away with a short boil, and because I have some that's 2 years old and I need to use it up.

Gonna go start grinding the malt now...

5 lbs pale ale malt (4L)
6 oz Caramel wheat malt (45L)
12 oz sugar
4 oz fresh ginger
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 small tangerine (clementine)
T-58 yeast

Use the lemon and tangerine juice in the HLT to dechlorinate and acidify the local hard tap water. Mash kind of high (152*) to increase unfermentables; I want a little residual sweetness. Sparge to collect 3.5 gallons of wort. 30 minute boil.

Grind the gingers and sugar in a food processor. Add at 15 minutes. Finely chop the tangerine peel and pulp, and add at 5 minutes.

 

[z-bob]

I had about 6 ounces of ginger after I trimmed all the nasty bits, so I used all of it. When I minced the ginger in the food processor with the sugar, it pretty much liquefied. (so the ginger is ground *really* fine)

I dumped everything in the fermenter, hot break, tangerine peel, and all. I just pitched the yeast and cleaned up a bit a few minutes ago. Next time I brew at night I need to do the prep work the day before.

 

[Zider]

How gingery was it?

 

[z-bob]

How gingery was it?

I don't know yet, i haven't tasted it. Another week and I'll pull some with a wine thief and try it.

 

[z-bob]

I racked it yesterday to give it a chance to clear (lots of fluffy sediment) and I tried a sample. It's not gingery at all. Maybe carbonation will bring out the ginger. If not, I may try it another batch using a full pound of ginger in a hop spider.

I will bottle it in a week.

 

[IslandLizard]

I racked it yesterday to give it a chance to clear (lots of fluffy sediment) and I tried a sample. It's not gingery at all. Maybe carbonation will bring out the ginger. If not, I may try it another batch using a full pound of ginger in a hop spider.

I will bottle it in a week.

Maybe you can "dry ginger" it? Put the blender pulp into a fine mesh hop sack. But you probably need to find a way to pasteurize the fresh ginger pulp. Freezing and thawing a few times perhaps?

 

[Bradlo]

A few months ago I came across a thread on another site that wish I had bookmarked. But the best method they could cite to extract ginger was to simmer a couple inches in two cups of water for about 20 minutes. Then, pour off the water (save it of course) add another cup of fresh water to the ginger and simmer it again. You can do this repeatedly until the ginger is spent.

Similar to hop isomerization, or whatever, you can only get so much extracted at a time. It didn't matter how much water in the initial boil. I've used this method a couple of times to make a ginger tonic and got tons of flavor. I've had ginger in a mason jar of vodka for months and it still isn't as strong.

 

[z-bob]

I've just had a couple of glasses. Still no ginger, but the lemon and tangerine are coming around now that the it's carbonated and the yeastiness is going away. It doesn't taste anything like it's supposed to, but it's starting to taste good.

I wonder if my gingerroot was too old or something?

 

[KennyPowers55]

I was partially involved in a couple of ginger beer brewings but we used 2-3 lbs. It is very "gingery". It was an attempt at making a Ginger Libation flavor but it came out way better to me.

What kind of flavor were you going for?

 

[z-bob]

I was partially involved in a couple of ginger beer brewings but we used 2-3 lbs. It is very "gingery".

What kind of flavor were you going for?

Gingery and a bit hot. And I thought it would have some sweetness from the caramel malt, but I didn't want much sweet.

 

[bucketnative]

@z-bob, for what it's worth, I have been making a lemongrass ginger saison with 3.5 oz of ginger added at 5 minutes for a 5 gal batch. It has a lot of ginger flavor, but not the heat. For my tastes it works really well with the 1.75 oz lemongrass added at the same time. I know for me, it took a couple of tries and a lot of reading before landing on those numbers.

However, there is no ginger heat. From what I can tell, you might need to follow the advice of @islandlizard and "dry ginger" to retain the heat. I found that freezing the ginger beforehand seemed to kill a lot of flavor and aroma. I have also heard (and tasted) of people getting good results using candied ginger in secondary (or primary).

 

[z-bob]

I think something must have been wrong with my ginger (got refrigerated?) because 6 ounces should have been noticeable. Next time I'll double it, and also add dried ginger (maybe an ounce) at the beginning of the boil. And rather than add lemon juice, use a water calculator to adjust the mash pH using citric acid. I will still add the shredded tangerine for flavor, that worked well.

 

[Vuarra]

As much as I dislike resurrecting threads, have you come across an amount of ginger that you thought was hot enough? My new partner loves strong ginger ale, and I wouldn't mind having a baseline that someone has already tried.

 

[z-bob]

I don't even remember this. Thanks for the reminder; I'll have to try it again this summer.