Fiery Ginger Beer

Now drinking my first chilled pint of my first GB brew! :drink:

Actually, tbh, I'm not quite as happy as the little smiley icon seems to be.
Basically pleased, but my next batch will be done differently.
The results of this one first:

Nicely gingery and fairly hot, but not extremely so. In fact, as far as 'fiery gingeryness' goes, it's not far off just about right for me (I like it spicy) A tad hotter wouldn't be unwelcome. but not essential.

It's strong. I calculate abv at about 8%, just one pint and I can feel it. Nice! :wink:
Carbonation is very gentle but I think I may have actually forgotten to add priming sugar Really can't remember. Gentle sparkle as opposed to volcanic fizz is actually quite pleasant.

Now for the not so good.

At bottling, this brew was extremely thin. It somehow had an even thinner mouthfeel than water, if that's possible. It was also unenjoyably bone dry. I like dry, but this was OTT dry. So I added 5 teaspoonfulls of glycerin (total) and 70g of Tesco aspartame based sweetener.

That was the mistake. It now has an unpleasant artificial sweetener twang. Serves me right, I was too mean to spend the extra on Splenda, which is the recommended brand. Or perhaps the glycerin is contributing? Maybe Splenda wouldn't be any nicer.. Really don't know. Oh, and it now tastes too sweet as well.
But it's not undrinkable, so I'll learn from this and hope to improve my next one which I got going two days ago.

Recipe:
1kg grated root ginger
6 teaspoons of ground ginger
3kg white sugar
5 teaspoonfuls glycerin
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
4 teaspoons Wilco wine yeast
4 tsps yeast nutrient
6 oranges, zest from all, pulp & juice from 3, juice only from other 3

1) Grate ginger root, zest/pulp/juice oranges, boil all for 10 minutes with all other ingredients except the yeast.
2) Strain through sterilised colander into (sterilised) fv
3) Disolve sugar in hot, just below boilingwater for 20 minutes with a spoonful of citric acid (lemon juice would have done). I've read that this 'inverts' the sugar, making it easier and quicker for the yeast to metabolise the sugar.
4) Put strained ginger/orange etc into muslin bag which was weighted. Squeeze bag to get juice into brew (will repeat this squeeze at intervals during fermentation)
5) Tie bag with string and suspend from fv lid to keep it off the bottom - don't want to disturb the sediment when I remove the bag come bottling time.
6) Add disolved sugar solution, then make up to 21l with Tesco cheapy mineral water (17p per 2l bottle) so I can use the bottles to hold the finished GB.
7) Pitch hydrated yeast at approx 22 degrees.
8) I've bought both Splenda and lactose powder to add at bottling, will probably split the batch and tyry both to compare.

Will post results here when finally tasting it.

At bottling, this brew was extremely thin. It somehow had an even thinner mouth-feel than water, if that's possible. It was also unenjoyably bone dry. I like dry, but this was OTT dry. So I added 5 teaspoonfulls of glycerin (total) and 70g of Tesco aspartame based sweetener.

That was the mistake. It now has an unpleasant artificial sweetener twang. Serves me right, I was too mean to spend the extra on Splenda, which is the recommended brand. Or perhaps the glycerin is contributing? Maybe Splenda wouldn't be any nicer.. Really don't know. Oh, and it now tastes too sweet as well.
But it's not undrinkable, so I'll learn from this and hope to improve my next one which I got going two days ago.

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Did you add the glycerine to give it mouth feel or to sweeten or both?

I was hoping for both. The mouthfeel has definitely improved, though as it's my first I don't know if this happens anyway after a bit of time conditioning.
I've just re-read my notes, it looks like I actually added 4 teaspoons of glycerine at the start with the other ingredients. If so then the final product contains about 9 tsps of the stuff. Perhaps that's contributing to the slightly sickly twang?
I tasted several times at botttling, adding just a bit more sweetener at a time. Thought I'd got it right but turns out not quite.

9 teaspoons :sick: :lol:

Yes, nearly twice the usual amount in a Wow. I take it that's way too much?

I dont know how much reach teaspoon sweetens it but i wouldn't want 9 teaspoons in the FV, maybe a combination of Glycerine for mouth feel and artificial sweetener would be better.

Quick update.
I've now drank quite a few pints of this brew and whilst it's not bad enough for the sink I'll be glad to finish the batch. It has that classic unpleasant, typical artificial sweetener taste, not quite overpowering the ginger but putting up a bloody good fight..
Not sure how much the extra glycerine may be contributing but my advice to others is only use arttificial sweetener if you know the brand and don't mind the taste.
Viable alternatives to consider are lactose powder or making up a simple sugar syrup and adding a drop at the drinking stage.

Just wanted to say I used this recipe. I did a little extra sugar, bout 5lbs total. Also left out the ground ginger in exchange for a little more fresh grated ginger. I used a montrachet wine yeast as opposed to a champagne. It's been fermenting for 3 weeks now, and still going strong. I'm interested to see how my changed effect the out come. I took an OG but have since lost my paper, I'm assuming my son decided to eat it, as is his tendency.

Hi AllieMae, do you mean you used the original (page 1 of this thread) recipe, or the one I posted above? Just curious and they're pretty similar; either way I hope yours turns out nice and I'm glad you added more ginger - this only had half the amount of the first one I did and it's not as tasty.
This time I didn't add sweetener of any sort as I figured I could do the sugar syrup addition at the drinking stage if needed but I came up with an alternative, lime juice cordial. It works quite well which is good because, although this second batch is nicer than the first without the sickly sweetener and ott glycerine, it's still not wonderful.
There's an underlying bitter taste to it which is odd as I de-pithed the oranges. Is ginger in quantity bitter? Is it because I'm not peeling it? It's not undrinkable and the lime cordial helps but there's definitely room for improvement.
Good luck with your brew, I'll be interested in your verdict when it's ready.

I used the original on page one. I didn't peel my ginger, I actually just threw it in the food processor. I tasted it today and its definitely ginger tasting, mine still has a lot of sugar in it, I expect this will become much dryer when it is finished. The wine yeast I used is a good all purpose dry wine. But I digress, I've never heard of ginger peel being bitter, possible though. My lemons and limes were not de-pithed but I found after I boiled everything the skin and pith were left in the pot.

I'm not a brewer this actually just looked like a fun recipe so I figured I'd take it on. Random thought, I used 5lbs of table sugar. Regular, white granules? Will this produce a different outcome than other types of sugar?

That's the sugar I use for this recipe and yes, it will give a different result from some other types. Maltose (malt extract,) doesn't ferment as completely as sucrose (table sugar).
The result will be that malt gives more sweetness and 'body' to the finished brew because some of it is left behind after fermentation has finished.
Don't know what type of bottles you plan to use but if glass make sure fermentation has finished before you bottle, may take up to 3 weeks.

Hi guys, first post on here!
Have just started this one this morning,
Some slight alterations to the op.
1.7kg ginger, scraped + whizzed,
3 oranges, zested, pith removed, whizzed,
Zest + juice of 2 lemons, 2 limes,
3kg granulated sugar,
3 tsp ground ginger,
3 tsp yeast nutrient,
1 sachets gervin sparkling wine yeast gv3.
I have decided to do the fermenting with all the bits in, and stir gently daily.
Og 1046, should of been higher, but school boy error, I topped up to 25 lts without thinking.

So I bottled mine yesterday. It is very dry. Both a combination of the wine yeast I used and the sucrose as bruintuns pointed out. Although I think it is drinkable after a few it is a little rough in the beginning. I'm thinking I'll make a lemon, orange syrup to add to it as I drink. Not sure how I feel about 50 bottles of beer on the shelf... 50 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around 49 bottles... I digress.

Within a couple of hours mine got going and since yesterday morning it's going like the proverbial train!

Well mine stopped yesterday, so I racked into another bin ready for bottling tomorrow night.
Now of was 1046, fg was 996, just used an online calculator and it says it will only be 4.73%! Seems strange seeing that 3kg of sugar went in?

vassili said:

Well mine stopped yesterday, so I racked into another bin ready for bottling tomorrow night.
Now of was 1046, fg was 996, just used an online calculator and it says it will only be 4.73%! Seems strange seeing that 3kg of sugar went in?

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hi a starting gravity of 1.046 and final gravity of 0.996 should give you a ABV of 7.61 :)

according to the calculator on here that works out to 6.6%

bigbeefy said:

according to the calculator on here that works out to 6.6%

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I got mine from brewers friend mate I'll check it out again

bigbeefy said:

according to the calculator on here that works out to 6.6%

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My bad mate it had re adjusted the sg to 1.056 so indeed you are correct