# Basic beginners Ginger Beer



## JayCharles (17/7/13)

Hi All,

I have been brewing beer(AG) for years but have never brewed a Ginger beer.

I am looking for a basic, solid recepie for ginger beer that does not use any tinned kits or extracts. Aiming for about 2.5 to 3%.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers in advance


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## MCHammo (18/7/13)

Hey there. Quite a few people swear by Chappo's No Kit Ginger Beer. I've not tried that one exactly, but I have been working independently on my own recipe, also from scratch. I haven't finished experimenting with my own recipe yet, so I reckon go with the proven formula. Mine isn't incredibly different anyway. From memory, there are a lot of good ideas thrown around in that thread, too.


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## JayCharles (18/7/13)

Thanks Hammo, appreciate it.

Recepie looks pretty good. Let me know when you perfected your recepie.

cheers


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## vittorio (13/8/13)

many ways, the easiest is:
1kg of ginger
3 kg of raw 

put it in a pot of 20lt of water, boil for 30mins in the last 15 mins throw in irish mosh. Chill the wort put in a fermenter for a week, towards the end of the fermentation add some finnings. Keg force carbonate for 3 days than bottle it with a counter pressure. 

This is the basic ginger beer recipe it will make 4.5%.


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## MCHammo (13/8/13)

I've never needed any sort of finings at all in a ginger beer. I also tend to find that I need more ginger & less sugar than that. It also benefits from a bit of lemon/lime juice. Yet to try the other spices some people use (cinnamon, cloves), but I will in the next few batches. US-05 yeast works way better than bakers yeast. Yet to try any different yeasts. I also bulk prime and let the yeast carbonate rather than force carb.

I've also found out a bit more about the active ingredient (gingerol) recently. Apparently cooking it changes it into a less potent form, but drying it turns it onto a more potent form. I will be experimenting with non-boiling some percentage of ginger, and with drying my own before using it. Nothing that I would recommend to anyone... yet. Ginger is supposed to have some antibacterial properties, so it *might* be ok if not boiled.


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## Hairy Dog (19/8/13)

G'day guys... I too have just bottled my first GB batch (basic coopers kit with a few added extras) I added a bunch of lemon grass and honey to the brew replacing some sugar.

Let it ferment for 2weeks between 18-24 degrees and then bottled about 45 Grolsch bottles, but tried a few different things.... Bottled 10 with raw sugar and a sultana, 10 with just raw sugar, 10 with dextrose and a sultana, and 10 with just dextrose hoping I'm going to get a few slightly different flavours if any.

Question is, is there anything I need to know or watch out for etc....

Cheers HD


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## bum (20/8/13)

Yep. Infection from the sultanas.

Same goes for Hammo with his non-boiled ginger.


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## MCHammo (20/8/13)

HD:
Not sure what you're trying to achieve by adding sultanas to the bottles. I think some recipes call for sultanas to be added as a source of yeast for fermentation. Given that primary fermentation has already occurred, I'm not sure what that's going to add. I'm not sure how wild/predictable/flavoursome the yeasts growing on sultanas are - I've never used them in this way. I guess as you seem to be conducting a decent experiment with control groups, you can always let us know how it goes.

Bum:
Non-boiled ginger is potentially risky, I agree, but I am experimenting, and finding ways to reduce that risk. I feel it's worth the risk to try and extract a spicier ginger flavour from the same/lesser quantity of ginger, cooking it kills off a lot of the flavour. The most important part is that I start off the ferment with cooked ginger, and only add non-cooked ginger once fermentation is well and truly under way. Ginger will be well and truly peeled to remove most of the nasties living on the skin. I'll also have to look into drying out fresh ginger root - or finding somewhere I can buy it. 

I do believe I've read somewhere that ginger has both antibacterial and antifungal qualities, so it's use raw may not be as dangerous as most ingredients would be. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll be proved wrong. Only time [and experimentation] will tell.


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## Airgead (20/8/13)

The only mead I ever made that got an infection was made with unboiled ginger added to the secondary. Ginger has heaps of lactic bacteria on it.

Ended up as a sour ginger mead. Odd... but not too bad.

Cheers
Dave


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## MCHammo (20/8/13)

Airgead said:


> The only mead I ever made that got an infection was made with unboiled ginger added to the secondary. Ginger has heaps of lactic bacteria on it.
> 
> Ended up as a sour ginger mead. Odd... but not too bad.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the heads up. Any idea if this is something that primarily lives on/around the skin, or does it permeate the entire rhizome? If I can get away with just peeling and scalding the outside of the ginger, that would be marvellous. Otherwise, I'll have to dig around for a bit more info or abandon ship.


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## Airgead (20/8/13)

As far as I know its right through. I could be wrong though. 

Ginger is the thing that brings the lactic bacteria into a ginger beer plant (the proper old way to make ginger beer) but that's usually powdered so any surface bacteria will go right through the powder. One old trick for starting sourdough cultures is to add a bit of ginger.

I'd make up a strong ginger tea by steeping in hot water. That should pasturise and extract the flavours. That's what I have done with subsequent ginger meads.

Cheers
Dave


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## MCHammo (20/8/13)

Airgead said:


> I'd make up a strong ginger tea by steeping in hot water. That should pasturise and extract the flavours. That's what I have done with subsequent ginger meads.


I've always had pretty much this approach in the past - by adding all my ginger at the start of the boil. Extracts all the flavours, kills everything, etc. Probably not worth making the ginger tea to add later on in the ferment, unless adding half of the ginger later on actually changes the flavour profile (maybe it does? I do not know). The only reason I was going for a later addition was to put the more intense ginger flavours in at a time when the conditions favouring an infection were reduced (more alcohol, less sugars, active yeast in large quantities, etc), but as you've had this happen in a mead (presumably from the ginger), it looks like it may not work out as I had hoped.

I've still got a couple of days before I had planned my first raw ginger addition, so it's not a lost cause yet. I have a whole heap of cleaned soft drink bottles I could use as mini fermenters to try a few things out. I might try out raw ginger in a couple, dried ground in a couple... any other suggestions?


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## Hairy Dog (21/8/13)

Hamo I have had non alcoholic GB that has had a sultana in the brew.... Just thought I'd give it ago..... I also used lemon grass over the bush lemon to try and get a different taste if anything at all. Will see come Sunday when I'll try a bottle from each batvh


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## JayCharles (3/9/13)

Appreciate the Info Guys,

I can wait to get this moving. I think I'll start with a pretty basic recipie, although I love galangal, so I might sub 300 gm of ginger for galangal.

Cheers


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## MCHammo (3/9/13)

I tried a partial galangal sub on my last ginger beer, probably about 300-500g. It killed the flavour... totally. Try it if you must, but I will never do it again, I find mine to be almost undrinkable. It's ok warm (room temp) with a wedge of lime in it, but otherwise that experiment (for me) was a flop.


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