Begone you complicated Ginger Beer recipes!

[Hyper.Intelligent.Fish]

With four small batches of apple cider under my belt I'm expanding into Ginger Beer territory.

But trying to find a simple GB recipe is nigh impossible. To my mind the most simple GB recipe should be ginger, water, sugar and yeast. Right?

But every recipe I see seems to adding more.

Cloves? Why?
Lemons? What?
Cinnamon? Huh?
Limes? Hang on...
Honey? Wait a sec, wait a sec.
All spice? Now that's just...

Anyway.

I'm making a version of Chappo's Father and Son special, which seems to be popular, downsizing x 5 for a 5L demijon, skipping the lime (none available at shop), and using regular honey, but I'm worried that without a basic ginger beer without all the frills that I won't be giving myself a base to work on, so my next brew will be the following:

300g Fresh Ginger, chopped up.
400g Raw Sugar
Water
Yeast (Probably bakers yeast, since a lot of other recipes use it, and I don't want to waste good yeast on an experiment.

Any comments are welcome, and I plan to compare the basic no frills GB with the fancy one.

Thanks,
Fish.

 

[bum]

With four small batches of apple cider under my belt I'm expanding into Ginger Beer territory.

But trying to find a simple GB recipe is nigh impossible. To my mind the most simple GB recipe should be ginger, water, sugar and yeast. Right?

But every recipe I see seems to adding more.

Cloves? Why?
Lemons? What?
Cinnamon? Huh?
Limes? Hang on...
Honey? Wait a sec, wait a sec.
All spice? Now that's just...

Anyway.

I'm making a version of Chappo's Father and Son special, which seems to be popular, downsizing x 5 for a 5L demijon, skipping the lime (none available at shop), and using regular honey, but I'm worried that without a basic ginger beer without all the frills that I won't be giving myself a base to work on, so my next brew will be the following:

300g Fresh Ginger, chopped up.
400g Raw Sugar
Water
Yeast (Probably bakers yeast, since a lot of other recipes use it, and I don't want to waste good yeast on an experiment.

Any comments are welcome, and I plan to compare the basic no frills GB with the fancy one.

Thanks,
Fish.

There's not really any comments to make. You'll make the batch. You'll taste why everyone uses other ingredients. They taste good. The thing you're planning on making almost certainly will not.

Good luck with it though.

 

[mikec]

Nothing wrong with a bog standard, basic ginger beer, per se. Start with a base and work up from there, I get the logic.
The other ingredients add flavours that are desirable, so by adding them, you'll make a GB that is nicer than the basic GB.
Of course.
I cannot condone using bakers yeast though.

 

[treefiddy]

300g Fresh Ginger, chopped up.
400g Raw Sugar
Water
Yeast (Probably bakers yeast, since a lot of other recipes use it, and I don't want to waste good yeast on an experiment.

Firewater.

I'd love to try using that ginger that's cut into cubes and covered in sugar. Seems more ginger flavour and less fire.

Also, wine yeast is cheap. Why not use that?

 

[brettprevans]

Hyper intelligent? Lmao

Yeah start a new thread for a recipe based on an exsisting thread. Fail.
Didnt bother to read or understand why the ingredients are used. Fail.
U havnet brewed it but slag off exsisting triwd and true recipes. Fail
Bakers yeast used on recipes? I can count on 1 hand. Fail.
Arrogance. Fail.

There is nothing complicated about the gb recipes on here. If its complicated them u need to learn more.
Go forth and learn young brewer.

Ps my spelling. Fail. See we all have room for improvement.

Oh comments. Ginger water with about 2% alc and no other flavour sounds awful. (Since u havent said how much honey).

 

[Hyper.Intelligent.Fish]

Hyper intelligent? Lmao

Yeah start a new thread for a recipe based on an exsisting thread. Fail.
Didnt bother to read or understand why the ingredients are used. Fail.
U havnet brewed it but slag off exsisting triwd and true recipes. Fail
Bakers yeast used on recipes? I can count on 1 hand. Fail.
Arrogance. Fail.

There is nothing complicated about the gb recipes on here. If its complicated them u need to learn more.
Go forth and learn young brewer.

Ps my spelling. Fail. See we all have room for improvement.

Oh comments. Ginger water with about 2% alc and no other flavour sounds awful. (Since u havent said how much honey).

Um, so yeah. Not sure if I've offended you in a past life or anything, pretty sure I haven't kicked your kids or run over your dog or anything, but you've taken my original post a little too seriously. So, to clarify.

This thread is based on the base recipe of ginger, sugar, water and yeast. I mention the other brew as a comparison. Didn't bag the other brew, indeed mentioned quite clearly that I'm making that one first because it comes so highly recommended.

Many ginger beer recipes online use bakers yeast, and as such, being a simple, uncomplicated recipe, it will be so. Ridicule if you must, but arrogance look thyself in the mirror. The cider guys are more than happy to discuss the bog standard bottled apple juice, yeast and airlock scenario. I didn't realise that the Ginger Beer guys discussing a bog standard ginger beer recipe would be beneath them.

Honey forms part of the recipe not being discussed on this thread, which is why amounts were not discussed, but since you insist it'll be 200g.

Hope this clears things up.

Thanks,
Fish.

 

[bum]

The cider guys are more than happy to discuss the bog standard bottled apple juice, yeast and airlock scenario.

I feel like you may be confusing the cider guys with the hooch guys.

 

[mondestrunken]

So I made a ginger beer (~3%) with mostly Coopers DME, some dextrose (what?!!) just to lighten the body, and around 50g of ginger chopped up and put in the boil, fermented with US-05. Is that simple enough?

It's not too bad at all, but next time I would at least double the amount of ginger, and probably brew it so it could be drunk in summer, as it's not much of a winter drink...

 

[mondestrunken]

Also, wouldn't the bakers' yeast be a relic from days gone by when decent yeast wasn't readily available?

I don't see how using bakers' yeast makes the recipe any simpler.

 

[professional_drunk]

go for it dude. A simple recipe is a good place to start from. Come back and tell us how it turned out.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Next up: "a guide to brewing with ginger"

 

[Byran]

I remember years ago an old dude I met was making ginger beer at home and just used some plain old raisins in the fermenter. I think it was to get the wild wine yeast. It brewed, it tasted good. Pretty simple.........

 

[Brewtus]

I have had a few goes with making GB and tried using malt to give it body, even a few hops to bitter it. I even did a dark malt GB. The problem I found is because there is no hops (my goes excluded) in basic GB and the yeast rips out all the sweetness, it is very dry and unbalanced. Thats why people add spices and such to balance the flavour. I added lactose to one bacth to sweeten it up but 500g just made a small impresion. Also 2 cloves in 20l is plenty. maybe start with one. I have since been distracted doing AG.

Good luck but don't expect much of a result with just ginger water sugar and yeast.

 

[Hyper.Intelligent.Fish]

I remember years ago an old dude I met was making ginger beer at home and just used some plain old raisins in the fermenter. I think it was to get the wild wine yeast. It brewed, it tasted good. Pretty simple.........

I've actually heard this before. It might be an interesting experiment small scale...

 

[Hyper.Intelligent.Fish]

Also, wouldn't the bakers' yeast be a relic from days gone by when decent yeast wasn't readily available?

I don't see how using bakers' yeast makes the recipe any simpler.

My local shop doesn't sell brewing yeast, the nearest homebrew store is about a 20 min drive away, while shop is 5 min walking distance. Simpler as in I don't need to go anywhere to get special yeast, and experiment wise it's something that most people would have.

 

[bum]

Have you got any trub from a batch of beer?

 

[Deep End]

You could always mail order some yeast, then you dont have to go anywhere; except the letterbox. Hell, inbox me your address and I'll post you a spare packet of brewing yeast I have lying around!
I'm all for free speech and experimentation, but the Chappo and son recipe does not look like anything I would let pass my lips in a hurry, you might consider adding some lemon juice or something to it.
If you want some cheap ginger beer you'd be better off buying a brigalow can of ginger beer and following the instructions, thats simple and easy too. Just saying

 

[Hyper.Intelligent.Fish]

You could always mail order some yeast, then you dont have to go anywhere; except the letterbox. Hell, inbox me your address and I'll post you a spare packet of brewing yeast I have lying around!
I'm all for free speech and experimentation, but the Chappo and son recipe does not look like anything I would let pass my lips in a hurry, you might consider adding some lemon juice or something to it.
If you want some cheap ginger beer you'd be better off buying a brigalow can of ginger beer and following the instructions, thats simple and easy too. Just saying

The Chappo recipe has both lemon and lime in it, along with cinnamon and honey.

 

[Deep End]

Ok, well the ginger, sugar, yeast and water one, is the one that sounds a bit ordinary. Anyway whatever makes you happy I guess.

 

[fletcher]

forgive me if this is off topic, but these sorts of threads interest me.

if people don't want to make something as best as it can be, or as nice tasting as it could be, then what sort of feedback is sought apart from 'cool, go for it'?

what else, apart from 'why don't you use X, Y, Z instead' could this thread get? is it acceptance that this endeavour isn't a waste of time that's wanted?

i can't think of any comment to give apart from, good on you, try it out, the recipe sounds as though it will come out terribly; but you'll be the best judge of that.