hi everyone,
I am new to this and have had a ball looking through this site. It's been great.
I have just started brewing, and decided to give it ginger beer a go from scratch - mostly because I was broke, and was just using stuff we had in the house.
I think I was trying to be a bit creative and may have stuffed up in the process and am looking for advice if anyone can offer it.
This is how I prepared it:
1st step - ginger beer plant (1 teaspoon of sugar, ginger, bakers yeast - every day over a week I fed it with suguar, sporadically adding a little lemon here, cayene pepper there, dry ginger, etc (three weeks later it is going great guns)
After a week of feeding the plant, I mixed in:
4l water
1 kilo brown sugar
1k white sugar
handful of ginger sliced thinly
4 lemons quartered
2 dried apricots
2 table spoons maple syrup
I boiled all this until sugar was dissolved and the lemon and ginger was soft and poured it into the fermenter.
I then put cold water in the fermenter and juggled the temp until it was right.
I poured in the ginger beer plant, sealed it up, and 12 hours later it was bubbling away.
I left it like this for about 12 days.
When I bottled it it smelt a little bit too lemony, but none the less, I kinda expected it. About another 8-12 hours later, I tested the PET bottles and they were feeling tight, in the next day or so I one of the was feeling very tight so I released a little air and it fizzed.
I have left the bottles like this for 5 days now sitting.
My main concern it that I did not put a primer in the bottles (will this cause it not to be carbonated?). But I would also be interested in any feedback others might have on what I have done.
let you know in a couple of days how I go.
cheers
