Ginger Beer Recipe - Scratch Brew No Kit

[bradsbrew]

Has anyone used the masterfoods ginger in a jar? The preservative is sodium metabisulphate.

 

[Lionman]

Has anyone used the masterfoods ginger in a jar? The preservative is sodium metabisulphate.

There was a post a few pages back re Costco 1KG jar of crushed ginger.

I think the consensus is it isn't ideal as they include additives, it isn't 100% ginger.


I'm putting down a GB tonight. It's my first one, hopefully, it turns out. It's inspired by this thread.

2KG raw sugar
1KG brown sugar
1KG honey
1.6KG ginger - blitzed from frozen
2 whole chilis, roughly chopped
5 lemons - juice and zest
US-05

I'll do about 4L boil for 30mins and put it all in the fermenter. Top up to 21L.

Should put me at 1.067OG or there about's. Ferment it down to 1.015 and then keg and chill. Should be around 6.5% ABV.

Hopfully there's still a bit of sweetness at 1.015.

 

[Lionman]

Made a last minute decision to use 2KG of light brown sugar. Planning on the FG to be a bit higher, around 1.02ish. ABV should be similar but a bit sweeter.

I used a food processor to blend the ginger and chili, was too easy I didn't bother peeling it.

I poured the 'wort' through a brew bag to catch all the ginger and have left that in the fermenter to continue to infuse.

It tastes really nice in the FV. Very sweet but with a big ginger hit. Hopefully, it still stands up after the yeasties dry it out a bit. Can't wait to keg it and drink it!

 

[captaincleanoff]

I brewed the recipe in the original post in this thread.

Brewed a week ago. Pitched rehydrated 05, after 3 days no action, so sprinkled another packet of 05 in. Fermenting at 18c.

A week later - still no action. Still on OG of .052

Wondering whats going on here. Lemon juice put the pH too far out? Needed yeast nutrient? Disappointed : (

 

[Hopdrop]

Hey guys,

random question, looking to do another batch of ginger beer and hunting around for somewhere selling ginger at reasonable price in Perth. I stumbled across someone selling 20kg box of ginger powder for $10!

Any obvious con's to substituting fresh ginger for powder entirely?

 

[indica86]

Any obvious con's to substituting fresh ginger for powder entirely?

Flavour. Is there a market somewhere? I'd give you some if you were near me, I have ******* heaps

 

[Lazz360]

Does this recipe require hops in the bag as well, sorry if this is a stupid question only a newbie to the brewing scene

 

[Fendercaster]

5b5bbbh

 

[technobabble66]

+1 @Fendercaster. Totally nailed it.

Personally I'd stay away from hops in a ginger beer. The bitterness clashes badly with the ginger and super dry finish you will typically get.

 

[Fendercaster]

Made a last minute decision to use 2KG of light brown sugar. Planning on the FG to be a bit higher, around 1.02ish. ABV should be similar but a bit sweeter.

I used a food processor to blend the ginger and chili, was too easy I didn't bother peeling it.

I poured the 'wort' through a brew bag to catch all the ginger and have left that in the fermenter to continue to infuse.

It tastes really nice in the FV. Very sweet but with a big ginger hit. Hopefully, it still stands up after the yeasties dry it out a bit. Can't wait to keg it and drink it!

It's been a while. How did you go with this mate.

 

[Nick the Knife]

Terrific thread. Am going to pop my first ever GB attempt on in a few days - I'm looking to use up a few odds 'n sods I have left over - figuring the GB, given the big flavour will be more forgiving towards them than a normal 'beer' brew.

The recipe is going to be flexible, both now and on the day.
Approx 20 - 25L brew
- 1 x 1.5kg Coopers Amber LME (quite old and looking to use it as I'm transitioning to AG)
- Approx 700ml starter (made with LME) of a couple of generic brewing yeasts
- 1kg Raw sugar (will adjust to get around a 5% ABV)
- 1.2kg of fresh ginger (all home grown, encourage others to do as super simple)
- Zest of several fresh limes and lemons
- very smallish mix of spices (cinnamon stick, allspice berries, kaffir lime leaf, peppercorns, coriander seeds)
- leaning towards NOT putting in any chilli, could see it being too noticeable but might do just one moderate one

Will freeze & blend the ginger. All ingredients except the starter & LME will be given shortish boil (only want to sterilise them so long seems of little benefit and actually would lose a lot of the volatiles in the citrus & spices). Am going to put the whole lot in the fermenter - I'm planning on racking to secondary for bulk priming anyway & as there's no hops I'm no so worried about oxidation when doing this.

Will bulk prime with white sugar - adjust depending on what the FG is.

Planning on holding off putting the cirtus juice in the fermenter as concerned it could alter pH - given I'm racking to secondary figure I can adjust there by addition if desired.

Have also omitted honey from the initial recipe as it ferments so completely (apparently 95%+) so I do think it'll be somewhat wasted - for a rather small contribution in flavour - can always add a tiny bit to it at secondary or even in the glass.

Have glass (coopers) & plastic bottles, planning on using the former but if I get a stalled brew etc can always go with the latter, just to be safe - but have never had a bottle explode on me yet.

Welcome any feedback

 

[Hangover68]

Terrific thread. Am going to pop my first ever GB attempt on in a few days - I'm looking to use up a few odds 'n sods I have left over - figuring the GB, given the big flavour will be more forgiving towards them than a normal 'beer' brew.

The recipe is going to be flexible, both now and on the day.
Approx 20 - 25L brew
- 1 x 1.5kg Coopers Amber LME (quite old and looking to use it as I'm transitioning to AG)
- Approx 700ml starter (made with LME) of a couple of generic brewing yeasts
- 1kg Raw sugar (will adjust to get around a 5% ABV)
- 1.2kg of fresh ginger (all home grown, encourage others to do as super simple)
- Zest of several fresh limes and lemons
- very smallish mix of spices (cinnamon stick, allspice berries, kaffir lime leaf, peppercorns, coriander seeds)
- leaning towards NOT putting in any chilli, could see it being too noticeable but might do just one moderate one

Will freeze & blend the ginger. All ingredients except the starter & LME will be given shortish boil (only want to sterilise them so long seems of little benefit and actually would lose a lot of the volatiles in the citrus & spices). Am going to put the whole lot in the fermenter - I'm planning on racking to secondary for bulk priming anyway & as there's no hops I'm no so worried about oxidation when doing this.

Will bulk prime with white sugar - adjust depending on what the FG is.

Planning on holding off putting the cirtus juice in the fermenter as concerned it could alter pH - given I'm racking to secondary figure I can adjust there by addition if desired.

Have also omitted honey from the initial recipe as it ferments so completely (apparently 95%+) so I do think it'll be somewhat wasted - for a rather small contribution in flavour - can always add a tiny bit to it at secondary or even in the glass.

Have glass (coopers) & plastic bottles, planning on using the former but if I get a stalled brew etc can always go with the latter, just to be safe - but have never had a bottle explode on me yet.

Welcome any feedback

I would suggest not leaving your spice mix in the FV, i did and i think the cinnamon gave it a bad aftertaste.
I used a pale ale wort as a base (parti-gyle from a previous brew) and other than the bad aftertaste it came out good.

 

[Nick the Knife]

I would suggest not leaving your spice mix in the FV, i did and i think the cinnamon gave it a bad aftertaste.
I used a pale ale wort as a base (parti-gyle from a previous brew) and other than the bad aftertaste it came out good.

Cheers for the reply - funny you say this as before I read this I decided last night to likely omit basically all the spices. My logic being that ideally they'd only be incredibly subtle & would only add nuance to the end flavour - the upside from them would be relatively limited. The potential downside though is you end up with a Spice beer, thats an absolute mess of flavours - also with the potential for many compounds that could hinder fermentation going into the brew.

So highly likely I don't put them in at all - or perhaps just in a bag for the initial boil only.

Still going to put all the blended up fresh ginger and citrus peel into the fermenter though - can't see any issues from that.

Have had the yeast starter on my DIY stirplate for the past 2 days - haven't used it before and surprised by how hot the fan gets. Which is figure is from the resistance on the fans electric motor that the magnets cause. So only run it in 5-10min bursts every few hours.

Leaning towards doing the brew on SAT to take advantage of the offpeak electricity then.

 

[Eddy Monsoon]

I would suggest not leaving your spice mix in the FV, i did and i think the cinnamon gave it a bad aftertaste.

100%, Cinnamon can be very easily overdone. If you do nothing will fix it

Ended up drinking a xmas beer batch on my own

 

[mynameisrodney]

I'm super keen to make a ginger beer, but the price of fresh ginger is pretty high. I was hoping to substitute some of the fresh ginger for the jars of crushed ginger from coles/woolies. Does anyone know if they are a 1:1 substitute by weight?

 

[Nick the Knife]

I'm super keen to make a ginger beer, but the price of fresh ginger is pretty high. I was hoping to substitute some of the fresh ginger for the jars of crushed ginger from coles/woolies. Does anyone know if they are a 1:1 substitute by weight?

I wouldn't think it's a 1:1 - as to start the jars are around 95% ginger - I have a 1kg one in my fridge - the rest is salt, oil, preservative etc. So on that basis you'd have to add extra.
Furthermore it'll not have the pop in flavour of fresh - so I'd say at minimum you'd have to add 25% extra.

Alternatively rather than a straight replacement Iif price is an issue (try asian stores for cheaper fresh stuff or farmers markets - as it's harvesting time for ginger now) - why not use it to 'subsidise' your fresh stuff - e.g use half fresh and half jar.

At the end of the day THE ginger is the star of the brew and cutting costs on it too much will risk a less than stellar brew IMHO.

Buy a few extra pieces of ginger, wait till nodules form on them and then plant them - come next year you'll have around 5 times + the amount and can do over again year after year. Is incredibly simple and about as low maintenance a plant as you'll find.

 

[Coalface]

I'm super keen to make a ginger beer, but the price of fresh ginger is pretty high. I was hoping to substitute some of the fresh ginger for the jars of crushed ginger from coles/woolies. Does anyone know if they are a 1:1 substitute by weight?

The jars often have an oil base which you don't want in your beer. If you're in a city, you can often get fresh ginger at an asian supermarket for half price of the duopoly.

 

[Eddy Monsoon]

Used 2 of these in 23 litres recently, total 460g

Ginger is there but not powerful, so would go 3 or 4 next time

However, it's also got a slightly sour taste, which maybe to do with the 5% rapeseed oil or the citric acid,

and the bottle conditioning hasn't carbonated much.

so in 2 minds atm

 

[Nick the Knife]

The jars often have an oil base which you don't want in your beer. If you're in a city, you can often get fresh ginger at an asian supermarket for half price of the duopoly.

True on both counts - was recommended earlier in the thread (or might have been another one) if you do use the jars - after adding to your boil you can generally remove the majority of the oil was skimming the scum/froth that forms on the top edges of the boil. But i do agree that Asian stores, if you're lucky enough to have on nearby are sources of top quality fresh stuff at much better pricing.

Think I'm going to edit my brew slightly - as mentioned transitioning to AG and have had 7 or so tins of Coopers LME sitting here for quite a while. Was planning on using the oldest one, an Amber and bulking out with sugar but instead will go all malt and ditch the sugar for another tin of light extract. 25L of water so will likely be around 30L in the fermenter (due to the malts, ginger etc). Will aim for 5% ABV still - might need a tad of sugar to get there.

 

[Hangover68]

Cheers for the reply - funny you say this as before I read this I decided last night to likely omit basically all the spices. My logic being that ideally they'd only be incredibly subtle & would only add nuance to the end flavour - the upside from them would be relatively limited. The potential downside though is you end up with a Spice beer, thats an absolute mess of flavours - also with the potential for many compounds that could hinder fermentation going into the brew.

So highly likely I don't put them in at all - or perhaps just in a bag for the initial boil only.

Still going to put all the blended up fresh ginger and citrus peel into the fermenter though - can't see any issues from that.

Have had the yeast starter on my DIY stirplate for the past 2 days - haven't used it before and surprised by how hot the fan gets. Which is figure is from the resistance on the fans electric motor that the magnets cause. So only run it in 5-10min bursts every few hours.

Leaning towards doing the brew on SAT to take advantage of the offpeak electricity then.

I wouldnt leave them out, just dont add them to a hop sock and add to the fermenter like i did.