Ginger Beer

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Doc

Doctor's Orders Brewing
Joined
7/12/02
Messages
7,713
Reaction score
40
Location
Sydney
I recently brewed an alcoholic ginger beer (well I guess you can call 3% alcoholic).
Anyway it came out fantastic but everyone seems to get smashed on it like it is 10%.
Anyone got an theories on why?

Cheers,
Doc
 
:lol:
they are drinkin lots of it ? :D

joking , i also have brewed the alcholic ginger beer and used to swap brews with my across the road neighbour , he gave some to his wife ,and when he next came to swap a bottle of his brew for mine he asked me about the G.B. "is it alcholic ? "i told him yes and he proceded to tell me how his wife got sh#%faced on it ... oh and did i have any more ?" with an evil wink ... :rolleyes:

so i guess i havent answered your question but i have drunk the stuff and it didnt have that affect on me or my better half ( damn and rats ! :huh: )

regards
simon :chug:
 
A nameless mate brewed a ginger beer once, with regular white sugar (he didn't believe me when I said buying dextrose was a good idea). It was decidedly average. Alcoholic, yes, but try to imagine a ginger beer that tasted like someone had mixed 2 parts giner beer, 2 parts strongbow dry, and 3 parts dishwater.

Urgh.

Ginger beer isn't really my thing anyway.

As to why your mate's missus got maggoted on it, well, who knows. Maybe she's just a Cadbury :)

Vinds.
 
I brewed a batch of ginger beer (Beermakers tin w/ 2kg dextrose, 500g lactose). Turned out tasting fine, but its very lacking in carbonation. Seems alcoholic, though you cant really taste the alcohol. I suspect the yeast may have died off due to me trying to make it so alcoholic (2.5kg of sugars). Would explain the lack of bottle carbonation.

One very annoying thing that resulted from this brew however, was ginger extract that I *cannot* get off my 30l plastic fermenter. Its stuck on, permenantly by the looks. I've tried pink steri (soaked for 2 days). I've tried a bi-carb paste, and I've tried isopropyl alcohol. Nothing seems to get it off.
 
I had a similar sort of thing happen with my first brew, can't recall now what it was but by christ was it strong, the only difference to what I do now is proper booster packs, malt extracts and hops rather than sugar as someone has already mentioned.
 
Damn forgot to mention

Kook, I had the same problem with my Apple Cider, everything was very flat so I gave the bottles (all 60 of em) a good shake (rather vigorous) and place them back in 2nd fermentation, a week later we cracked a few open all with nice psssst. I'm not sure whether that will fix your problem but worth a shot I guess.

As for removing stuff on the fermenter, I found the apple cider a bitch to remove after I had finished with it, I left it for a few days and squirted the bugger with the hose. An alternative I suppose would be go to your nearest car wash and use a high pressure cleaner. I got a piranha steam cleaner from Kmart a few weeks back, makes sterilising a breeze now not to mention it's good at removing hard to get off stuff :D

Hope that helps.
 
I got the taint out of mine.
Tried Milton Anti-bactrial solution (but the taint was still there). Then tried ESB Fermenter Keg & Line Cleaner (Sodium Hydroxide) then did a run through with Pink Stain and hot water. Think it was the Pink Stain that did the job though. Use the pink stain at a 1tspn/litre concentration and left the fermenter filled with it and hot water for a hour or so.

Mine was fizzy.
My recipe was

Beer Makers Ginger Beer kit
Dextrose 800g
Powdered Light Malt Extract 400g
Corn Syrup 200g
CSR Dark Brown Sugar 200g
19.7 litres purified water

Kit yeast re-hydrated with nutrient.
SG 1031 - 1014

Fermentation period 19 days.

Cheers,
Doc
 
Is it a good idea to rack to secondary for ginger beer?
 
Doc said:
I got the taint out of mine.
Tried Milton Anti-bactrial solution (but the taint was still there). Then tried ESB Fermenter Keg & Line Cleaner (Sodium Hydroxide) then did a run through with Pink Stain and hot water. Think it was the Pink Stain that did the job though. Use the pink stain at a 1tspn/litre concentration and left the fermenter filled with it and hot water for a hour or so.

Mine was fizzy.
My recipe was

Beer Makers Ginger Beer kit
Dextrose 800g
Powdered Light Malt Extract 400g
Corn Syrup 200g
CSR Dark Brown Sugar 200g
19.7 litres purified water

Kit yeast re-hydrated with nutrient.
SG 1031 - 1014

Fermentation period 19 days.

Cheers,
Doc
[post="466"][/post]​


Doc,

I know I have asked this question before, but I dont think I got an answer...

Does the Beermakers ginger beer use artificial sweetener or a natural sweetener?

I have tried the Coopers GB, and it had a real sickly nutrasweet aftertaste. Even after 10 months in the bottle.

As far as I have been able to work out, there are only 2 naturally sweetened GB kits about, the first being the Grumpy's kit (I am a long way from Adelaide), and the second, being the "old fashioned Ginger Beer" kit, with you not using the saccharin sachets that are provided, but using Lactose as a non fermentable sugar, in conjunction with your dextrose/honey/brown sugar or whatever you use to ferment with.

Any ideas for brewing a naturally tasing Ginger Beer?


Thanks in advance,

M
 
I make a few kegs of ginger beer a year for the summer arvo refresher by the pool , befor a good session :) and the girls love it ...

To get rid of some of the residual sweetness I use a packet of beer emzime at pitching time . I make up 44lt but only use one pk of emzime ... this has taken the sickly sweetness out ..
cheers fnqbunyip
 
Doc said:
I recently brewed an alcoholic ginger beer (well I guess you can call 3% alcoholic).
Anyway it came out fantastic but everyone seems to get smashed on it like it is 10%.
Anyone got an theories on why?

Cheers,
Doc
[post="384"][/post]​

Not really a theory, but it could be one of those mysteries of alcohol. Why is it that a person may be able to drink a bottle of scotch and function normally, when they drink 6 beers or 2 glasses of champagne and fall over in a screaming heap?

You would expect the numbers of standard drinks to be the telling factor, but that doesn't seem to always be the case.

I have also noticed when leaving the local every now and again, I blow the alchometer just for giggles, and the results surprise me sometimes.

Drinking lightly, and fully expecting to be able to drive (but not in charge of the keys), blowing .12

Conversley, after a heavy, solid night, expecting to set a new personal benchmark, blowing .08 (But feeling very worse for wear) Even allowing for the dodgy calibration of the machine, I was surprised.....

Possibly it could be linked to carbonation, and vapourised alcohol? But then red wine is the death of me early in the night.....

Bottom line, no idea, but curious. :blink:
 
I made a coopers kit GB and used raw sugar. It turned out like "ginger beer" at 4.4% alc, no bad or off flavours, it's quite nice on a hot arvo but I'd rather stick to my Ales and Lagers.
 
Here is a recipe I stole[cut and paste] off a site [might have been here?] anyway, if it was, :) thanks as everybody loves it, a mate also uses it now.
GINGER BEER

- 1 can of Beermakers Ginger Beer Kit
- 1k of light malt
- 1.5Kg of Dextrose
- 1.5 teaspoons of ground Cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
- General purpose Champagne dry yeast.

The following i will add at the end of fermentation, stick through the juicer and pour into to the keg so i dont lose any ginger flavour or get rotten lemon and lime smells...

- 1/2 lemon and lime juiced
- 110g of juiced fresh ginger.
Author unknown...Sorry :(
 
Anyone tried one of the ginger beer kits from The Country Brewer?

I saw the Cooper can for the first time at coles the other day (had only seenthe brigalow ginger beer at the supermarket up til then.

Not sure what kit to use for my first ginger beer....

Haven't the seen the "Beermakers" kits around (not that I've really looked for ginger beer kits all that much until recently...)



Rich
 
Anybody with a good reciept from scratch for ginger beer, maybe grated ginger root, light malt extra, plus sugar/honey?
 
I made a few grain ginger beers a couple of years ago, and have been racking my brain trying to remember the recipes. They were based off google research though, so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with one.
 
mandrakar said:
Doc,

I know I have asked this question before, but I dont think I got an answer...

Does the Beermakers ginger beer use artificial sweetener or a natural sweetener?

Sorry Mandrakar. No idea.

Beers,
Doc
 
I have made it with sultanas,lemon pulp,grated ginger etc
be very careful I blew a pet bottle which was in a foam esky that was also destroyed - the good ol'days - I now use packet yeast :)
 
RichLum said:
Anyone tried one of the ginger beer kits from The Country Brewer?
[post="85375"][/post]​

I did one of their kits a month ago, with the following extras:

500g dextrose
250g LME
250g maltodextrin
(from booster kit)
500g honey
350g dark brown sugar
2 sticks cinnamon
tbsp cloves
some nutmeg
15g pureed ginger root

Bottled it a little over a month ago, came out at 4.5% and it's drinking quite nicely, however the kit has a bit of an artificial sweetener taste which is offputting. Still tastes pretty good on ice though, nice and gingery and it's carbed up well. Probably won't bother with the honey or dextrose next time, will prolly just go dark brown sugar and malt extract and might try a different kit (maybe even get Grumpys to ship one of theirs over for me).
 

Latest posts

Back
Top