High Initial Sg

[Bricey]

well, my wife put down the Ginger Beer today, and after a few hiccups in getting the conversions from imperial to metric, and a small case of me setting fire to the shed during the boil, we got there.....

took a quick reading before putting it to bed and the inital SG was a massive 1114.

Anyone got any idea on what it should get down to? If it is any indication, we had movement in the airtlock within 5 minutes of closing it off.

Will let you know what the end SG is and how it tastes, but it looks and smells like ginger beer, so I think she might be on a winner!

 

[barfridge]

What the hell was in this ginger beer? 1114 is phenominal!

And how did you take the gravity reading? If it was from the fermenter, it could be due to a concentration of sugars in the tap, giving an artifically high reading.

 

[die sudhausanlage]

Geez mate I thought I could smell smoke.

4kg of sugar in the batch wasnt enough so you went 5.

Ill have to get me some of it. Ginger Champers.

How did the mighty Rabbits go, did you clean up?


Well Done.

 

[Kai]

What volume did you make, and how much sugar did you put in.

Sounds like you might be brewing up a case of stone's green ginger wine.

 

[jayse]

hey bricey like kai says can you post all the fermentables that went into, chances are that it would be impossible to get that SG with a simple ginger beer recipe unless you backed it up to a sugar plantation.

We can work out the SG by what went into it if you post that


Jayse

 

[Bricey]

Took the reading from the fermenter right before we closed it off. I dont think that there was too much of a concentration in the tap, but i would not be surprised if there was

the recipe called for some 17 cups of table sugar, which worked out at a little over 3kg! I thought this was a little high at the time, but who is to argue with a recipe. If it's on the net it has to be true, right?

According to the projected outcome, we should get a ahl/vol of about 6.5% but at this stage I think this might be a bit of a revised figure on the part of the person who posted the recipe.

Might be a case of doing SG readings each day for the next week or so

 

[Kai]

That sounds like it could be a bit high, but what was your final volume?

 

[jayse]

Hi again bricey,
3kg of sugar won't get you anywhere near that gravity, if your looking at 20 litres and the only fermentbles were the sugar then the OG IS 1.058 no questions asked your reading is totally wrong.
at 1.058 and finishing at 1.005 you'll be at your expected 6.5%


Jayse

 

[Bricey]

Took a reading today, and it had come down to 1.098 and the airlock is going bolistic!

will let you all know what the final reading is, but i guess things are going well so far

ingredients were...
480-600g of ginger root (we used 580g)
4 lemons, squeezed and then the rinds put in the boil
3kgs of table sugar
3/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar

we boiled in 10L and then topped up with 10 post boil

 

[macca]

That sounds like a huge brew bricey. Id love to taste it when its done.

Just a short note, I went back through my records, and my sugarwash for spirits struggles to reach that OG.

Macca

 

[SJW]

I dont know what u did but i cant get those figures to come out on Beersmith. Anyway sounds like rocket fuel, let use know how it turns out. I would not expect it to be a very mellow drop.

 

[Bricey]

Well, the brew be done, and here are the final results and taste test verdict...

It droped down to a final SG of 1036.....still quite huge! bottled into 29 750ml PET bottles. After about 10 days in the bottle we had a taste and it was AWESOME!!!

First thing that we noticed was the ginger bite and bitterness, followed by quite a sweet aftertaste (im guessing that comes from the amount of sugar used) then there was a definate alcohol warming present.

The most surprising thing of all was we found that it self carbonated. No priming of the bottles at all, but had a carbonation very similar to a bottle of "bundaburg" ginger beer. We were very surprised and have done a 2nd batch to see if we can improve on it.

Could this be the winner of the fruit beer section at bathurst 2006?