Non Alcoholic Ginger Beer From Scratch

[GeoffN]

I am wanting to do a non alcoholic ginger beer for the family.

Having browsed through a pile of posts. What I have gleaned out of it is: Coopers kits can be too sweet, just right, need lots of additives to make worth drinking. Brigalow gets mostly bad press though one comment was the family love it. Then there were a number of other kits that were mentioned. Make it from scratch seems to be the best recommendation.

I tried a brigalow ginger beer kit and made it up as directed. I only bottled it yesterday but was very disappointed in the taste out of the fermenter. I did not have anything available to improve it and so decided I to leave it as is.

The next one I would like to do better. I could not find a recipe that was non alcoholic. I would like some advice on the following thoughts for how to make one that is non acloholic but will not make bottle bombs and will store for at least one or two months in glass bottles and still have some sweetness so that the kids can enjoy it. Too much ginger is also not going to go down well with the kids.

I do not keg and do not want to buy a whole bunch of plastic bottles. Glass is free.

500g fresh ginger
juice from 2 lemons
200g lactose for sweetness
200g golden syrup as fermentables (thought about molasses for more flavour)
Yeast nutrient
Yeast

Liquidise ginger with juice from lemons
Boil all ingredients for 30 miutes in 2 litres of water
Strain into fermenter and cool with ice.
Make up to 20 litres with cool water
Add yeast and nutrient stir.
Stir again and bottle after 3 hours
Store for 2 weeks for carbonation.

How sweet will 200g of lactose make the ginger beer? I know this is subjective, so 'too sweet' or 'not sweet enough' will help me decide for the first try how much to put in and then I can make more batches and fine tune.
Is there something else I can use that will not ferment for sweetness? A good friend is lactose intolerant.
I am thinking of using Brigalow yeast and nutrient as I can buy it at BigW. It is my closest HBS other than Woolies. All other HBS's are more than an hour away. I could use baking yeast and DME as fermentables as that will add some nutrient as an alternative.

Thanks in advance for advice or comments.

 

[nuggetron]

if you love ginger double the fresh amount
throw in a few chillies to cut through the ginger

no need to liquidise the ginger unless you dont want chunks personally i like getting the ginger blasts

caution with boiling, can remove alot of the aromas

can also use the skin of the lemon if so scrub the skin

according to the coopers can not adding sugar reduces the alcohol but doesnt remove it

artificial sweetners wont ferment and are an alternative to lactose but are shunnned upon on here by some

molasses and golden syrup will ferment and turn to alcohol

if absolutely no sugar goes into the fermenter then the yeast wont do anything until being bottled where the priming sugar will turn to alcohol but to have no sugars at all is difficult

not sure how to do non alcoholic

 

[benno1973]

Nuggetron - I read every one of your posts...

To the OP - how are you planning on making non-alcoholic ginger beer if you're adding yeast and fermenting it? You do realise that when yeast ferment the sugars they produce alcohol and CO2?

 

[nuggetron]

Nuggetron - I read every one of your posts...

nice haha half the time its crap the rest is gold according to me

 

[GeoffN]

I do understand that carbing up with yeast will give at least 0.5% alcohol but I would label that as non alcoholic in comparison to 5%. I'll feed 0.5% to my kids without worrying about it but I will not feed them 5%. The missus would be a little annoyed if I did.

Thanks for the comments on increasing the ginger. I'll keep that in mind.

I was wanting to avoid the artificial sweetners as they can leave a bitter after taste. But (and it only occured to me now) I am making ginger beer and if there is enough ginger taste then that should mask it.

I was also wanting to know what I could do using 'natural' ingredients.

I could just use a Brigalow/Coopers kit and Buderim refresher to enhance the ginger flavour. I'll have to cut back on sugar for carbing to avoid bottle bombs. A 750 ml bottle of Buderim refresher is 94 g of sugar. Maybe two bottles of Buderim and slightly higher total volume to get to 8g/l. Total volume would go up to 24 litres. Slightly lower sweetness and more ginger. Could be a good low alcohol Ginger beer. I think I'll give that a go before I try making one from scratch.

Thanks for the help.