...I'll probably have a stab at the thai beer again some time, with galangal this time. The trick is the chillies too, it's hard to get the balance right. They wouldn't be essential though. Pm me a reminder if you want to know how much of stuff I put in, I don't think I have it here...
Cheers
Ben
Ok, Inspired by
this thread and a wander down the 'freaky lane' of my local fresh fruit & veg markets I decided to experiment with Galangal in a ginger beer.
Send in the clowns...
Galangal on the left & ginger to the right here.
Its a relative of Ginger with a different, milder flavour
WIKIPEDIA
I cook a mean Prawn Laksa with this stuff, it IS quite a different flavour to the ginger we know, almost floral aroma.
That said, I really like the ‘bite” of a HB GB so I wont be chucking the traditional ginger all together, I am settled on 1/3 Galangal and 2/3 Ginger as a starting point to see if it works.
Recepie (based loosely on Brissybrew’s published elsewhere)
250g Fresh Grated Galangal
500g fresh grated Ginger root
1 cinnamon stick
8 cloves
1 lemon, juice + a few scrapes of zest
1 Lime (anything is good with lime) juice + a few scrapes of zest
2kg raw sugar
500g LDME
US 56
5L water (for Boil)
~10L water (in fermenter to total vol 18L)
STEP1 Grate ginger. I am lazy and seeing its only 9.30pm and SWMBO is JUST gone to bed, I break out my little friend OSKAR the ancient, noisy, angry blender.
STEP1.5 OSKAR enjoyed the ginger but the galangal is quite a bit more ‘fibrous’ Those damn asian roots nearly killed him!
Assembled, ready to go
Step 2 COMBINE everything and go for the boil. I needed 2 pots to dissolve all the sugars. I will break out the big AG pot next time and go for a boil volume of about 10L
60min boil
On a whim I added 200g spare ginger at 30mins for ‘aroma’
Step 3 Strain into fermenter, chill if you must, and pitch a hydrated US56 sachet
OG was 1044, by morning it was chugging like a train.
Now, 4 days on, gravity is around 1012 Think I will rack it before bottling at the weekend.
Initial tastes are encouraging, you can taste the floral Galagal without missing out on too much ginger bite. There is still a fair bit of sweetness but I think this will dry out after the secondary finishes. It is also quite a bit clearer than I expected. Certainly lighter in colour than the kits I have done in the past.
Seems to be a few GBs on the go at the moment, ‘flavour of the month’ almost. Good stuff, will post the finalverdict when it comes out of bottles in 2 weeks.
FHG