Alcoholic Ginger Beer

[Natho]

My brewing partner and i are going to attempt this in a couple of days time. He has some extensive experience brewing beer and has all the gear. We do not however yet have a recipe. Does anyone have any good ones and/or tips?

[Habeas Brulee]

I don't have a recipe, but I do have a tip - infuse the ginger flavor into the liquid before pitching the yeast, but don't leave chunks of ginger in while it's brewing, because they'll inhibit the growth of your yeast.

[eje]

Well, I had kind of an awful one from Sam Adams the other year as part of their "Brewer Patriot Collection." Their "Traditional Ginger Honey Ale" was supposedly based on a Thomas Jefferson recipe.

Most homemade Ginger Beer recipes I've seen pitch yeast for carbonation, not alcohol formation.

The yeast is pitched into a ginger flavored sugared water solution and then the "beer" bottled in a sealed container (stoneware bottles are traditional.)

Are you going to try for an actual beer with a malted barley base?

Look forward to reports.

[Natho]

No i think seeing as how it's our first, we are just going to go for straight out ginger. So if those recipes don't pitch yeast for alcohol does it get it from natural yeasts? Or are they recipes for non-alcoholic beer?

[Batard]

My first post, so everyone be nice. Glad to be here, I have fallen in love with eG.

Are you planning to make an alcoholic product? Normally for a Jamaican Ginger Beer type recipe, you would just pitch a small amount of yeast after filtering for bottle conditioning.

My friends and I brewed for many years when I was younger, and we tried many different types of recipes (think chocolate/raspberry stout), but never with Ginger as an adjunct. But IMO, there is something about ginger in a malt beer that strikes me as strange flavor profile. Were you thinking of following a conventional beer recipe, or something experimental like replacing the hops with ginger?

If you haven’t brewed before, it might be good for you to go through a basic batch of Ale with your friend just to get the basics down and get a better understanding of the process.

I would avoid trying to use “natural” yeasts. Besides not really knowing what sort of off-flavors you are going to end up with, natural yeast takes too long to develop a good krausen, and the bacteria will get going in your must before the yeast gets a going. Definitely make an active starter and pitch that when you ferment (make sure to check that it is active before starting to brew). Also, you need to consider the alcohol content you are expecting in your end product: you may want to consider a champagne yeast.

Best of luck with your brewing venture!

[eje]

Welcome to eGullet batard, and welcome to posting!

In any case, Natho, homemade ginger beer doesn't typically contain any alcohol to speak of.

This is one of the better pages I've seen with instructions:

Homemade Ginger Ale

My limited understanding of the little yeasties is as follows.

When you initially pitch yeast into a nutrient rich medium, they primarily concern themselves with reproduction. They don't start to produce alcohol until the population density reaches a certain level. Ginger beer/ale is never left actively fermenting long enough for them to reach the population levels necessary to prompt them to produce alcohol.

I can't remember ever seeing a modern ginger flavored beer on a malt base, other than that Sam Adams Brewer Patriot thing. It was not really very tasty.

On the other hand, I could imagine a ginger flavored mead or cider might be pretty good.

[Stigand]

Around 1997 or 1998, the Turf tavern in Oxford used to serve 'Ginger Tom', a great copper-coloured beer with a strong ginger kick, about 3.5-4% ABV. I liked it a lot. A bit of Googling suggests it was brewed by the Barnsley Brewing Company in England - which unfortunately went out of business about 5 years ago.

Perhaps the recipe is still around somewhere. For want of a better place to start, you could drop an email to the Campaign for Real Ale in the UK.

[Batard]

Around 1997 or 1998, the Turf tavern in Oxford used to serve 'Ginger Tom'

Stigand inspired me to a bit of Googling as well. I found two other breweries also boiling up something called 'Ginger Tom,' one in England and one in New Zealand.

England: http://www.thefilo.co.uk/thebrewery.html

NZ: http://www.thedux.co.nz/index.cfm/Queensto...D_WINNING_BEERS

The description sounds lovely:

Ginger Tom 4.0% a.b.v

Old fashioned style ginger beer, light golden malt colour with plump fruit and spicy bouquet, encapsulated with natural fresh flavours of honey, malt and lemon, characterised by a crisp refreshing dry ginger finish.

I found a few homebrew Malt/Ginger Beer recipes around. Most of them seem to use canned extract, but there are a few that are mashed. Reading through recipes should give you enough information for a baseline.

http://hbd.org/brewery/cm3/recs/index.html#ginger%20beer

http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat/recipes/spe...specialty_beer/

Happy Brewing.

Edited December 4, 2007 by Batard (log)

[eje]

Batard, looking at some of those lists makes me wonder if there is anything that hasn't been used to brew beer!

[jesskidden]

I can't remember ever seeing a modern ginger flavored beer on a malt base, other than that Sam Adams Brewer Patriot thing.  It was not really very tasty.

Atlantic Brewing (Bar Harbor, ME) has a ginger wheat beer in it's line-up, Mount Desert Island Ginger.

http://www.atlanticbrewing.com/beer.html

Had a taste of it at the brewery, don't remember much about it (which could be a good or bad sign, I suppose). A "highlight" of their tour was the 55 gallon drum of smashed "spent" ginger root. They recommend the beer as both a summer and winter beer (go figure, right?), so I guess it's a "year 'round" offering. Atlantic's beers are available in much of the eastern US, though most of the 12 oz. bottles seem to be contract-brewed by Shipyard.

IIRC, the Prohibition era homebrewing book, The Proceedings of the Company of Amateur Brewers (reprinted as "The Homemade Beer Book") has a few, very minimalist recipes for alcoholic ginger beers.

Edited December 4, 2007 by jesskidden (log)

[Natho]

Ok well it's been cooked up and is in the fermenter for round 1 of fermentation. In about a week we will be racking it off for a secondary fermentation then we will bottle it when the SG has stabilised. We used 1.5 kg of raw ginger (might i add that peeling 1.5 kg of ginger is a bastard of a job..) plus brown sugar, honey, cinnamon, clove, some extra malt and some other grains (not sure what they where) and juice of two lemons. I'll let yous know how it goes. It smelled awesome on the stove. Strong caramel overtones floating amongst the ginger. Oh yeah we also added 250gm lactose for sweetness.

[theisenm85]

Out of curiosity... do you know if you were doing an extract or all grain style brew?

I'm curious as to the types of grain. If you didn't want an alcoholic ginger beer, you could use mostly specialties with not base malt or mash period (or extract), but if you did... you'd have base malt, (2-row or pale malt of some sort) or extract in the recipe.

Just trying to discern the character of the recipe, it'd be fun to have ginger beer around for the people scared of good normal beer, or for whatever. It'd also be good to have a good recipe on hand.

Also, when you added the ginger in the process could help

Edited December 18, 2007 by theisenm85 (log)

[Natho]

Out of curiosity... do you know if you were doing an extract or all grain style brew?

I'm curious as to the types of grain.  If you didn't want an alcoholic ginger beer, you could use mostly specialties with not base malt or mash period (or extract), but if you did... you'd have base malt, (2-row or pale malt of some sort) or extract in the recipe.

Just trying to discern the character of the recipe, it'd be fun to have ginger beer around for the people scared of good normal beer, or for whatever.  It'd also be good to have a good recipe on hand.

Also, when you added the ginger in the process could help

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We added 1 kg of dry light malt extract and 250gm of crystal grain. We DID want an alcoholic ginger beer. It's been bottled now and will be left for a few weeks to carbonate and develope. The taste of the bottle ready stuff was quite different then what i was expecting, although i guess i knew it wouldn't be sweet at all it was still a bit of a surprise when it wasn't seeing as how i'm used to commercial ginger beer which is always sweet. I tasted it after a week and a lot of the ginger flavour seemed to have disappeared but it had come back by the second week in the fermenter. Next time maybe we will add some powdered ginger to intensify the flavor. I think i will try make a sugar or honey syrup to add when i drink it to sweeten it a bit. but I will see how i like it when it's ready.

[Batard]

What I think happened is that you let your batch ferment all the way out. Over-fermentation gets you more alcohol but thins the beer out and throws it out of balance, and for me was the hardest thing to master. If you want the brew to have a better balance, you need to leave some residual sugar in your beer before you bottle. For me, that would mean adding some gelatin fining to the holding tank (or glass carboy) when the sweetness is right. The finings pull the yeast out of the liquid and mostly halts the fermentation right where you want it.

If you use an inverted fermentation technique, I can't recommend the Fermentap Valve Kit and products like it enough. It allows you to taste the brew without introducing a "wine thief", and it also eliminates the need for a secondary fermentation; both steps can introduce bacteria and wild yeasts to the mash. It also allows you to siphon off active yeast culture for your next batch.

Remember, you control the sweetness of the end product. The yeast will just do it's job until it has converted all the sugar to alcohol and CO2, and that often results in a bland, watery, overly alcoholic beer.

Would you mind posting your overall recipe?

Edited December 22, 2007 by Batard (log)

[Natho]

My mate has the recipe at his place where we did the brewing i'll see if I can get a hold of it. We couldn't leave any sugar in the brew because we carbonate in the bottle via the yeast so if we left any sugar in it we would have exploding bottles on hand. I'm not saying that it tastes bad by any means, it is just different to the commercial GB that we get in australia which is carbonated with gas and so can retain some sugar. But i won't know for sure for a few weeks anyway, after it has been in the bottle for at least 3 weeks then we will try it.

[TBoner]

I'm a bit late to the game, I guess. I don't know much about homemade ginger beer, but ginger in a malt beer works just fine if it's the right style. I've made a delicious ginger porter. Additionally, Delirium Tremens (and some other Belgians, I'm sure) makes good use of ginger. There's no mistaking it when you know it's in there.

[Batard]

We couldn't leave any sugar in the brew because we carbonate in the bottle via the yeast so if we left any sugar in it we would have exploding bottles on hand.

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I didn't really mean to leave loads of sugar in the beer, but one mistake I used to make -- especially with very malty beers -- was over-fermenting. I've never had bottles explode on me, and since you've been brewing for a while now I'm sure you wouldn't make this mistake. I would still like to see your brewing notes though, if you get around to it.

... Delirium Tremens (and some other Belgians, I'm sure) makes good use of ginger. There's no mistaking it when you know it's in there.

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That's interesting. I haven't had a Tremens in a while, now I have to pick up a bottle to test this out. Hehe.

[Natho]

I've made a delicious ginger porter.

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What kind of ginger did you put in? Fresh or dried/powdered? I love porters and this sound interesting. And how much and when did it go in?

[Natho]

Ok here's the brewing notes for my GB

batch size = 23 litres

Ingredients -

1 kg Light Dry Extract

250 gm crystal malt

10 cm cinnamon scroll

1.5 kg raw ginger root, peeled (it was 1.5 kg before we peeled it)

Juice of 2 lemons

8 cloves

1 kg light brown sugar

600 gm fairly nondescript ordinary honey

250gm lactose

We blended up the ginger with some water and put it on the stove and boiled it for at least half an hour with the spices, then we added the lemon, sugar, honey and lactose along with the liquid from the grain which had been sparging. We strained it into the fermenter and aded the dry extract, then topped it up to 23 litres, waited till it cooled down and pitched the yeast. It was racked off into a secondary fermenter after a week and then bottled with bulk priming after another week. Can't remember the final gravity. We had our first taste last night after it being in bottles for about 12 days or something (we were a little impatient plus hey, it was saturday night) and it was good! A bit odd at first because like i said there is always that previous association with ginger beer softdrink to get over but after that it was nice. Good ginger flavour in the mouth, but not much going on in the aftertaste. Very subtle honey flavour, i would personally like to use all honey next time and a stronger one to boot, as well as doubling the cinnamon. The acidity was just right from the two lemons, definitley wouldn't want any more. I would maybe add powdered ginger as well to intensify the flavour. And maybe some more lactose. But other than that, for our first time i am pretty happy with it and look forward to trying again.

[TBoner]

I've made a delicious ginger porter.

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What kind of ginger did you put in? Fresh or dried/powdered? I love porters and this sound interesting. And how much and when did it go in?

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It was a big porter, about 6.5% ABV. The ginger was fresh, a one-inch piece thinly sliced and added in the last 10 minutes of the boil. In my Delirium Tremens clone, I used I think 15g (don't have my notes handy) fresh in the last 10 minutes of the boil, plus grains of paradise and coriander. It was a very close replica and one of the best beers I've ever brewed.