I’ve been trying to get my homemade ginger beer to have a bit more kick over the last couple of summers. This summer, since I have recently purchased my own home brew equipment I decided to make good use of the 21 litre fermenting bucket and get the lemon to brew. I’m such a novice at home brewing. I don’t pretend to know anything about the calculus and all the terminology that goes with it. I just get in there and give it a try, even though on some occasions I know it’ll be a struggle to drink it. At least with a ginger beer, regardless of how dry or sweet it turns out to be, adding it to something like Pimms will always make it nicer to drink.
Grated ginger root
I try to keep brewing notes as detailed as I can, but even as I read over them now I struggle to remember some of the last minute changes I made. So I will do my best to describe what I did for this one. I developed the recipe from several different recipes on the Homebrew Talk forums, there’s plenty of useful information to be found there.
I started by filling my largest pot with water, up to about the 3/4 full mark. This is approximately 10L in my case.
Once it got to boiling point, I added approximately 1kg mix of different sugars; Golden Syrup, set honey, Agave, plus an extra 200g of granulated sugar. This is my 0 minute reference time, any times I mention henceforth are from this time.
After boiling for 10 minutes I added 160g of fresh ginger that I’d grated finely in a food processor.
At 20 minutes I added the juice of 3 lemons. At 35 minutes I added 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper for a little bit of a spicy kick.
At 45 minutes I added a further 60 grams of freshly grated ginger root and the juice and zest of 2 lemons.
At 55 minutes I took the mixture off the boil, added the juice of one lemon and left it cool for nearly an hour. I then added it into my 21 litre brew bucket and topped it up to the 5 gallon (19 litre) mark with water.
Boiling the wort
At this point I made the highly scientific test of tasting the brew and decided it wasn’t sweet enough. I dissolved a cup of granulated sugar in hot water and added this to the mix. The specific gravity at this point was 1.023.
I prepared the yeast by dissolving 1 teaspoon of sugar in 1/2 cup of warm water, sprinkling the yeast on top and leaving for 15 minutes. After adding this to the brew bucket I put the lid on and left it to sit, keeping it at a constant warmth of about 24°C with the help of a heating belt. It bubbled away happily for a few days, first smelling of oranges, then lemons and then ginger. After six days the brew had pretty much stopped bubbling and I measured a final gravity reading of 0.999, giving it an alcohol content of 3%. I siphoned off the ginger beer and added 1/2 a cup of sugar to give the bottles some fizz. During bottling I added a small amount of freshly grated ginger to each bottle.
Pitching the yeast
I put the bottles in the garden shed and left them for a few weeks. The finished ginger beer drink was the perfect amount of fizz but a little bit dry for my taste. Still good though and not the disaster I thought it might be. I think on my next batch I need to find a way of sweetening the ginger beer nearer to the end of the fermentation process so that it retains the sweetness in the bottle. The experiment to brew the perfect alcoholic ginger beer continues…
Trying it right now, my house smells amazing. Great photos!
Good to hear Tom, hope it works out well!
To adjust the sweetness, after fermentation has finished add some non fermentable sugars such as sucrose to the mix, until your happy with the taste. You will still need to add a touch of normal sugar for the secondary fermentation. Good site and good luck!
Hi Leon,
I am very interested in hearing why you put the ingredients in at different times during the boiling, and why you boiled the wort rather than just simmering. Apart from that, could you distinguish the taste of any of the different kinds of sugar, you had added?
In any case, thanks for the inspiring post! I’m trying my way through different ginger beer recipes and methods at the moment, and this was very interesting reading.
I’m going make this tonight. Thanks and Happy New Year.
An alternative to back-sweetening with unfermentable sugar is pasteurization. Reference this homebrewtalk post: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/
Hey thanks so much for the link Paul – I will try the pasteurisation method next time.
Cheers
Leon
Happy New Year to you too Andy – hope it turned out good!
I have had success with this method. Like Leon said it’s all about making small changes each time and recording what you do.
Ingredients:
2kg white sugar
1/2 kg light brown sugar
1/3 pack of muntons beer enhancer
1 pack of dried gervins yeast
5 limes
5 lemon
1 tsp of vanilla extract
2 tsp of chilli seeds
350g of ginger
Water
Method:
1. Peel ginger and thinly slice. Add ginger to a large pan and pour over a kettle of boiling water (1.5 Ltrs) then simmer for 45 mins. Add 2 tsp of chilli seeds in the last ten mins ( won’t be spicy but adds a nice fiery kick).
2. Add the white and brown sugar to a pan and add another kettle of water to dissolve. Once dissolved add 1/3 of a packet of muntons kit enhancer. This will be hard to stir in but will go eventually.
3. Add the juice of the limes and lemons to the pan of sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.
( Add any other spices here but just keep it simple first).
4. Heat the pan of sugar till it how’s clear.
5. Add the water from the ginger pan into a sterilised gallon pressure keg using a funnel and strainer.
6. Pour the contents from the sugar pan in to the keg.
7. Add 5 litres of cold water to the keg put the kid on and shake vigorously too oxygenate.
8. Top up the keg with a mixture of boiling water and cold water to get the temp around about room temp. No higher!
9. Rinse a cup out with boiling water to sterilise then add boiled and cold water to the cup to get 1/3 of a cup of wAter at room temp. Add 5 tsp of sugar and stir with a streusel spoon. Pour the sachet of yeast in and cover with something clean. ( piece if kitchen roll) and wait 20 mins.
10. Remive the lid from your keg and add the yeast.
11. Wait 5 days and bottle.
12. Leave bottles in foots and wait 24hrs
13. Place 4 bottles in a tall pan of water at 65C for 7 mins ( endure the water stays at 65C)
14. Leave bottles to cool and keep in a cold place. Or anywhere dark.
This will kill the yeast and keep the ginger beer sweet. It comes out at round 4%
No bottles have ever exploded. I out 2 tea towels on top of them when they are in the pan at 65C to be safe.
If you leave them longer than 24hrs to carbonate they will most prob explode. They come out really fizzy and taste amazing. I let too many people try a bottle now stuck making tons more!
Any questions just ask. Don’t add more limes or sugar until you have tried it. It balances out do less sugar = less limes and lemons.
*12. Leave the bottles indoors for 24hrs
Thanks Jamie, will have to give your method a try. These days I have started making hard cider as we are no longer living in the UK and miss it
Hello J4mie 82.
Can you please clarify your bottling step for me? (just after point 11).
Do you add sugar at this point to carbonate your bottles, and if she what co2 value did you use? 3.5 or less?
I assume you need to add sugar to get some fizz, before pasteurising the bottles 24 hours later… but 24 hours does not seem long enough…
I assume you bottle after 5 days to get some sweetness still, before fermenation has dried it all out?
Thanks
I am comparing yours and Jamie’s recipes.
Could you please explain why you add ingredients at different 10 minute periods? Jamie does not and I am curious.
Thanks in advance for this info.
I am brand new to all this. I love making my own beer from fruits, using apples or pears and raisins to get the ferment going. I want to get started with making ginger beer, and this looks like a great page to work from. My problem is how much yeast did you use? I bought some Lalvin EC 1118 yeast, 5 gram packets, from Amazon, but have no idea about how much to use. The packet only shows how to proof it, which I already know about it from making homemade bread.
[…] Leon steber | alcoholic ginger beer home brew […]
I have the same question as Australian Brewer. Do you add bottling sugar? Is 24 ours really enough time to fully carbonate?
Working on a ginger beer right now.
Made this recipe combined from several others.
Hoping to bottle soon – taste great so far. Good balance of sweet, ginger, dry, lemon/lime, and heat from the jalapeño pepper.
Have you tried back-sweetening at bottling time with a non-fermentable sugar like stevia?
http://www.willysbrewery.com/brew-log-blog/brew-12-willys-borelli-ginger-beer
password: brewmaster
How many spoon yeast to put in for 20litrs?
Hi Bentley,
I just sprinkle a small amount on top, it probably wouldn’t even be half a teaspoon. The yeast will multiply. Of course if you want the action to happen a lot quicker you can put more
Hey thanks for the link. This sounds great, I’ll have to try tour recipe sometime.