Firey Ginger Beer Recipe – First Attempt
Needed to rack my 1 gallon mead batch into a clean demijohn tonight. Not wanting to waste all the delicious yeasty goodness at the bottom, I decided on to make up a 1 gallon batch of ginger beer and pitch the yeast slurry from the mead. I’ve not done ginger beer before but after a quick bit or recipe, opted for this recipe:
- 250g root ginger
- 500g sugar
- 4Tbs lemon juice
- 1/4tsp cream of tartar
- 1/2tsp yeast nutrient
- water to 1 gallon (4.5l)
- yeast slurry from 1 gallon mead batch (or 1 dry yeast sachet)
First, I grated the ginger into a pan with the lemon juice and poured over a kettle full (about 1.5l) of boiling water. I let this simmer for about 30 mins, then dissolved in the sugar.
After cooling it in an ice bath, I transferred it to a fermenter, added the yeast nutrient and pitched the yeast slurry that I had racked the mead off. If you don’t have a yeast cake to use, then just pitch a sachet of champagne yeast (or even ale yeast). My OG was 1.051 so we will be looking at about 7% abv when done.
There’s an awful lot of solids in this wort (or is it a must?) so I would recommend you use a bucket or wide-necked fermenter cos you’ll have a hell of a time getting that crap out of a standard demijohn/carboy.
This bad boy should have plenty of bite to it. For example, this River Cottage recipe uses only one tenth of the ginger that I have used!! Also, this should ferment out drier than a nun’s gusset so I am going to experiment with backsweetening using Splenda (a low calorie sugar alternative) whilst still priming with normal sugar in bottles. This will hopefully allow me to make a sweetened carbonated version. Fizzy and firey… nice.