I went to my company Christmas party the other night and ordered a cocktail. I asked for my go-to cocktail: whiskey and ginger ale. Turns out they made a mistake: they made me a whiskey and ginger beer. I am not one to waste alcohol so I drank it and my life was changed. I’ve heard the difference between ginger ale and ginger beer described thusly:

Ginger ale is sweet with a side of ginger, ginger beer is ginger with a side of sweet.

The difference changed my life: I much prefered the bolder,spicier ginger taste of ginger beer vs. the ginger ale. I’ve resolved to brew up some of my own ginger beer at home. This isn’t a far strecth: my wife has been fermenting with kefir grains for a while and I’ve been along for the ride so I have some background. FYI: This won’t be alcoholic ginger beer, just fermented ginger beer.

Recipe

The recipe below is primarily Alton Brown’s Recipe with modifications that I’ve made.

Hardware

  • 2L jug
  • Funnel
  • Fine mesh strainer
  • 2 quart saucepan

Ingredients

  • 5 oz sugar
  • 2.3 oz fresh finely minced fresh ginger
  • 2 quarts cold water, divided into: 1/2 and 7 and 1/2 cups
  • Juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 1/8 teaspoon dried champagne yeast

Directions

  1. Mix sugar, ginger, and 1/2 cup water in 2 quart saucepan. Heat over medium-high heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand 1 hour to steep.

  2. Strain syrup through a fine strainer into a bowl. Cool the bowl to 68F-73F.

  3. Funnel the syrup into the 2L jug, then add the lemon juice and the yeast.

  4. Cap bottle and let stand at room temperature for about 2 days, checking bottle pressure intermittently by squeezing it or releasing the cap slightly and briefly.

  5. When ginger beer has achieved desired carbonation level, refrigerate. Serve and enjoy!

As-Made Recipe - 1/7/2018

I actually got the chance to make this tonight, so I decided to document how I made it.

First off, some hardware talk. All of the guides have said to ferment the ginger beer in a 2L soda bottle. For the life of me, I don’t have one of those in my house. My wife ferments things in quart-sized mason jars and my dad brews beer in big glass carbouys, so initially I was looking for more mason jars to do fermenting in. Sadly, you can’t buy less than like, 8 of those at a time. That’s too expensive for my tastes and I have nowhere to put that many unused jars, so I wanted a better solution. I took a leisurely stroll around Wal-Mart and although it took at least a half hour of looking, I found something great:

The holy grail of containers

This thing was perfect:

  • The size was correct
  • It was cheap
  • It has a built-in valve at the top

I really think the only way I could do better is to buy at least $30 worth of equipment. For a single-batch of brewing, this is a pretty useful container. Luckily, they sell this on Amazon too.

I’ll see how this thing works out, but I’m optimistic.

The first step was to make the syrup that would be the base of the ginger beer.

I brought my postage scale into the kitchen to measure the weight of the sugar and ginger. For the ginger, I just put a sheet of saran wrap on the scale top and put my cheese grater on top before zeroing the scale out. I didn’t cut the skin off of the ginger - none of that will go in the actual ginger beer anyway. I just started grating it on to the scale, every once in a while stopping to see how many ounces I had. I went with 2.3 oz of ginger because I like a lot of ginger. After grating the ginger I put it in a saucepan and put that on top of the scale again, zero’d it out and started pouring in the sugar. I used pure cane sugar. Other potential options include:

  • Refined white sugar
  • Brown sugar
  • Something called ‘Sucanat’ which claims to be a 1:1 replacement for white or brown sugar
  • Molasses

I tend to like the lighter ginger beers, so I avoided the brown sugar, molasses and Sucanat (which looks pretty dark to me). I didn’t have refined white sugar, so I went with pure cane sugar. I used only 5oz because I don’t like my ginger beer too sweet. We’ll see what happens with that.

Once I had the sugar and ginger measured out I added the 1/2 cup of water and put it on the stove. ( FYI, for the water, I’m using reverse-osmosis filtered water ) I put the heat up to 7 and the sugar dissolved rather quickly. Once that happened, I took it off the heat and let it sit for an hour before pouring it into a bowl through a strainer and mashing the liquid out of the ginger with a spoon. I used a non-contact thermometer to measure the temperature of the syrup as I put it in the fridge: It was 77F. It only needed to be in the refrigerator about 15 minutes or so to reach 68F.

I cleaned the 2L bottle out with soap and water, then juiced half of a lemon and set it aside. Next, I filled a small cup with filtered water. I poured the syrup into the 2L bottle through a funnel, then poured the lemon juice in through a very fine strainer. I used the cup of filtered water to rinse the syrup and lemon juice reside out of the strainer and funnel. Then, I added half of a 1/4 teaspoon of champagne yeast to the jug, then filled it up 90% of the way to the top with filtered water, gave it a good shake and put it on a shelf. Theoretically, on Tuesday night I should be able to check it for carbonation.

1-9-18 Update

Today is the day that the ginger beer was supposed to be done. I had monitored the temperature of the jug and it varied from 68F to 80F, all of which is in the desirable range for the champagne yeast. The morning after I started fermenting I tried relieving pressure in the jug but to my dismay I found there was no pressure to relieve. The same happened the next day too so I didn’t have high hopes going in to the taste testing. The ginger beer tasted okay - certainly not bad. It was a little too sweet for my liking and didn’t have that ginger spice that I love so much. However, I detected only the barest hint of carbonation. This thing hadn’t been fermenting in the past two days.

I have researched several potential reasons:

  • White sugar just ferments really slowly
  • It’s not warm enough

To get white sugar to ferment faster, you’re supposed to ‘invert’ it by boiling it with an acid. I may do this next time: add the lemon juice to the syrup before dissolving the sugar in it, then let it get it to boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.

That is something that I can do next time. For this time, I just added another 1/8 tsp of champagne yeast. We’ll see where that goes.

I think I will also need a more temperature-consistent place to ferment the ginger beer.

1-16-18 Update

I moved the jug to a place that had a more consistent and higher temperature: a cabinet above my fridge. Most temperature readings since have been in the 73F-75F range. This is a pretty solid temperature for those yeast, so no concerns there. Unfortunately, I’ve had little or no movement on fermentation. I’ve had no pressure to release and no hint of carbonation. It could still be fermenting - just very slowly. Some of the people on the homebrew boards have said it takes weeks. Still, I know more now than I did before, so maybe I should try a new batch. The things I would do differently in the next batch:

  • Add more ginger and I would blend it for a long time in a food processor. This should increase the ginger flavor.
  • Add the lemon juice to the sugar and water and ginger in the saucepan before heating it. This will invert the sugar and make it easier for the yeast to digest it.
  • Bring the sugar/water/ginger/lemon mixutre to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes. This should increase the ginger flavor and ensure the sugars are inverted.
  • Keep the jug above the refrigerator from the start. This should keep the yeast happy and fermenting.

For the mean time I’ll keep the jug where it is doing whatever it’s doing. Patience.

1-21-18 Update

Okay, now we have motion and movement on this thing. Currently, it is definitely fermenting - I know this because I hear the pressure escaping when I open the valve. I can do it a few times a day and still have pressure on it, plus I see the little bubbles rising to the surface. Bottom line: there’s activity. I did two things a few days ago that might have moved things along:

  • Added another 1/8 tsp of yeast
  • Screwed the cap on tighter

I figure if the cap wasn’t on tight then the gasses might have escaped. Maybe that happened, or maybe the yeast just took off this time.

Either way, it doesn’t a sad fact about this attempt: it’s a failure. I don’t like the way the ginger beer tastes: it’s not gingery enough and there’s too much lemon. The sweetness is gone: fermented mostly away by the yeast. It definitely tastes fermented, but not sour or skunky. That’s okay, but the whole point was ginger and it’s just not there. I can try again and see if I can improve the taste somehow.

I wonder if it would be permissible to leave the ginger in the jug while it ferments? would that make it too obnoxiously gingery?

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