Ginger Beer Soda

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

So, I'm looking for a little direction for making Ginger Beer soda. I'm looking primarily for bulk non alcoholic.

Here's what I want. I love a good Moscow mule in the summer. I want to put it on draft in my keg system much like I do with my apple pie and fruit cocktails. So, that means I need about 4 gallons of ginger beer. The 1 gallon of vodka is the easy part, lol. ABV will be determined by the proof of vodka, but it will be a safe level fir the keg system. It's silly expensive to buy, so I'll have to make it.

Ive read different ways to make it with just blending the ingredients and straining, and then more about using ginger bug. Im not really looking for a commitment to ginger beer, just a dance. I want it to be good and spicey, and have some sweetness to it. Is fermentation crucial? Getting it carbonated isn't needed, becuase I'll be force carbing it anyway.

Anyone have experience?

Thanks.

[acfixer69]

Looking forward to this one SCD I hope to make some copper muggs for the mules.

[NZChris]

If you already have a ginger beer recipe, use the ingredient ratios in the recipe, but simmer them for 5 minutes, let it cool then filter and carbonate

If you don't, start with this then adjust to your taste.
Per 1 liter of finished product:
40-50g of fresh, sliced, ginger
or, 1/2 tsp ground ginger
Juice of 1 lemon, (you can use citric acld).
Sugar to taste
Carbonate

[NZChris]

I have put ginger through a juicer, but I've not made ginger beer with that. If you are doing bulk, a juicer would be a lot easier than slicing.

Dried might be the cheapest, but it might be a bitch to filter. When using it for ginger beer, I use methode champenoise to get rid of it.

[Saltbush Bill]

I like making dark N Stormys , Rum n Gingerbeer.
Ive used the method using the ginger bug / Plant, and it works well except its not gingery enough for my tastes.
Before bottling I run fresh ginger through a juicer and add some of the resulting juice to each bottle......that makes it a lot better imo.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Thanks guys.

Chris, awesome, thanks for direct info. I went to Restaurant Depot today and got 5lbs of fresh ginger root for $11. Going with your above proportions, I would need 2lbs for the 4 gallons. I think I'll take your advice and juice it. The wife is going to take a handful for her own bug, and I'll juice the rest. That should give me over twice what you recommended, so I'll add and simmer to taste. Any left over juice I can store for other uses.

Salty, thanks for your experience input. Knowing that im not losing taste by not fermenting and forgoing the bug is extremely helpful.

I should have Moscow mule on tap in a couple weeks . Maybe I'll play with the bug and fermentation while the keg is carbing.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Well, the first part is done. Used the wife's Kitchen Aid juicer attachment. It was the first time I used it. Man, that thing is friggin awesome! I've got half a mind to juice fresh corn and see if I can make a decent whiskey like that!

So, 5 lbs of fresh ginger gets you about exactly 1/2 gallon of fresh juice. I kept a few pieces out for the wife in the future. It's alot more cloudy than I expected, so I'm off to read up on clearing it, if it just needs to cold crash for a while or if only fermenting it out will clear it.

A couple cool pics for ya.

20200509_144806.jpg

20200509_152704.jpg

[NZChris]

I don't think my ginger beer (5% abv) is ever really clear, no matter what method I use.

[DetroitDIY]

I haven't made it in a few years, but I had good luck. This recipe is 60 C, about 3.75 gallons

3.75 C Ginger Juice [30 Oz]: I juiced it fresh. It can be a bit tough on some juicers. Fresh is nicely potent and gives a crisp bite.
7.5 C Lemon Juice [60 Oz]: I juiced a lot, but ultimately supplemented with a good bottle of tart, real, lemon juice.
11.25 C Simple Syrup [90 Oz]: I used 7.5 C water and 7.5 C sugar to make this much syrup. Heat, mix and cool to a temp the yeast can tolerate.
37.5 C Water

I would go with the Champagne yest. I've tried it with EC-1118 Champaign yeast, ICV D47 Cote du Rhone yeast, and Safale SO4 Ale yeast. I don't recall liking the Ale yeast, but I was also playing in that batch with using Xylitol for some of the sugar to limit bottle carbonation (I don't back carb)... was quite lack luster. Never took the time to make a proper ginger bug.

I bottle carb, which either means you need to crash it in the fridge, or milk pasteurize, or risk bottle bombs. I've done milk pasteurization a few times, each time resulting in a few bottles blowing their caps or bursting the bottle. It makes for a messy kitchen and a pissed spouse. I've had better luck with Grolsch bottles which tend to let a bit of the pressure escape before the bottle bursts.

Milk pasteurization is the slow heating of the bottles in a bath of water and holding them for a time at an elevated temperature to kill the yeast in the bottle. There are temp vs. time ratios you can find, and recall that all the fluid in your bottle has to raise in temp. I'm also considering playing with a sous vide to pasturize low and slow vs. high and fast to see if these can affect he pressure blow phenomenon (Ideal Gas: PV=nRT, so as T goes up in a fixed volume, pressure goes up, and the bottle may burst). But I also suspect that as I heat the bottles in the bath form warm to hot, then hold it at hot... to avoid thermal shock and fracture of the glass... that may also cause the yeast to work overtime producing CO2 just before they die and that exacerbates the problem. When I get around to testing a few different settings with the sous vide, I'll try to report back.

Of course, the last two paragraphs don't matter if your force carbing. I will say that one of my stand by purchased ginger beers (Bundaberg) apparently does a combination of yeast fermenting and force carbing according to their label. Don't know any of the details on that.

ShineOn, if you're looking for more ginger, try inverting the ginger to lemon ratios.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Yeah, I went and read some more recipes and processes, and some of them had pics. All the beers were opaque, so I didn't sweat the murky ginger juice. I stained it out one more time for sediment.

Ok, so it's in the keg. Here's how I made it.

Four 4 gallons water
1 liter of fresh Ginger juice (squeezed from 2.5 lbs Ginger Root)
2 cups lemon juice
1 -1.5 cups sugar

Heated enough to dissolve sugar. Chilled, kegged.

It's rather simple, but it seems to be how non alcoholic is made. It taste a touch watery at the moment, but good flavor and spice. But alot of my beers and ciders are that way before carbing. I'll give it 2 weeks and try it. Good part is if it's weak, I'll add some more ginger juice. Then, I'll add 1/2 gallon of azeo nuetral to the keg and be right on the mark for an 11% Moscow mule. I'll just need a squeeze of lime and maybe a touch of honey .

Thanks for your help.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Ha. I said screw it.

I read that heating the ginger can tame it. So I opened it up and through another 1/2 liter fresh juice in there and froze the rest. I like it kicking!

Next time I will probably just dissolve the sugar with water and lemon juice, cool down, then add the ginger juice.

[Corsaire]

You can try making some ginger tea as well.
Just slice some fresh root in water and bring it to a boil. The longer you boil, the hotter it tastes but it tastes different than fresh ginger.
Strain, then add sugar while hot.

I've played around with this and fermentation.
I added dried pepper flakes to one ferment, I enjoyed that one.

I've never carbonated fresh ginger juice, thanks, I'll be trying that soon.

[brewstillski]

Curious, how'd this turn out? I've got a few spare corny kegs that I'd love to put to use like this for the summer.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

It turned out awesome. At this point it is straight ginger beer. I decided to add the liquor by the glass, that way I could make it with rum or whiskey if I wanted. But the base ginger beer is awesome. After a few weeks in the keg it balanced nice. I think in the future, for my own taste, I'm going to juice and use the entire 5lbs. Then, add it to the water after it has cooled to room temp. It's spicey now, but I want to see what the full effect is .

[WithOrWithoutU2]

I want to put it on draft in my keg system much like I do with my apple pie and fruit cocktails.

Do you have a "how to" thread on the Apple Pie and Fruit Cocktails that you can point me to? I search for "Apple Pie Keg" and tons of stuff came up but I could not find anything specific to what you have done.

Thanks

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Yeah man, you're in luck. I've talked about it a few times, and searching my post history I found a recipe. Comes out around 10%-12% abv. I know traditionally people like it at 40%, but this makes it safe for the keg system, and drinks like a wine/ mead.

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=73016&p=7547868&hilit=#p7547868

[Windy City]

Check out this thread

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=57158&hilit=ginger

This stuff never lasts long at my house

[brewstillski]

It turned out awesome. At this point it is straight ginger beer. I decided to add the liquor by the glass, that way I could make it with rum or whiskey if I wanted. But the base ginger beer is awesome. After a few weeks in the keg it balanced nice. I think in the future, for my own taste, I'm going to juice and use the entire 5lbs. Then, add it to the water after it has cooled to room temp. It's spicey now, but I want to see what the full effect is .

Oh that's awesome. I'm gonna start a batch now so it will be ready/tame by the time I am ready for a spirit run of neutral. Thanks for sharing.

[contrahead]

I made a small 1 gallon batch of ginger beer just last month. Still have a few bottles left that I'm saving to use as hand grenades.

At least I had the presence of mind to bottle my ginger beer in those very strong - old fashioned Grolsch bottles with the wire hoops and ceramic stoppers. Any other type of glass bottle would have exploded in the first couple days.

I kid you not, opening an ice cold bottle was a nightmare that took about 10 minutes. Off and on I'd crack the top a little to relieve some pressure. But no matter how cautious I was it would still end up spewing into my lap or onto the computer screen and keyboard. At the end of openings - repeated several times, I'd end up with about half a bottle (a sticky bottle) of chalky beer.

On top of the opening ordeal I was to determine that I really didn't care for the taste of typical ginger beer all that much. Not straight, by itself alone. My version tasted as good as commercial offerings like Bundaberg's though. Once at an October festival, I had a crafted barley beer that was heavily flavored with ginger – and I thought that it was excellent, by contrast. I do love my Moscow Mules however - or even better the “Spicy Mule” - for which I left a recipe for some time ago – here.

My recipe was ad-libbed from a video; linked here under the topic “how did the first settlers in america make likker”. For my 1gal batch I boiled both dry and fresh chopped ginger and added about 2 cups plain white sugar, no fancy sugar. With my new respect for secondary fermentation, were I to repeat the process, I'd only use 1 cup of sugar.

[malt_lover]

Hello, I too love ginger beer and also add peels of lemon to the mix when it is off the flame. Peels of two lemons per liter; a bit of cream of tartar to preserve flavour and colour. I also made another variant with mango ginger - a variety of ginger which smells just like mango but has spicy punch of ginger, in India. That made an awesome drink. I also ferment mostly with ginger bug or US-05.

[DetroitDIY]

Mango ginger... that sounds exactly my speed if I could make it right.

My fully fermented ginger beer wasn't exactly to my liking, but when I cut it 50/50 with a lightly fermented bottle of sweet ginger beer I'd also made it was much better. If you're fermenting dry Contrahead, and want carbonation without bottle bombs... ferment it dry in a carboy, then add 6 g sugar per liter of beer and bottle it in regular beer bottles. It'll hold that pressure and not explode. If you want even more bubbly, you can double that ratio and bottle it in champaign bottles, but that'll be REAL bubbly. Or, you could just keep going with the Grolsch bottles. I too use those sometimes when I'm afraid I might make bottle bombs on a new recipe.

[NZChris]

I kid you not, opening an ice cold bottle was a nightmare that took about 10 minutes. Off and on I'd crack the top a little to relieve some pressure. But no matter how cautious I was it would still end up spewing into my lap or onto the computer screen and keyboard. At the end of openings - repeated several times, I'd end up with about half a bottle (a sticky bottle) of chalky beer.

I've been gassing variations of ginger beer and sparkling ciders in the bottles for years without that problem. I crack the caps after about day three and listen for the pissst. When it is about right, the whole batch gets refrigerated and stays refrigerated until it is either drunk, or disgorged to get rid of sediment.

[bastardbrewer]

I like making my own Gingerbug, that way no yeast is required.

Slice and cut fine 28 gram of ginger, keep the skin on as ginger beasties like this.
Add to a 1 ltr or so glass jar, add 28 gram of sugar too. Stir well. Keep at a nice warm temp, say 30 degrees. Boiler cupboard is perfect.

Then, for the following week or so, add 28 gram ginger and 28 gr sugar EVERY DAY. keep at the same nice warm temp in the boiler cupboard and shake or still well daily. After 4 or 5 days bubbles should start to form, and it will start smelling what I call "milky"??

After 10 days you have your gingerbug, your own ginger yeast!

You can now dissolve sugar and lemonjuice to your liking to about 5 ltr of water ( I use about 500 gram and 2 lemons I believe), let cool down to 30 degrees and add 200ml of your gingerbug. Then bottle into those grolsch type or ikea fliptop bottles, and leave in the boilercupboard, a couple days is sufficient. Air every day, somehow huge pressure is build up. You can take OG and FG readings if you want to calculate ABV. Mine is only 2 or 3% but matches perfect with wodka or rum (home distilled of course). It will go clearish but not fully clear, and there will be sediment in the bottom which I try to leave in the bottom but dont mind some in that last glass.

BTW after 2 days i still find it a bit too sweet, 3 or 4 days is good for me, 5 days is a tad too dry for my liking, somehow a bit more bitter too.

It's a fun, sciency approach to gingerbeer, I enjoy making it from scratch with the gingerbug.

Cheers!
B the B

[DetroitDIY]

Thanks Bastard. I love the DIY of course, but have always felt I didn't want to wait for a ginger bug, so have never tried it.

Heavy Grolsch style bottles, that's key. I recently made 5 gals of a root beer mead by steeping my own botanicals. There was a lot left in them so I steeped them again and made 2 gallons root beer with my daughter. Bottled them in beer bottles and put them outside after three days to arrest the fermentation. Just tonight I tried the milk pasteurization. Now I recall that I needed to bottle in Grolsch rather than conventional beer bottles. I did take it out to the workshop as a precaution... good idea. Had a few caps pop and a few bottles burst. Had on my protective gear and kept working while the others successfully pasteurized. Next time Grolsch. In the hot bath they will burp rather than explode or pop the tops.

Cheers!
DetroitDIY

[Setsumi]

i like pickled ginger, the juice is excellent in drinks. not on tap but easy to make and mix

[Corsaire]

I've recently tried to make my own gingerbug. While something was definately fermenting I ended up with a very slimy, thick liquid.
I'll give the above process a go, fingers crossed the slime stays out of my jar this time.

[howie]

currently enjoying a lovely ginger beer.
my favourite was Royal Jamaican Ginger Beer, but can't get hold of it.
matso's GB is ok, but $80 a carton.
i stumbled across this old recipe for Powderkeg GB and it's extremely good IMHO(my son reckons it's better than Matso's).
depending on your price for Ginger, it cost me about $70 for ingredients, but worth every penny for 23 litres.
bottled in Grolshies, with 1 x carbonation drop per bottle, but no signs of over carbonation yet, despite the name.
Powderkeg GB
- 1 x Morgans Ginger Beer Kit
- 1 x 500g Fresh ginger
- 1 x 250g DARK Brown Sugar
- 1 x 1kg dextrose
- 1 x 750ml Buderum Ginger Refresher Cordial
- 1 x fresh chilli (sliced thinly with the seeds in)
- ~600ml Sweet Vermouth
- ~600ml Sweet Sherry
- ~30ml Lochan Ora

Grate the ginger and soaked in a bowl with the Sweet Sherry, Sweet Vermouth and Lochan Ora for 24 hours. Combined the GB kit, brown sugar, dex and refresher cordial in 3L boiling water in the fermenter and stirred, then added the grated ginger soak (liquid and all), added the sliced chilli and topped up to 23L. Leave for approx. 3 weeks (keeping at a moderate temp of ~20 degrees Celsius) - FG – 0.996 Alc/Vol : 7.0% (Based on an OG of 1.048)

yeast safale US-05.

*Lochan Ora - use 30ml of whiskey and 1 tsp honey instead
*Sweet Vermouth - I used Cinzano Bianco
*my OG was 1.030(?), FG 1.000 for about 4% (not sure about my OG, but it isn’t 7.0% as quoted in recipe)

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

So, a quick update. I've played around with this a couple times, and zeroed in on what is perfect for me on tap. I don't make it often, so taken some time to see what I like. Before I kept the sugar low, and non alcoholic. Figured I would spike and sweeten to the glass. I still leave it non alcoholic because it's good for the kids when they have a tummy ache, and I can make either a mule or a dark and stormy. Now, however, I find it much better just to sweeten to drinking conditions up front, and save having to make simple syrup on demand. Here is my perfected ginger beer, for prosperity. I buy a 5lb bag of ginger, use around 4 to get the juice.

4 gallons of water
2 quarts of fresh squeezed ginger juice
2 cups lemon juice
10 cups sugar

Bring water and lemon juice just hot enough to dissolve sugar. Add sugar, stir until dissolved. Let cool to almost room temp. Add strained ginger juice.

Fill 5 gallon keg, carb and serve at 25 psi. 2 weeks carb before drinking.

Absolutely the best ginger beer you've had.

[Copperhead road]

That sounds very gooood!
thanx for sharing SOCD.

I might have to give it a crack...