Alcoholic Ginger Beer: Day 1 - The Brew Up

My appetite has been whetted recently by a renewed interest in homebrewing. Ok, not the coolest of home-pursuits but wholly rewarding. Not only do you get to concoct your own beverage and present to the unsuspecting friends/co-workers etc but you also get to design the label! Then i realised you can actually make alcoholic ginger beer (not the plant-inspired version i did as a kid) ... and with a potential 9.5% .... oh my god ....

Anyhow, i digress. I stumbled across 2 recipes online that looked easy peasy.

1. Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall's Ginger Beer Recipe
Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall's Ginger Beer Recipe

2. Dave's Ginger Beer

At first instance, Hugh's looked easiest but digging a little deeper, and looking for a challenge (and larger quanitites) i went with Dave's Ginger Beer.

The ingredients as follows:

5 gallons water
1-1 1/2 lbs. ginger root, coarsley chopped (PLUS extra 1/2 lb ginger root and 60g dried ginger)
17 cups sugar (i'm assuming american sizes here)
4 lemons, sliced
3/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 packet champagne yeast (i substituted this for Wine Yeast Compound and followed instructions)

Off we trotted to Tesco and got everything (it was a wet sunday, otherwise the cornershop fruitstore would have been first port of call). Yes, even the yeast. It seems that Culverhouse Cross has a section for homebrew stuff.

Keeping it simple for the first attempt - i've pretty much left the recipe unchanged other than adding about an extra half pound of ginger and also emptying a whole spice bottle of the dry stuff (just for an extra kick).

Process was pretty simple for getting going, a few tricky bits that weren't covered in the original recipe so i have modified and this is the process i'm going to do:

Process

1. Fill largest pan with boiling water (leaving inch and half from top)
2. Add ginger & cream of tartar
3. Squeeze lemons and then drop in squeezed bits too
4. Add sugar (i managed 9 1/2 cups) and allow to simmer for 30mins (i removed pips)
5. Add remaining sugar to sterilised fermenting bin (7 1/2 cups)
6. Carefully pour ginger mix through coarse strainer and then squish pulp with back of ladel
7. Top up with cold water to the 5 gallon mark and leave to lukewarm temperature
8. Taste (at this point, i wasn't happy so boiled up more ginger root and dried ginger and added back in to mix)
9. Add yeast as per pack (i used wine yeast compund - which meant a heaped teaspoon per gallon straight into the fermenting bin)
10. Check gravity (reading said it could be possible 9.5% alcohol - but we going to stop before completely fermented)
11. Cover and allow to ferment for 7 days (16 - 20 degrees)
12. Check gravity intermittently
13. Siphon into 2litre pop bottles (sterilised) - this will be done through a coffee filter for extra clarity
14. Add teaspoon of zest and finely grated ginger to each bottle
15. Cap and store upright for one week (15 - 17.5 degrees)
16. Release pressure daily
17. Then store under 15 degrees

A few photos:

Grating

The key ingredients

Lemons / ginger / cream of tartar / water / sugar

Fermentation bin after 2 hours

20 degrees

Will be updating once ready for bottling!