Does anyone have a decent ginger beer recipe that they can share? I’ve seen recipes ranging anywhere from 2 Tbsp to 1lb of fresh ginger for a 2 liter batch. I’m definitely looking for something with some kick to it, but a pound in 2 liters seems ridiculous.
One of the 2016 Big Brew’s was a Ginger Ale: Summertime Ginger Ale - Beer Recipe - American Homebrewers Association
Are you looking for an beer recipe or a “ginger beer” recipe for mixer for Dark and Stormy’s? I am looking for the latter.
Same here, I’m planning on making the soft drink.
I’ve been interested in this as well and have been leaning towards the syrup recipes as I think they would be more scalable and easy to try many variations.
Do you have a recipe in mind?
There are loads, and as Eric mentioned they vary greatly in the amount of ginger. Just google “homemade ginger syrup”
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/ginger-ale-recipe.html
At one time I was making ginger beer using the GBP and it was delicious, but my plant never grew and I could not keep up drinking the stuff as fast as it would make. I suggest you give it a whirl as it is cheap and easy.
http://www.ipass.net/mpdixon/GBP.htm
A couple of my links are dead as it an old site and I forget how many total batches I made back in the day. I know I quit documenting at 10.
Here are some new links:
http://www.gingerbeerplant.net/buy.get-gbp.php
https://www.happyherbalist.com/ginger-beer-plant-culture-kit/
And of course just google Ginger Beer Plant
Sounds interesting, but I learned from my kombucha brewing that brewing and drinking anything that needs to be kept going on a cycle just won’t work for me.
Now that I have a 3-tap tower, I’m looking to have a keg of soda on tap on occasion. I picked up some passionfruit concentrate and pomegranate molasses to work on a few ideas. Aside from the more creative 1-offs, I’d really like to have a “house” ginger beer recipe as a go-to. I guess I’ll just have to pick something as a start and work on it from there.
That was my experience with kombucha too, it got a little ahead of me.
Know that you have pomegranate syrup you can make a really nice muhummara.
I have been brewing a few batches of sodas with my daughter and was thinking of having a keg of ginger beer on tap. We made a gallon at a time using 1.25 to 2.5 oz of grated fresh ginger, depending on how much ginger flavor we wanted, 1/2 a lemon juiced, and about 1.75 cups of sugar simmered for about a half hour. It’s a pretty simple recipe, but makes a pretty good ginger beer. This also was for naturally carbonated ginger beer. If I force carb, I will probably cut the sugar amount down. Good luck and let us know how it goes and what recipe you use.
I think I’ll be making a few tweaks as I go, but I made my first batch last night. The recipe is basically a guesstimate based on several recipes I’ve seen, but I should be able to dial it in quickly over a few batches.
1 medium hand of ginger, peeled and chopped (weighed 1.5 oz/43g of prepped ginger)
125g light brown sugar
This was added to a cup of water and heated to a boil in the microwave in an oversized coffee mug
Zest of 2 limes added as a “flameout” addition to the boiled syrup, then covered with plastic wrap and allowed to steep about 90 minutes
The juice of the 2 limes was added to a 1-liter soda bottle, then the strained ginger mixture, then topped off with filtered, cold tap water. I force-carbed to 30 PSI and threw it in the kegerator to chill overnight. I’ll give it a taste tonight and report back. The nice thing about a 1-liter batch is that it is pretty much 1/10 of the size of my 2.5 gallon kegs, so everything should scale up easily to a keg.
How did you force carb the 1 liter bottles?
One of these guys. It screws onto a standard soda bottle lid and hooks up to a gas disconnect:
Cool.I’m getting one for sure.
I got one for my barley wine that did not carb up in the bottle. Works great.
The great thing about soft drinks is that they are ready quickly and you can experiment without having to wait a month.
Carbonator caps are great and if you are fine with ordering from Amazon, i think they are selling steel ones for about the same as the plastic ones.
Here are my notes on this batch:
Lime flavor was the dominant character; it was more like a limeade soda with ginger than a ginger beer. The ginger level was there, but lower than I’d like. Less spiciness than I’d like as well. The sugar balance was just right, but I pick up a faint “artificial sweetener” character that I can get from too much brown sugar. There was also a bit more sediment than I’d like. I might try lining my strainer with butter muslin in the future.
Next batch I will cut it down to 1 lime’s worth of juice, and possibly skip the zest altogether. I love lime, but it’s just not what I’m going for. The sweetness was good, but I’m afraid that it might get a bit too much once I cut the acidity. I’ll probably cut the brown sugar 50-50 with turbinado to reduce the molasses sweetness. That should lighten the color as well, which was a bit darker than I pictured.
I know I need to amp up the ginger, but I’m not sure how much was just hiding behind the lime. I think I’ll stick with one hand the next batch, but I have a fatter one that might yield a little more than the last one I used. I’ll probably extend the steep a bit as well, in hopes of extracting a bit more heat.
Side note - 2 limes (juice + zest) is the perfect amount for 1-liter of soda to give a strong lime flavor without bitterness. I’ll probably use this recipe, but replace the ginger with some passionfruit concentrate, for a tart refresher this summer.
I’ll keep a running log here. I’ll probably get the next batch made up in a few more days.
Batch #2 was brewed during Thursday’s snow storm. The ginger I used was much fresher than the ginger I had for batch #1, and I think it made a considerable difference. I ended up getting about 100g of ginger out of one medium-sized hand, compared to only 43g in my last batch. The hand was a lot plumper, so that was probably a big part of the increase in yield.
Batch 2:
98g Fresh diced ginger
60g light brown sugar
60 g turbinado sugar
This was added to 8oz water and heated in the microwave to a boil. This was then covered with plastic wrap and allowed to steep for ~5.5 hours. I added this to the juice of 1 lime (juice only - no zest this time) in a 1-liter bottle, topped with ice water, and force carbonated at 30 PSI.
When I went to taste it the next day, it had gone flat. I’m thinking that the carb cap wasn’t sealed too tight. I gave it a quick taste, and noted that the oversweet molasses character was still there. I resealed it and hit it pretty hard with the CO2. When I tasted it later that day, there was a nice prickly carbonation, and the oversweet character was gone. Note to self - carbonation seems to help counter that artificially sweet character.
The flavor balance was pretty much spot-on. I could taste enough of the lime to tell that this was where the acidity was coming from, but without too strong of a flavor to compete with the ginger. I could cut the lime juice down my maybe 25-30%, but it’s ok at this level. The ginger flavor was nice, and there was just enough sweetness for balance.
The only thing that it needed more of is heat from the ginger. I got some spiciness on the lips and tongue, but it needs more kick for me. I really don’t want to go up on the fresh ginger, because this recipe already scales up to a kilo of fresh, prepped ginger for a full 2.5 gallon batch. I’ve done some reading, and it seems that dried ginger is spicier than fresh ginger, although fresh just can’t be beat for taste. I could try lengthening the steep time to an overnight steep, but I think I’m just going to add a tablespoon or two of dried ginger to the steep next time and see what that does.
Thanks for the detailed write-up! Looking forward to hearing more and trying your recipe!