How to make home brew ginger beer - about 17% ABV and 30p a pint!

This is ridiculously strong homebrew. Probably around 17% ABV, so be careful drinking it - think of it as fortified wine (ie sherry or port) and dont blame me if you get very pissed very quickly, or go blind, or do stupid stuff etc.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• ginger
• beer

[dinodom000]

I whipped up a few batches of this because it looked interesting. After adding a pint of sugar (20oz) to a gallon the gravity was only around 1.04x. Witch seems a bit low for 17% ABV. Did I overlook something? A second question, after fermentation do you wait for it to clear before carbonating?

[simonearly]

@dinodom000 Er, dunno. I base the strength on the ability of it to knock out me and my neighbours at his barbeque last summer. It usually takes 8-10cans of stella to get that smashed.THis did it in a 1/3 of that amount, hence the calculation. As for the clearing, a *true* alcoholic waits for no beer to clear - that's just for girls!

[smileonlegs87]

I dunno if I may have done something wrong. I used a 2L softdrink bottle to brew in, and A balloon airlock. Bought a fresh pack of Champagne yeast to make this and only put in a teaspoon, the balloon would only really expand after I shook the bottle a bit, then the next day would be flat again. Normally when I do honey meads, the balloon is full for about a month before going flat(with bread yeast), is this how champagne yeast works? also, now the bottle and the balloon has sucked itself in-HELP

[simonearly]

@smileonlegs87 err, that sounds quite wrong. the CO2 sounds like it has dissolved into the solution and by agitating it, you are making it come out, hence the balloon expansion on shaking. Sounds like the fermentation has ceased. Make sure stuff is clean and theres an airlock, plus a warm environment - room temp is fine. Seeing s I'm not there in front of it, I cant give you any more suggestions I'm afraid. It does take a few days to kick off though - maybe leave it alone for a week?

[WilliamGruff]

Nice video.

[smileonlegs87]

well it's been a week now. the balloon is what I use as an airlock for my trial batches. it didn't really ferment at all, i thought the agitation may have been kicking the yeast into action. I did sanitize everything too.... hmmm. Maybe I'll give another batch ago.

[simonearly]

@centralparkfitness Yes, I've used "normal" general-purpose yeast in the past - the stuff that's sold in normal supermarkets for bread-making. It will give you about 4-5% ABV. If you do it that way, put less sugar in else it will taste very sweet (to my palate anyway). One trick I used when this was the case was to put in the higher tolerance champagne yeast in after bottling, just to add the CO2. When it was getting pretty hard (the plastic bottle!) , put it in the fridge to kill off the yeast.

[centralparkfitness]

@simonearly I think you answered my next question but just to be sure, your finished product isn't going to be too sweet right because the yeast fermented all the sugar? you then add the honey after the fact to give it a sweet taste? I think I'm gonna make a batch of this today! have you ever done it with other types of brewing yeast like ale yeast? heck baking yeast would work, just won't be able to get the high ABV

[simonearly]

Just a quick update, I'm putting the honey in *after* the brewing process has finished instead so the sugar makes it a bit more palatable.

[simonearly]

@centralparkfitness no, never had a problem and I'm quite lazy with sterilisation etc - I tend to wash everything as if it were general "washing up" and rinse a lot, but no dishwasher sterilising or other chemicals and it all seems to work. In fact, to demonstrate to my kids what yeast is, i put in a single speck - literally the size of a very small grain of sand. It took a few days more to get going, but the result was the same of course.