An attempt at an all grain ginger beer, using 820g diced ginger and 200g crystalized ginger toward the end of boil.
Using Windsor yeast for it’s lower attenuation to finish with a higher gravity and hopefully a little sweeter. Fermentation at 18C with no pressure .
Brewed as normal, extracted the ginger in a pot on the stove with 1L water and 2L wort, boiled 10min, poured it into the brew at flameout / 0min. I then recirculated the wort through the ginger in the jug and via the hop basket as a filter for approx 10min about 4 or 5 jugs.
Tasting the wort after transfer there was a good amount of ginger flavour but it could do with more – will taste test and potentially include a fermenter addition of more ginger.
Day 1
Fermentation started quickly, by the morning it was active.
Day 3
It slowed down at the start of day 3 and by the end of the day it seemed to have finished and started to settle. SG 1.018
Day 4
SG 1.017 by the end of the day. Spunding valve closed for pressure capture.
Day 5
SG 1.016 / 1.015.
Pressure at 6.6PSI
Temperature raised to 20C for rest phase.
Day 7
Gravity 1.015, pressure 9psi.
I purged the trub jar with CO2 and opened the valve to drop out the trub.
Day 8
Removed the trub jar and transferred it to a steralised jar. Seems to have a lot of the other muck in it and since it has ginger I’m unsure if I’ll keep it. There is a good yeast layer in the bottom of the fermzilla so I might be better to take another jar full later..
Poured a taster out of the fermenter – seems good at 20C and flat, nice ginger ale taste. The dip tube had a slight blockage, I connected the gas line and blew it through to clear it. This worked.
I gassed it up and a gave it a bit of a shake carbonate since it wasn’t coming up much by itself (it’d come up to 10psi over a few days, much slower than other brews, i think due to fermentation finishing earlier than other brews, but I didn’t want to start capture too early).
Sitting at 20C and about 20psi, 1.015 FG. I’ll monitor the pressure to ensure it carbonates well over the next few days.
Day 12
Started cooling, initially just to 18C, then to 10C and finally to 4C by day 13 (Thursday 10/10)
Day 13
Beer at 4C and mostly carbonated. Shook a bit of gas into it to help get the levels up a bit.
Taste was interesting, very fresh. I think it’ll condition further over time.
Mixed 212g dextrose sugar into 200ml boiled water and added it to the all round along with finings.
[note: adding the dextrose was a mistake – I thought the finings would prevent this from fermenting but not the case. Since the beer was at 5C it wasn’t fermenting. The amount of sugar was a little higher than bottle conditioning – so shouldn’t be a big issue. I raised the temp to 18C to allow it to ferment off]
Transferred into the all rounder with closed syphon method. 22L total into the all rounder. I bottled approx. 2L for a taste.
Day 15 UPDATE:
Saturday evening added 5g chilli powder, 5g ginger powder, and 100g artificial sweetener (naturals brand with erythritol and stevia) to 100ml vodka (for steralising the additions). I’ve let it sit for 48hours at 18C to ferment away the dextrose from earlier, and for the flavour to infuse.
Day 18
Taste test Tuesday 15/10/24 is much closer to what I was aiming for – quite a strong spicy bite and much nicer aroma from both ginger powder and chilli powder additions.
Day 19 Wednesday
bottled approx 14.5L
Artificial sweetness flavour isn’t great, it’s not too strong but just not that nice. Should be tasty with lemon.
Perhaps change to maltodextrin for the future.
Overall interesting experiment.
Gravity change from the dextrose and vodka added approx. 0.5% according to my calculations. Final abv approx. 6%.