Ginger beer

What's the morning after like?

Is it Ginger beer or beer that tastes ginger ?

Just thought i would change things a little here and talk about ginger beer.

I make a good ginger beer. I normally use a plant and bottle that. This way is okay and you can get a steady flow of beer flowing once a week, you just keep feeding the plant and bottle the liquid. i normally get 5 or 6  700ml bottles worth a week. The only problem with this way you are always bottling the beer and the alcohol is not that high, you get around the same as light beer.  So i had a play with a different way of doing it. im making a 20L batch that will come out at around 5% alcohol.

this is my recipe if anyone is interested.

800G fresh ginger
2.5kg sugar
one pack champagne yeast
2 Table spoons of yeast nutrient
20L water
a brewing bottle to hold 20L with air lock

I chopped the ginger up in slices then added around a cup of water and put in a blender.

take a 4L pot and fill half with water then added the ginger and bring to the boil. then put on low heat for 5 minutes and add the sugar. when sugar is dissolved add mixture to brewing bucket or bottle and full with tap water to 20L. once the water has cooled enough (less than 30 degrees) add the yeast and nutrient and seal. leave it doing its thing for around a week or till it has settled down. Then strain mixture through a cheese cloth and strainer to a second 20L container and  clean the bucket and put the brew back in. let it sit there for another week or so till it has stopped fermenting (no more bubbles) next you can take a sample of your brew. This is where im up to now, i took a sample and tasted it. It tasted pretty rank to tell the truth so i took a sample to my mates down at the brew shop for them to taste. They said it was okay, thats what it was supposed to taste like. they said i just need some sweetener and it is time to bottle.

So its time to bottle. I added the sweetener and it tastes a lot better now, I  used brewing sweetener which the yeast will not eat so it will stay sweet. I will put 1 tea spoon full of sugar per bottle to kick the carbonation process off to give it the fizz that i like and with a bit of luck i will have a nice strong ginger beer for xmass!