Ginger Beer question

[shin]

A couple of weeks ago I decided to have a dabble and put down a ginger beer brew. Here's the recipe I've used:

2kg Dextrose
500g Japanese Light Malt Extract
500g Lactose
Ginger / Lemons / Allspice

I've got two question I would love some input into.

First up, it's been 14 days since I put the brew down, temp has been sitting fairly consistent between 22 & 24 degrees and fermentation started within 12 hours or so no worries. The OG was 1.040, maybe up to 1.044 but after a fortnight it's only just dropped below 1.020, probably in the region of 1.018 but splitting hairs I guess. Is there anything obvious that would have made this a slower fermentation than usual?
I was assuming the lemons may have added an extra sugar contribution but I wouldn't imagine it would have messed with things too much? I'm not too worried about it as the fermentation has be very consistent and I'm happy to wait another couple of weeks for it to bottom right out before I bottle it but I'd just like to know why it's going slower for future reference.

And secondly, even though I added 500g of lactose I think it's going to need more to balance out the increasing dryness as the fermentation continues. Is this something I can do at the time of bottling? I was thinking of racking the ginger beer across to the bottling bucket and stirring in lactose to taste then give it up to an hour to settle then bottle. Does this seem like an ok approach?

Thanks in advance.

[oneilldave]

Hi Shin,

I'm not an expert, but I have made ginger beer before and it turned out like rocket fuel that made your nose melt with the ginger - lovely drop of beer it was, too!

So, my contribution is:

1. The lactose will only ferment out by about 75%, and possibly the same for the LME, though you may want to check the figures on that. This means that you are relying on the dextrose to give you the main strength boost, but this only goes down to about 90%. I suppose that's good enough and should give you, in an ideal world, about an 85% conversion rate. I would think that you could then expect to drop down into the 1.010's at least. So, why has it slowed down? Well, maybe yeast is old and not suitable for the job in hand. Or it maybe that the ph balance is wrong and making it hard for the yeast to work. That could happen with the acidity from the lemons, but saying that it didn't happen to me. I did a 25L brew and used 4 whole lemons, it started out at 1.080 and over about 4 days dropped like a rock to 1.005! It was very dry, but very gingery and made a few people fall over. I would suggest leaving it for a couple of weeks and seeing what happens. As long as it has a good cap of CO2 it shouldn't spoil.

2. Too dry for you? Well, for my next brew I'm going to watch the gravity on a daily basis and when it hits the FG I want I'm going to kill off the fermantation. That way I will control the strength and, therefore, the sweetness. However, for your brew, I would suggest disolving some non-fermentable sweetner in a little boiling water and then adding it to the brew with an absolute minimum of stirring. You don't want to aerate the brew as this will help it go off.

I don't know if that helps at all, and I'm sure greater minds then mine will have some suggestions, but the most important thing is does it taste nice. If the answer is yes then you've made a good brew. Maybe if you want it stronger next time just add more sugar. I only ever use honey when making things like that as I like the flavour it leaves behind.

Good luck,

Dave.

[shin]

Cheers. When you say "the lactose will only ferment out by about 75%" I'm a bit confused as I was under the impression that it shouldn't ferment at all?
I'm exploring the idea of adding in an amount of lactose for body and an amount of a non fermentable sweetner to finish it off.