Ginger Beer

[Belto]

My wife who is not a beer drinker, suddenly expressed a wish for me to brew a Ginger beer.
She normally drinks Sherry or more recently wine
I was thinking ABV approx 8%

Are there any recipes that I can use
My search on the forum has surprisingly prooved fruitless

[booldawg]

Try searching for Ginger Beer in the 'Other Brews' section of the forum.

Heres a link to one of the many threads;

viewtopic.php?t=11479

[stevezx7r]

I did one of those when I started brewing. Iirc I got a couple of 5 litre water bottles from asda (about a quid), emptied them and added quite a bit of root ginger (as finely chopped as possible) (about a quid) then topped up with water and added spray malt to the required OG (about 3 quid or you could use glucose for about 2.50). It tasted realy nice but it's one of those drinks which has started giving me indigestion so I could only drink a small glass of it. It was around the 8% mark so a couple of pints in the summer was all that was needed

[Laripu]

My wife who is not a beer drinker, suddenly expressed a wish for me to brew a Ginger beer.
She normally drinks Sherry or more recently wine
I was thinking ABV approx 8%

Since she is not a beer drinker, you'd want to keep the hop rate very low.

Here's a spiced ale I found on Recipator: BahHumBrew. It fits the bill for alcohol and low hop rate, and you can kick up the ginger and eliminate the other spices if you like.

I've made a light carbonated mead as follows:

• 11 lbs (5 kg) light clover honey
  3 ounces of fresh ginger, shredded
  water to 23.5 liters

Boil 10 minutes, cool, and pitch a 1 liter starter made from 2 packages of rehydrated Lalvin champagne yeast. (The primary should still contain the boiled shredded ginger.) When fermentation is complete, siphon to secondary and age 6 months. Batch prime and bottle in small beer bottles. Will contain about 11% alc/vol. Consequently I called it "Old 11-ish". If you use more honey, it will likely not carbonate, but it will still taste good. I did that too once, and called the batch Honeymoonition.

[eddetchon]

I wouldn't bother with hops.

suggestions here seem good but can i also suggest:
- finely grate the ginger on the small teeth of a grater (ie. the mincing teeth)
- add the juice of maybe 3 lemons for a batch of about 8L (i do mine in a 10L pail)
- use a tsp of tartaric acid - helps bring out the fruity flavours
- use some yeast nutrient if you've got any.

I use the ginger at a rate of 2 flat tablespoons of pith and juice per litre but then I only make it as a mildly alcoholic drink (0.5% alc/vol probably) so you may need quite a bit more if you're shooting for 8% to counter the alcohol and residual sweetness you'll get if you also use malt. i usu just use raw sugar. bread yeast from a sachet will work fine btw.

and dry ginger powder can be a nice addition to - throw in a few teaspoons. it'll change the flavour a bit but that's ok. one of the joys of ginger beer is that each batch can vary quite a bit.

finally, be careful not to overprime at the end. i suspect that the ginger itself has sugars that aren't easily fermented and i have had issues with overpriming and very foamy bottles. use plastic bottles for safety!