Bottling day

[Wolf]

Here are some pics from my weekend bottling. I do a simple ginger beer, pretty small scale as you can see.


Gingerbeer


I siphon it to the juice jug and then distribute it to the bottles with the jug.


I fill the sink with boiling water to sanities the bottles.




the first three beers.


the beer


I'll wait at least a week before I start drinking them. After two weeks they should be pretty good.

[stevezx7r]

Ginger beer is great for a summer bbq - nice tall glass and plenty of ice. Unfortunately, I can't drink it anymore as my stomach think it's battery acid.

[Redbloke]

... I must be a glutton for punishment but I really enjoy the bottling process! It's good to see the finished product of our labour of love

Wolf, the labels on the bottles would have to go, they would annoy me

Cheers

[Wolf]

its sort of my own recipe, I use fresh ginger and sugar, this time mostly white with a bit of demerara for color. I tend to experiment so it always turns out a bit different. From the early samples this batch will be good. After experimenting with lemons and pineapple in the last few batches Ive gone back to a pure ginger and sugar recipe.

Every time I do the bottling a bit more of the labels come off. A few more batches and the bottles will have delabled themselves.

[Wolf]

fresh ginger and lots of it. I experimented a bit with dry ginger powder but I didn't like it.

[Redbloke]

Got the recipe for that ginger beer, looks interesting

[Wolf]

I don't follow a very strict recipe, i tend to experiment a bit and get lots of variation between batches.

Ive tried various fruit additives and found a bit of lemon is pretty nice, but this time like I said I went for a more pure ginger flavor.

This time I used more sugar then ever before. A whole 4kg bag of white sugar went into that carboy. It was still pretty sweet when I bottled it.

As for ginger i went to the grocery store and filled up one of the plastic produce bags as full as I could. I find that its a lot better to peel the ginger. (tho more time consuming) After its all peeled I slice it up as I add it to the boil, my pot is small so It takes me about 4 pot fulls to fill the carboy. I add the ginger and sugar as the waters boiling and boil it for a good little while. I usually let a few chunks of soggy ginger slip into the carboy.

I let it cool overnight and pitch the yeast early the next morning.
Ive experimented with yeast a little too, Ive tried coopers beer yeast and Fleischman's bakers yeast and oddly enough I seem to prefer the bakers yeast.

This batch brewed in the carboy for only two weeks before I bottled it, so it was still noticeably active and sweet when I bottled it. I usually dilute it a bit with water when I bottle it, this time I used less water in the diluted ones and half of them I bottled raw. I was going for a more stronger ginger burn this time. diluting it with water clears it up a bit and makes the beer alot lighter. sometimes I enjoy that but this time I wanted a stronger beer.

I think next time I bottle I'll cook up some more ginger water and dilute them with that to get even more ginger flavor! I like a good strong ginger burn and I find the ginger flavor masks the alcohol content nicely.