On the other hand I also like 'ginger' beer (anyone tried the Beartown Ginger Beer?). So I had a bit of an experiment with ginger to try to make one myself'. I used about 500 gms of grated root ginger (cost abot £1:50 from Morrisons) boiled it for 45 mins, used the resulting fluid to make up a Muntons wheat beer kit with and wrapped the remnants of the ginger in muslin and steeped the lot in the fermenter with the fermenting beer. This has a definite taste of ginger. It's not very strong (3.6%) but I think it will be great on a hot summers afternoon in the garden (that's if we have a summer this year). It is currently maturing, if anyones interested i'll let you know what it's like when it's ready in another three weeks.
Getting back to the honey. I read elsewhere, on this or some other site, that you need to pasturise your honey before using it to make beer as it comes natural with all the accompanying bacteria etc that could grow in your fermenter once they are no longer prevented from doing so by the concentrated sugar in the honey. To pasturise the honey you need to heat it to 80 degrees C for thirty mins apparently. I did this in the oven (and then burnt my hand on the jug, like a pillock
).JCB
