AG# 45 - All Grain Ginger Ale -Thoughts Appreciated!

[floydmeddler]

Time has come for me to brew a ginger ale. Here's the recipe:

Untitled Recipe
21-B Seasonal/Winter Specialty Spiced Beer

Size: 25.0 L
Efficiency: 80.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%

Original Gravity: 1.052 (1.026 - 1.120)
Terminal Gravity: 1.013 (0.995 - 1.035)
Color: 18.19 (1.0 - 50.0)
Alcohol: 5.06% (2.5% - 14.5%)
Bitterness: 40.8 (0.0 - 100.0)

Ingredients:
5 kg Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt - TTS
200 g British Crystal 55°L
160 g Chocolate Malt
100 g Torrified Wheat
300 g Ginger (fresh) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
50 g First Gold TTS (7.2%) - added during boil, boiled 90 min
25 g Bobek - TTS (4.5%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
Yeast - W.J King's brewery yeast

Want it to be pretty damn gingery. 300g does (even to me now) sound like too much. However, research here and there leads me to believe that this is what's needed for a gingery brew. May add some more spices too.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

[Wolfy]

Chilli and/or lemon can often help bring out the ginger flavours (if you are into those things).

[critch]

i did a comercial ginger porter last christmas. i put approximately 84g in the amount your making, while the ginger was present it certainly wasnt in your face and the taste faded fairly quickly as the product aged.

marble in manchester do a beautiful ginger ale and they use powdered ginger apparantly, the flavour is more consistent according to them.

my mate has used ginger in a syrup he bought from sainsburys to good effect as well

ginger added early on was once used for bitterness in ye olde pre hop days iirc

[dave-o]

Want it to be pretty damn gingery. 300g does (even to me now) sound like too much.

Even 500g was not enough, i found. It had a clear ginger tang, but it was nothing close to Old Jamaica or Idris Fiery, as i was aiming for.

The dryness didn't seem to quite go with the ginger taste either, and if i did it again i might mash high or add maltodextrin.

I'm not sure 5 mins is long enough to get all the ginger juice out. Perhaps consider putting it in a muslin bag so you can fish it out and put it in the fermenter too.

[critch]

if its added too early in the boil the flavour compounds in the fresh ginger will sublime and youll be left with nowt in the way of flavour, just the bitterness aspect

imo 300g of grated root ginger will be more than enough for five gallons, if not way too much.@10mins at the latest!

as stated before i did the equivilent of 16.6g per gallon and it was soft but very noticible. i made 2 batches of 360 gallons and added 6 kilos of grated fresh ginger to each basicly 600g per bbl or 84g 5 per gallon, it worked well

[DarloDave]

I had the Williams Bros Ginger ale a few days ago, fantastic beer, im sure I read it was unhopped too.