HomebrewandBeer.com forum

hi. im just looking for an easy recipe for ginger beer. i have the coopers ginger beer kit. what should i add apart from the sugar?

some fresh ginger?

Fresh ginger, cinamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, malt, honey, brown sugar and cloves.

all of that?! do you have quantities of those ingredients that i should use?

thx

you have to have the fresh ginger. maybe 500grams. depends on how much you like ginger..I usually put in heaps of ginger and ginger powder...so maybe 500g of fresh ginger would be ok for you.
just pick the ingredients that you think you would like in your ginger beer. That was just a list of things that I know work in ginger beer.

great thanks. i think il just add some fresh ginger for the 1st attempt.

Im not a great ginger beer drinker but made some recently for some freinds. I got this recipe from Chris on this forum.
Ive had some really good feed back from it. So once youve done your simple GB try this one for somthing with a bit more Zing.


"My personal favourite at the moment (a beautiful summer ginger beer) is:

Coopers GB can
2kg raw sugar (this can be reduced if you want lower alcohol)
100g of brown sugar (50g of brown per 1kg of raw sugar is a good rule of thumb)
juice of 4-6 lemons
1 1/2 inch of fresh peeled (and preferably grated) ginger
1/2 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
8 good shakes of allspice

Simple boil up all the ingredients on the stove for 20mins, add to fermenter, then top up to 18L (if using 1kg of sugar option) or 20L (if using 2kg option).

This is quite gingery, and has a nice background of spice."

I have an AG ginger beer on tap to get me thru the current heatwave (OT - looks like we could beat our 15 day record)

I realise you have a tin of ginger snot to begin with but it was the combo of spices i thought you might be interested in.

For a 20L batch
1kg fresh ginger - whizzed in a food processor, skin and all.
1 lemon thinly sliced
2 cinnamon sticks
8 cloves

Boiled all this for 30 mins.

Back in the kit days i used 2 kg of raw sugar instead of the grain altho i did add LDME on one occasion. Brown sugar would work well too.

Late last year I put down my first Coopers ginger beer. The results were...disappointing (to say the least). The variations posted here have given me much to think about for my next brew but I was wondering if they would be enough to "save" the Coopers GB or if I might be better off trying another brand (since I already know the Coopers base isn't really what I'm after)? I'm pretty new to homebrew so I'm not feeling confident enough to do one from scratch - sticking to the KISS philosophy at the moment.

The prob is getting it to not taste like pepper water. If you keg, then you can crash chill it at the right stage to keep a little sugar left.

I bottle, and haven't bothered with a GB because my options really either include unfermentable sweeteners like lactose or sachharine (like the kits). I have thought of Stevia, but have no idea about it.

You could kill the yeast off like in wine with sulphites, but how do you carb the bottles? A random thought here is that you could ferment at the bottom end of the range for a lager yeast so that there is already dissolved C02 because of the low, kill the yeast and bottle immediately... but I am too lazy for this crazy scheme.

Sounds a bit complicated for me right now, too. In fact, I'm pretty sure I only understand half of it - as I say, I'm pretty new at this. I googled stevia and I see where you're going with that but I think it involves a bit too much work/research for me right now.

I really liked the taste of the wort when I put it down but it was pretty nasty by the time the ferment was finished. The unpleasant aftertaste was less noticeable over time but still wasn't gingery enough nor sweet enough (not a fan of the sweeter ginger beers would just like a little more sweetness).

Thanks heaps for your suggestions.