ginger beer to spirit

[Scott Dorsey]

Part of the issue with ginger beer is that the stuff that makes ginger aromatic is somewhat more volatile than alcohol, and it's going to come out in the heads. If you run ginger beer (or a higher proof ginger wine) through a pot still, most of the actual ginger flavour is going to disappear completely.

Freeze distillation removes water, leaving behind the lighter fractions, and consequently leaves behind a lot more of the flavour of the original mash. Unfortunately it can leave behind undesirable flavours as well, and the stuff that causes headaches. But it is much more apt to result in an interesting product given ginger beer to begin with.

If you really want to start distilling, there are a number of homemade pot still options including the classic Kenmore water distiller. They all have various advantages and disadvantages depending on what you are trying to distill and whether you need more diffuse heating to prevent pectins from burning or whether you can live just with an immersion heating element.

--scott

[Bryan]

All true, but I expect that there are plenty of folks out there who don't even want to see the word beer today,

--Bryan

[Scott Dorsey]

Hey, man, I would have told you to leave that stuff alone and stick with the veuve cliquot.

--scott

[john brook]

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Interesting. How much sugar would go with the 2kg ginger and 25 litre of water please? As a newcomer I'm trying to find out roughly how much sugar turns to how much alcohol.

[nicknoxx]

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I've always used 0.5 Kg sugar per 1% abv in 5 gal as a guide - seems about right

[Dick Adams]

2kg of ginger seems like overkill to me. If you add whole or sliced ginger root, it will candy.

Since Ginger is a spice rather than a sugar, the following is probably correct:

For 35 liters of water:

Sugar SG ABV

----- ----- _____

5 kg 1.075 10.12 6 kg 1.090 11.97 7 kg 1.105 12.78 8 kg 1.120 15.54 9 kg 1.136 17.36

Dick

[dennis]

I think you will struggle to find a yeast that will ferment to 17.36, most die at around 15 or less. This is why wine tends to be 14-15% AFAIK

[Scott]

Looking at the Wyeast website, most ale yeasts can handle about 10% max. Wine yeasts tend to handle 14-17%.

[Scott Dorsey]

The turboyeasts used for some spirits production will ferment considerably higher, BUT at the expense of having a lot of off-tastes. Since these are mostly heavier molecules that come out in the distillation tails, that's not a problem, although it would be a serious problem if you use them for something that wasn't distilled.

If you are making non-distilled beverages, in most cases you make sure the original sugar content is sufficiently high that, after the yeast dies off, you have as much sugar as you want in it. You use the yeast attenuation to set the proof. If you are looking to make a super-dry beverage, though, you will want the sugar to run out before the yeast does, and so you use the sugar content to set the proof.

Champagne is a special case of the latter; the sugar runs out, then you add a little more sugar (dosage) to ferment in-bottle. For brut champagnes you add only enough dosage to make it fizzy while still not killing off the yeast.

--scott

[Joel]

While I ahgree it can be hard to punch up above ~13-14% with most beer/wine yeasts, I'd not put a hard limit of 10% on any beer yeast. I've fermented more than a few batches of beer and mead using beer yeast and had no trouble getting above 10%. Mostly using British, Belgian, and American labeled strains.

[Martin Bonner]

And the home-brewing kit exported to Saudi Arabia. It came with lots of recipes for what you can do with a tin of malt extract. One of the recipes was "Hop flavoured vinegar". One bullet point in the recipe was "at this point you have beer, but it would be illegal to drink it. You must allow it to go sour ..."

[James Silverton]

Martin wrote on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:06:20 -0800 (PST):

A bit like the bottles of unpasteurized apple juice (cider) sold in Prohibition times with the warning, "Keep closed to prevent fermentation". Incidentally, even now, a little fermentation improves the taste of apple juice a lot.

[geoff]

Rochefort and Chimay both produce live beers at 10% or more IIRC

[Frank Erskine]

Chimay gives me a bad headache... :-)

It's very nice though.

[geoff]

Yeah, 20 bottles and that's me knackered the next day

I'm on the wine tonight - stop tempting me

[a]

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Just keep adding sugar until the yeast karks it with the alcohol content. Champagne yeast can be coaxed to about 18%. Just start taking it easy when you get past 12% or so. Only add maybe a cup of sugar at a time in a 25 litre batch after the 12% mark but you should get a feel for how the yeast is coping as the days go by.

[a]

Hi Dick,

The ginger is for flavour and yes, 2kg mincewd in the food processor gives quite a 'pronounced' flavour. Just right for those of us who love ginger, probably too strong for 75% of the world. :-)

[spamtrap1888]

Fresh apple cider I buy at the farmers markets inflates their plastic jugs after a week or so -- a very pleasing beverage.