“Jenny's Ginger" Beer

Brew date: January 20, 2013
1 gal

Waiting for my chocolate porter to condition, I decided to submit to my wife's repeated requests to brew a ginger beer. This being my first "soda," I adapted my recipe from this one at SidneyHappyHour.com. Overall, the batch probably took about an hour.

As an experiment, I decided to follow the bottling recommendation from Jeffrey Morgenthaler's website and ferment one 16-oz bottle's worth of ginger beer in the bottle for 48 hrs before transferring it to the refrigerator to cease fermentation. Since the bottle is capped, I pray it doesn't explode. It was very difficult to decide how much yeast to add. His recipe calls for "25 granules." I more likely wound up with 50.

Ingredients:

• 15 g cream of tartar (boil)
• 1.5 lemon zest (10 min)
• 1 lime zest (10 min)
• 31 g ginger grated (10 min)
• 350 g brown sugar (10 min)
• 1.5 lemon juice (primary)
• 1 lime juice (primary)
• 1 packet Red Star Pasteur Champagne dry yeast

Instructions:

Add cream of tartar to a little over 1 gal cold water. Bring to boil. Add lemon and lime zest, grated ginger, and brown sugar. Boil 10 min. Chill mixture to 70 'F. Add fresh squeezed lemon and lime juice. Transfer to 1 gal carboy/jug. Pitch packet of dry yeast. Gently swirl to mix in yeast. Ferment at 64-66 'F for 1-2 weeks.

OG: 1.035

TG: 1.008-1.010