We bought a glass carboy in Vancouver and brought it back with us, along with some brewing yeast. There’s nowhere nearby to get beer-making ingredients, but there is one thing that there’s plenty of up here: ginger. We have previously made very fizzy non-alcoholic ginger beer in Nalgene bottles by adding ginger, sugar, and bread yeast, which is an easy and effective way to make a fun beverage (takes about 2 days)*. But now it was time to get serious.
*Caution: this process creates high pressure and can be highly explosive
Ginger Beer Log
Jan 13 (3am): yeast added to wort Ingredients: - 1.5 kg white sugar - 10 L water - 250 g peeled, grated ginger - 1 pkg EC-118 champagne yeast Jan 14: 150mL sampled, tastes very sweet, good amount of ginger Jan 20: 200mL sampled, tastes less sweet, very good! Jan 21: put 1L in a Nalgene with 1/2 tsp of brown sugar, 1cm air space Jan 22: tried Nalgene ginger beer: not very carbonated, not sweet - could use more sugar and time Jan 25: distinct alcohol taste, not sweet, but good flavour - filled 2 x 1L Nalgene, added 1 tbsp brown sugar to each Jan 28: good amount of sweet and fizzy - not high pressure, but distinct bubbles Jan 29: started new 1L Nalgene and 473mL glass bottle (with minimal sugar) Feb 2: opened yellow Nalgene, no fizz on opening but some in drink, low sweet, strong tang flavour, insignificant fizz, definite alcohol taste (somewhat beer-like) Feb 7: opened glass bottle - no fizz, no sweet, a bit bitter - refilled yellow Nalgene with 2 tbsp white sugar Feb 10: not sweet or too ginger-y or alcoholic. Tastes like weird water, not fizzy. Feb 12: filled 0.5L bottle (2 tsp sugar), purple Nalgene (4 tsp sugar), 1L beer bottle (4 tsp sugar) Feb 15: opened 0.5L bottle - no fizz, sugar has not been eaten by yeast (sweet taste), so yeast has clearly died somewhere in this process. Alcohol content doesn't kill yeast until about 15%, so it's probably not that. Mysterious. Feb 19: opened 1L beer bottle - not very fizzy, but we were discussing that maybe champagne yeast makes smaller, less aggressive bubbles, so maybe the yeast is still alive and kicking. Subjective opinion is that the final alcohol level is probably around 7%. Feb 22: opened yellow Nalgene - tons of fizz! Maybe we just haven't been letting it sit long enough? Alcohol level is for sure at least 7%. The next batch of ginger beer was started on Feb 19 with an ale yeast - we will see what difference that makes.