Ingredients
- 2kg fresh Australian Ginger
- 3x Lemons
- ~500g Dark Brown Sugar
- ~250g Raw Sugar
- ~250g Dextrose
- 120g Maltodextrin
- 500g Lactose
- 500g Honey
- 3x cinnamon sticks
- 1x whole nutmeg
- 4g Yeast Nutrient
- 1x Coopers kit yeast (from Heritage Lager)
First, I chopped and crushed the ginger and lemon, and boiled in a grain bag for hours. I then left it sit in the pot in the fridge for a couple of days (due to time commitments rather than methodology). Eventually, I got around to brewing it….
I squeezed as much of the juice out of the bag, and then brought this ‘wort’ back to the boil, having added the whole spices. It then sat on simmer with the lid on for a while longer to get the essence of the spices into the wort. I then added the fermenting sugars. The original plan was to use 1kg of Dark Brown Sugar – however, Mrs Ravenwolfe used about half a pack the night before to make Sticky Date Pudding muffins; i didn’t even have half-kilo of dextrose lying around, so I had to top it all off with raw sugar. Needless to say there is now NO sugar in the house at all…. let that be a lesson to us all – ensure your brewing ingredients are hidden from baking wives.
Then it was just a case of adding the other sugars (non-fermentable) and the honey. The honey and the lactose will make it somewhat sweeter, but also a bit drier I expect. Strain out the bits of spice, pour into the fermenter, and top water up to 21 litres. I then added the nutrient.
With the yeast, I rehydrated it, and then poured it into the wort. Giving it a good stir, splash away, as the oxygen helps yeast do its thing with stuff like this – unlike beer, there isn’t much for yeast to munch on (can’t use malt as this is designed to be Gluten-free), hence why we add nutrient. The honey will help with this also.
- 19 July OG = 1.040
- 9 Aug SG = 1.012
- 13 Aug SG = 1.009
- 17 Aug FG = 1.009
bottled 18/8 and primed with standard measure of raw sugar per bottle.
ALC/VOL. 4.07 %
