Ginger beer worries

Hi all,

Just tried to make my first home brew from a few recipes online / advice from a seasoned home brewer.
Used mixture of dried ginger and grated frozen fresh ginger plus 4 limes. Added two tbsp of golden syrup and 1kg of brewing sugar plus ingredients to 5 ltrs water and boiled for around 2 hours.
Added to filtered water upto 19ltrs and added the pitched yeast.
Initial gravity reading was 1.018 (so not very high).

2 Days in and when I took lid off to see if anything was happening there's some small bubbles but no head. Lot of sediment dropped to the bottom. Yeast has all been mixed in.
Is this all normal for 2 days in?

Should I consider adding some extra (brown) sugar (disolved in water) and potentially some more yeast (bought 5g of champagne yeast) to increase alcohol content etc?

Cheers,

Tom

With a gravity that low, fermentation probably only took a few hours. Two days later, you probably missed it. Do you have the ability to take a gravity reading? That would definitely confirm that fermentation occurred.

1.018 is indeed a very low starting gravity. If you fully attenuated all sugars (1.000), somewhat unlikely, you would have a 2.25% abv brew. On the positive side you'll be able to drink a lot of it! If you want to boost it, sugar is one way to go. Boil the sugar in a little water (as little as needed to dissolve it), cool it, then add to the beer. Unless you pitched very very little yeast the first time around, you don't need the champagne yeast. Still plenty left in there.

Don't understand why the Gravity was so low though, added over 1KG of sugar which is all any of the brew kits for 20Ltr require.
Maybe the reading was wrong?
I'll take a reading tonight and probably try adding another 500g sugar (boiled) and potentially more yeast -> can't guarantee the quality or type of yeast I used initially as it was in a sachet simply marked "yeast".

other than the kilo of sugar, what other fermentables did you add? i just did a quick back of the envelope calculation and 1.018 is about right if you added nothing else. 2 spoons of lyle's isn't going to get you much, and the limes and ginger won't be contributing anything. are there any other fermentables you lumped into your "plus ingredients"?

please post your full & detailed recipe, if you can.

tmdye said:

Don't understand why the Gravity was so low though, added over 1KG of sugar which is all any of the brew kits for 20Ltr require.

Click to expand...

yes, but those kits also have malt extract that provide typically a little over half of the fermentables (aka gravity). you've essentially made half a recipe, so you've got half the gravity of a typical brew.

i strongly suspect you don't need to add more yeast. should plenty still in there.

BTW, without any barley or hops in your brew i would hesitate to call it a "beer"... but that's just me being taxonomically annoying certainly doesn't mean this won't be tasty!

Seriously, what is in your "plus ingredients?"

Are you trying to make beer out of only sugar and lime juice dude?

Unless by brewing sugar you mean malt extract, which I suppose could still be considered "sugar"....

haha fair point on the 'beer' comment.
A ginger beer is quite an english thing then I guess.
I took the advice of a guy at work who's won home brewing awards and have added another hit of sugar.

Ingredients were the Dryed ginger, grated ginger, limes and sugar.
Just did a reading, was down to just around 1.005, after adding more sugar went to 1.020 so should be alright content wise when it's finished it's fermentation.

Wasn't as strong tasting as I thought it'd be when I tried it, guess I'll use more fresh ginger next time to get more flavour out.

be careful about ginger... it can sneak up on you. i think you've done it right: do a little, see how the final product tastes, then adjust a future recipe.

i've have an over-gingered beer. not nice at all.