It's been asked before but not really answered so I'll try again...does anyone have a clone recipe for Crabbies Original Alcoholic Ginger Beer?
I would love an answer to this question as well. I just bought ingredients yesterday to wing it but I would like a good guideline.
I am new with the hydrometer so readings may be off but I got an OG of 1.6
A) Ferment it dry and backsweeten with xylitol or lactose to taste then bottle carb with sugar. I figure it will hit 6-8% if I let it go. Might even be ok just like that
B) Ferment till it tastes right but still has sweetness and bottle carb with the residual sugar left in it.
I've started a 1 gallon batch using a basic recipe that I came up with from reading the Alcoholic Ginger Beer thread the the GingerAle thread. I'll start there and modify as needed.
1 Gallon water
2/3 lb fresh ginger chopped in a food processor
1/2 cup Turbinado sugar
Juice of 1 lemon plus zest
Juice of 1 lime plus zest
Red Star Champagne Yeast
Bring water, sugar and ginger to a boil, turn off heat.
Add zest and steep for 1 hour.
Add juice and strain into fermenter.
Cool overnight and pitch yeast.
Makes 1 gallon
How'd the recipe turn out. Any of the recipes...
Any more word on this jcoxen? Planning on making your recipe tonight. Is cooling overnight necessary? Was thinking primary for two weeks then bottle. I'm planning on back sweetening with a non fermentable sugar and then bottle conditioning with with priming sugar so I can hopefully get something close to crabbies that's sweet and carbed in the bottle. Thanks.
Don't shoot, I don't see any new post on this topic, and this thread isn't that old.
I think you are way off track if trying to clone Crabbie's Ginger beer. If you read the ingredient label it pretty much tells you the recipe. The hard part if figuring out the proportions.
1) Carbonated Water
2) Sugar
3) Alcohol
4) Grape juice concentrate
5) Citric acid
6) Caramel (colour)
7) FLAVOUR (including ginger extracts)
8) Yeast <dead or alive???, maybe it's marmite>
9) a bunch of chemicals apparently used since 1801
I am 100% sure that this is not a fermented product. They list alcohol as an ingredient, so it's not a product of fermentation. It's basically just vodka, lime and ginger beer soda aka Moscow Mule.
You could reverse engineer it. De-carbonate it and measure the gravity to determine sugar content, take the PH to figure out how much citric acid to add, but adjust for grape juice acidity. Everything else is guess work.
I'm not gonna shoot. You could very well be right. The Crabbie's website says, "Crabbies Original Alcoholic Ginger Beer is carefully crafted from a recipe using ginger shipped from the Far East which is cold steeped for up to six weeks and then combined with four secret ingredients to produce its deep, deliciously spicy flavor." So it's entirely possible that it's nothing more than infused neutral spirit.
But where's the fun in that?
I was reading up on how Ginger beer is made. You start off with making a Ginger Bug. Yes bug, it sounds kind of scary and it is. You shred organic ginger, mix it with water and sugar and then let it sit on the counter until it naturally ferments. Apparently with wild yeast and Lacto bacteria. You then use this as the starter for making Ginger beer.
That's approximately how I make it, but you won't get an alcoholic beverage using that method. The dominant fermentation byproduct will be lactic acid.
There are non-alcoholic Ginger Beer recipes on the net that read more like Kombucha or natural vinegar than beer. For instance - http://www.instructables.com/id/The-REAL-ginger-beer-recipe/. I don't know any way to make one of those alcoholic short of just pouring in grain alcohol so as far as I can see we're back to either fermenting (as in beer) or infusing.
Just thought I'd give an update on my ginger beer. I followed jcoxen's recipe, thanks so much man. I let it ferment for 2 weeks. Then to try something different I back sweetened to taste with Xylitol, which is non fermentable, and bottle conditioned it. In two weeks I popped one open, perfectly carbbed. It tastes almost exactly like crabbies. I had them side by side and mine was a little spicier and not quite as sweet but really close. I could make it right on with more back sweetener. The color is different but Crabbies says on the bottle they add coloring. This is gonna be a regular in my house cause it's so easy to make. Thanks jcoxen.
Tried a couple different versions of a ginger beer. My most recent 5 gal recipe:
Steep 2 Lb. Ginger in 2.5 gal water at 150 F for 30 min.
Bring to boil. Add 3 Lb. Sugar and 1 Lb Honey
Boil for 15
Fill with cooling water to 5 gal
Ferment 1 Week
SG 1.030 (wanted a session beer)
FG 1.000
I back sweetened to 1.010. Added some gelatin in the keg to clarify. Waiting for that.
Initial impression is that the ginger flavor is a bit more muted than it has been in the past - I think that's the honey. I want to experiment with dry hopping ginger, maybe adding a steeping grain to the current recipe for body and color, or maybe even trying an amber ale recipe and using ginger either as the hops or as a dry hop. See what happens.
I used US-O4 for this particular batch. Gelatin didn't clarify hardly at all - probably the milkiness of the ginger is to blame for that.wich yeast you used for this?
i don't know if any, how much pectine does ginger has, maybe thats the cause of turbity as pectine won't come off with clarifyng methods as gelatin or cold crashing.I used US-O4 for this particular batch. Gelatin didn't clarify hardly at all - probably the milkiness of the ginger is to blame for that.
i don't know if any, how much pectine does ginger has, maybe thats the cause of turbity as pectine won't come off with clarifyng methods as gelatin or cold crashing.
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