Fermenting Ginger Ale

[jonnybleu]

Hi everyone, question about fermenting to get a certain % alcohol level in a ginger beer/ale.

I may be wrong in this but:
I have heard that if you let 100% apple juice ferment down to no more sugars you will be at roughly 5% and apple juice is ~ 10% fermentable sugars as far as I know.

I would like to take this same idea to a ginger beer, adding about 10% sugar to the mix and fermenting down till little or no sugar is left to have ~5% alcohol and then bottle and use a bit of a sugar at capping to carbonate.

I would think this would be enough to keep things from getting too explosive if you know what I mean.

Now my main question, are there any sugars out there that leave a sweet taste even after fermenting away? I would like to make a sweeter batch and I am afraid that just standard white/cane sugar will result in a very dry taste. I heard maybe corn sugar would be the way to go? Any other suggestions for a good type of sugar if wanting a sweet taste? Also, is my 10% sugar/volume for 5% ROUGHLY correct?

I know I could just make a syrup to taste and force carbonate but honestly in my opinion the taste of a fermented/yeast ginger ale is so much better than a force carbonated one.

Thank you!

 

[TheBigLebrewsk1]

Hi everyone, question about fermenting to get a certain % alcohol level in a ginger beer/ale.

I may be wrong in this but:
I have heard that if you let 100% apple juice ferment down to no more sugars you will be at roughly 5% and apple juice is ~ 10% fermentable sugars as far as I know.

I would like to take this same idea to a ginger beer, adding about 10% sugar to the mix and fermenting down till little or no sugar is left to have ~5% alcohol and then bottle and use a bit of a sugar at capping to carbonate.

I would think this would be enough to keep things from getting too explosive if you know what I mean.

Now my main question, are there any sugars out there that leave a sweet taste even after fermenting away? I would like to make a sweeter batch and I am afraid that just standard white/cane sugar will result in a very dry taste. I heard maybe corn sugar would be the way to go? Any other suggestions for a good type of sugar if wanting a sweet taste? Also, is my 10% sugar/volume for 5% ROUGHLY correct?

I know I could just make a syrup to taste and force carbonate but honestly in my opinion the taste of a fermented/yeast ginger ale is so much better than a force carbonated one.

Thank you!

I think your numbers are roughly correct. I believe unsweetened apple juice fermented out to .999 will result in about 6% ABV. Apple juice has approximately 10% more sugar per ounce in it than Ginger ale, which would put you at about 5.4% if it fermented down to .999 which it won't because of the water added to ginger ale. So 5.1-5.3 % is my guess, all other things being equal.

I believe you cannot back sweeten and bottle condition as the yeast will consume any sugar. Perhaps there is an artificial sweetener that is not fermentable by the yeast, olestra, aspartame etc, but I really don't know. In the cider world, fermentation has to stop, you add a conditioner to prevent refermentation, then you add your invert sugar to taste. I don't think you can do both back sweeten and bottle ferment.