h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi

I am hoping someone can help. I have made some ginger beer with lots of root ginger and lemons and went a bit mad with the sugar (can't follow a recipe if I think I could make it better!) I tasted it and it was very sharp and yeasty still so I added some more sugar - I thnk I ended up feeding the yeast again. It has now had 3lbs of sugar to nearly 2 gallons of liquid and bubbled continuously for 4 days. I think it has now stopped fermenting. Can I add some sugar now to make it taste better? Any ideas gratefully received.

Fippy

I will try too

Is this still the first fermentation?

If so you need to filter, dilute and bottle the result - and add sugar for the yeast to work on to make the beer fizzy.

Once in the bottle the yeast will turn the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide, until either the sugar runs out or the alcohol content reaches the yeast's limit of tolerence.

With a plastic bottle you can see the gas being produced and expanding it, and after a few weeks the bottle is really hard. Then you put it into the fridge for a few days and the yeast will settle to the bottom and leave the liquid fairly clear.

I make ginger beer in a demijohn with six pints of water plus the water I use when liquidising the ginger root.

I put a pint of the liquid into each of 6 2 litre bottles, with several tablespoons of lemon juice and 200gm of sugar, then almost fill it, squash it a little to expel the air and put on the top. Some bottles need to be shaken to get them started, but usually they will expand in a week and then get fizzier for the next two, when using brewers' yeast. The result is very pleasant, but the settling is important or you will get an upset stomach from the yeast.

Anne Croucher

I accidentally made some really strong ginger beer. I bottled it after following the recipe. It was the last bottle from the primary fermentation and only half filled the 2ltr bottle, this means it had the majority of the yeast and active ingredients. I expelled most of the air and put it in a corner and forgot about it for about 9 weeks. The bottle was rock hard when I found it, and took ages for the gas to escape.

I could taste that it was strong because of the smell of alcohol, also it was a lot less sweet than previous batches. It tasted like a dry white cider. This may be because I used lager yeast rather than bakers yeast.

If you expel the gas from time to time, squeeze the bottles to remove the air space and tighten up the bottles, they will continue to ferment and the Ginger Beer alcohol content will get stronger and stronger, but it will also become less sweet (drier) and may eventually loose it's fizz as the alcohol level eventually kills off the yeast and most of the sugar has been consumed.

To me it sounds as though you are still in the primary fermentation stage. You may have skipped the bottling stage. You need to bottle it as soon as possible and leave it for quite a bit longer (2-3 weeks) to get some decent fizz into it. Test your plastic bottles now and again for firmness (you need to leave about 4 inches of air in the bottle and squeeze them so that the liquid reaches the top and you then screw it up tightly. The bottles will refill with air (well, CO2 anyway) and the pressure will build up.