welcome friends today we are going to make ginger beer and we're gonna make a
naturally carbonated or naturally fermented ginger beer using our homemade
ginger bug and this really is just a yeast starter culture of wild yeast
starter culture using the wild yeast that naturally occur on the outside of
ginger and if you take a look you can see that video which leads into this
video now I don't normally do it this way I will make this down in the brewery
and then I'll ferment it and I will end up forced carbonating it rather than
carbonating it in the bottle so a little bit different but the steps are the same
now just because I like filling without a safety net
I'm gonna try something different I don't normally put this in the blender I
will usually use a food processor and grate the ginger but I thought you know
what let's put it in a blender and see if we can blend it fairly smooth and
extract as much flavor as we possibly can well that worked really well I think
that worked really well so we'll put this into a pot into this pot really
gingery I'll just use a little bit of the rest of the water to rinse out the
jug yeah you're right I spilled it's just water into the pot now last little
bit of water and like with all of our recipes everything is below the video in
the show notes you can catch everything down there so next in is sugar and this
is an unrefined cane sugar I've done it with white sugar I've done it with this
sugar I got to tell you there's really not a whole lot of difference maybe just
a little bit of depth of flavor with this type of sugar but it's not so much
that it's gonna throw you next in is the spicing now I really like my ginger beer
to have a little bit more of a complex flavor than just ginger but if you want
just ginger you don't have to put these in so first in our some allspice berries
then some cloves and if you hate cloves don't use them peppercorns star anis and
cardamom pods so we want to bring this pot up to sort of a low simmer we want
to stir everything together get it warm dissolve the sugar and start bringing
all of those flavors out of the ginger and the spice into the water so a low
simmer for about ten minutes and we're gonna turn the pot off we're gonna leave
it and let it come down to room temperature on its own before we move on
to the next step so it's actually tomorrow by the time this cooled down to
room temperature and I did a couple of other things I couldn't get back to it
so I put a lid on it left it overnight and that will actually probably work to
our benefit it'll give all of the flavors time to steep together now I've
got a fine mesh strainer and we're going to strain out all of the solids without
spilling everywhere great now straining at once is probably enough and you've
got this pulp left over alright let's give that a taste let's get let's get a
couple of tasting spoons this pulp you've got most of the flavor out of it
it should be in there but there's still a lot of ginger flavor in there I'm
going to turn that into a cake and that link will show up somewhere around us
now for this liquid you could strain it a second time through some cheesecloth
if you wanted to totally up to you I don't know I think I might do it great
so time to taste it very important to taste it at this point this is your last
chance to make any changes with the flavor and there's no sense going
through the rest of the process if you don't like what it tastes like
so let's see it's got that it's got that ginger heat it's a little bit too sweet
but as soon as it's fermented it's going to the sweetness is going to subside and
a lot of those other flavors are coming through so you get a little bit of the
peppercorn you get a little bit of the star nice I think this is going to be
really great next up is pitching the east but before I picture the east in
this video I'm going to direct you to another video where I'm going to test
this and we're going to figure out how much alcohol is actually produced so if
you're just in that video click on it and if you're not what's putting the
ginger bug okay well just strain this out now for this amount of liquid if you
brew beer I know that you're all down with doing the calculations to figure
out how much yeast is probably in this amount of liquid now it's yeast you need
in here to get the whole thing going and if you do those calculations because
you're a brewer do them this is for me this is a kitchen sink project and I'm
looking at this I give it a smell it's pretty strong I think I've got a really
good amount of yeast going on in here I don't think I need that much somewhere
between half and three quarters of a cup is all I need to get this going
so I just strain out the ginger bits and these ones i discard now the ginger bug
needs a refresh in a top-up and we'll deal with that in the ginger bug video
but essentially you just add a little bit more water you put in some more
ginger and you throw in some more sugar and everything's fine
so take the bug that I've strained out and we just pour that into the rest of
our mixture and give it a good stir now I've put a baking tray down because I
know I'm gonna spill I've got a funnel and I've got beer bottles so I've got
flip-top beer bottles that are self-sealing and I've got
stubbies which take a crown cap and you seal them any way you bottle it is fine
but make sure you actually get bottles that can take the pressure if you get
decorative bottles that have these flip tops you could end up in a bit of
trouble down the road and that's not a good thing to have so we fill up the
bottles and of course everything has been cleaned and sanitized I think that
should be a given whenever we do anything in the kitchen it's been
cleaned it's sanitized you're ready to go you're not using dirty bottles I'm
gonna give you more credit than probably most people will you know that so we
don't fill it all the way the top leave a bit of headroom
so that the gas can expand and for these ones you just seal it like that and
you're done the studies are essentially the same just a smaller amount I like to
have a smaller size if I'm having one on my own I'm not sharing with somebody
it's nice just to open a small bottle rather than a larger one so I do two
sizes but of course it doesn't really matter you could do this in any size
bottle you could do this in a two-liter pop bottle if you wanted to do you do it
in a much larger jug it really is up to you I just like these studies because it
reminds me of the 1980s all beer in Canada up until I don't know the mid
1980s was sold in this style of bottle didn't matter what brand it was they all
came at least in Ontario where I lived they all came in this stubby bottle so
these bottles take a crown cap closure and I've got them in a little bit of
water with some sanitizer just to keep them clean and I've got a couple
different mechanisms to close the bottle but this is probably the cheapest one
and it's got a magnet so you put the cap on the magnet put the cap on top of the
bottle and squeeze and press and sealed onto the rest okay i'll bottled-up I'll
see you in a bit a week right here and we're gonna do a taste
right okay do I need to start an order um so that's one day on the counter and
then into the fridge two days three days four days okay
so crack em open I've got a just in case oh yeah something different I didn't
expect as much carbonation in that one so if you won't go for that one and I
will start with number two so are you just I'm what are you expecting for
flavor differences I'm expecting differences in carbonation mostly okay
and there will be a difference in the amount of alcohol so two days on the
counter that's some good carbonation so oh I didn't pour my to it but hey that's
a completely different color um interesting
three days of carbonation yeah cuz clearly right that's good yeah so in
terms of carbonation I think two days on the counter is gonna get you where you
need to be and 44 days might be too many and it might be just right depending
upon what you like out of it but yeah you can see okay
so that's four days four days is too many complete disaster well not a
disaster but you can see there's a very distinct color change to the here
between these two but not so much the last three so that's the yeast eating
through everything changing the color okay so let's flavor-wise
let's give it a go yeah that's very gingery very gingery see now is there
gonna be a different alcohol content is there alcohol at all in this it's ginger
beer there will be a difference in alcohol content and I've got a separate
video link we'll come out here somewhere where I'm testing the amount of alcohol
so that's the number one that's it's here I'm gonna have you taste it first
completely different yeah there's a complete change complete change like
that it's a lighter much lighter for as much as this one's injury that was
injury this one it's a lighter somehow the heat is gone almost don't the bite
so just saying you'd like this one better no no no I like the bite yes I
like the bite of that one better oh wait a second the heats coming on now yeah
yeah so the heats coming on now so I haven't
tried that one yet but there's number three give that a try
interesting it I can't put my I can't think of how the flavors change but I
feel like it's changed again it has changed it has changed now here's the
thing if it if you so yeah if you put this in after one day you take out a
bottle and you taste it you go that's not quite right you can pull all of them
back out of the fridge and leave them on the counter for another day at room
temperature and then put them back in because putting them in the fridge
doesn't kill the yeast it just puts it to sleep slows it down it's still
fermenting in the fridge at fridge temperature this one even has a
different smell wow that's even different again yeah I'm
amazed I was not expecting such a flavor change between the for the you know
carbonation yeah that makes perfect sense
active yeast wobbles that one is completely different so these two are
probably the most alike but like the difference being this and this is
completely different so this has gone over some cliff yeah I think these are
too these are the two I would go so I would me personally I would stick with
two or three days in each case the the yeast and whatever else is in there
because we don't know what's in the ginger bug unless you take it somewhere
and have it tell did you don't know what's in the ginger bug but definitely
yeast is full-on working in these and this one has a yeastier smell to it I
think
it is definitely more beer like except done definitely more beer like but lower
on the ginger flavor yeah that's I think that's what that's the bat's dissident
yeah lower on the ginger flavor but you know
I would agree with you two or three days on the counter for us is our preference
but I would you might like something different in a pinch one day on the
counter I would drink that and really enjoy it I think four days on the
counter has too many too many that's over the edge for me so check out the
other video where we make the ginger bug from scratch in order to carbonate these
and also check out the other video where we are testing the alcohol content
because just based on this testing I know that this is probably fairly high
in alcohol content so give this a try it's a lot of fun and if you like ginger
ale or ginger beer it's a super ginger it's lovely it is really nice cool
thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you