welcome friends this is a breakout video that is part of the ginger beer making
video series so there's a video on making ginger bug there's a video on
making ginger beer but one of the mysteries of making ginger beer is that
most of the videos or blogs downplay the amount of alcohol in the finished
product that there's so very little its undetectable or maybe less than a
percent and I just I just don't know I I know that in this ginger bug we don't
know what's in here but I'm sure that there's a lot of yeast there will also
be lactobacillus there'll be a whole bunch of other bacteria that are doing
other things but the main component I think is yeast which means alcohol and
especially if you've got carbonation carbonation means alcohol was produced
by the yeast so I'm gonna do a test I'm going to test it now and I'm gonna test
it when it's done and we're gonna figure this out so Julie and I brew beer so
we've got a full brewery down in the basement and I've got all of the tools
to make this happen so a lot of people would use a hydrometer and this this
floats up and down in the liquid and gives you the specific gravity you do a
specific gravity before you add the yeast you do a specific gravity after
you've added the yeast and it has fermented to the point where you want to
drink it and this will tell you how much alcohol this is an analogue
refractometer you put a little drop of your liquid before and after the same
sort of deal is this and you'll look through it to hold it up to the light
and you take a reading you do a calculation it tells you how much
alcohol this though is my favorite and by far the most accurate this is a
digital refractometer and so what I end up doing is I I take a little dropper we
take a tiny little bit and I've mixed this so that I know it's a homogeneous
mixture and I put a tiny little drop here on the test surface close the lid
and press go and so I've got this reading I've written it down and I'll
keep this aside and when we're done the fermentation process I'll do the reading
again we'll do a calculation and we'll figure out the percentage of alcohol
okay the fermentation process is done and in front of me I have four samples
this is all from that same batch and this one was left on the counter for one
day to ferment this one for two days three days and four days and we've
already done the video and the testing the taste testing so if you want to
check that out look for the link and now we're gonna
test the alcohol amounts so I have the digital refractometer I'm going to do
the tests over again do some calculations and we'll figure out
exactly what's going on okay now so here are the results after 24
hours on the counter 0.2 percent alcohol by volume so very low alcohol and pretty
good flavor after 48 hours of two days on the counter it's one percent alcohol
by volume and this had really excellent flavor after three days 1.5 percent
alcohol by volume and Julie and I decided that these two were probably the
best tasting and after four days on the counter 1.6 percent alcohol by volume
and based on my readings there's enough sugar still in here that this could
continue to ferment and could get to 3 to 4 percent I thought it would be at 3
3 to 4 percent already it isn't I was wrong I stand corrected
so 1.6 percent alcohol by volume isn't that much it's fairly low and depending
on your tolerance level you could drink a pile of these without feeling anything
this one definitely would be safe for a child because there's less alcohol in
this one than any sort of baked good where you use vanilla extract so there
you have it that will give you an idea sort of a guideline of how much alcohol
is in home fermented or naturally carbonated ginger beer and of course
your results may vary from this just based on how much sugar you put in how
viable your yeast culture was or your starter bug was the temperature in your
kitchen there's so many factors that will impact the amount of alcohol
but this will at least give you a starting point thanks for stopping by
hope to see you again soon