Ginger Beer

It would seem that there are a million and one different methods to making alcoholic ginger beer at home, some of them seem relatively simple while others are rather complex and require a lot of lead up time (to make something called a Ginger Plan). So after tralling through hundreds of the little bastards i found this little gem (well its "gem" is yet to be determined), a nice and simple blog post detailing how some one made a base ginger beer that can be tweaked and changed as you see fit.

Home Brew Ginger Beer

Here is a shorter version of it, mixed in with what i did:

Ingredients:

• 240g Grated Fresh Ginger.
• 5 Lemons.
• 1 Kg Of Sugar. 500g Raw, 500g Brown, 1 Giant Table Spoon Of Golden Syrup.
• 20 L Of Water.

Method:

1. Fill a large pot about 3/4 full with water and set to boil.
2. Once boiling add the 1Kg of sugar (this is the 0 min mark).
3. After 10 min of boiling add 160g of fresh grated Ginger.
4. After 20 min add the juice of 3 lemons.
5. After 35 mins add 1/4 tea spoon of cayenne pepper, 1 tea spoon of nutmeg and cinnamon.
6. After 45 mins add last of the Ginger and the juice and zest of 2 Lemons.
7. After 55 mins take the mixture off the boil, add the juice of 1 Lemon and let cool.
8. Add the mixture to the fermentation tank and top up to 20L with water .
9. Prepare the yeast by desolving 1 teaspoon of sugar in 1/2 a cut of warm water, add the yeast to the top and leave for 15 mins.
10. Leave some where warm (about 20 Deg C) for aprox 6 days.
11. When bottling add a carbonation drop and some grated ginger.

Boiling Up The Wort

Yummy Water From Speights 

Yeasty Yeasty

Dunedin Cooling Method

Greengage Wine

Greengage Wine

After getting into the swing of things with my Honey Mead my wife wanted to get into brewing (i knew there was a reason i married her). So we went out to the local farmers market and found some Greengage plums, (not apples as i originally thought) 4 Kg's later and a nibble here and there we had enough cut and de-stoned fruit to start the fermentation process. The following recipe is what we have based our wine on. 

Recipe:

1.35 Kg Greengages
Pectin Enzyme
1 Campden Tablet
1.35Kg's Sugar
1/2 Pint Strong Black Tea
Water Up To 1 Gallon
Yeast Nutrient
Wine Yeast

METHOD:
Place the ripe fruit in a fermentation bucket and pour over the boiling water. Add  0.435 Kg's of sugar and an equal amount of cold water to the boiling. Add the campden tablet, pectin enzyme, yeast nutrient, and wine yeast. Cover and leave for three days in a warm place, stirring daily. Strain and add the rest of the sugar (0.915 Kg's) then put into a carboy airlock it and seal the jar.

Store the carboys in a warm place and allow the fermentation to work. Once the fermentation has ceased, rack the wine into a clean carboy and place in a cool environment. when the wine is clear and stable siphon into bottles.

Fermented for three days then racked

The image is of the first racking of the wine, once the fermentation has stopped we shall rack it off again and let it sit till it clears and then bottle it.

Supplies and BOTTLES!!!!!

Greetings and salutations readers, this will be a place where i keep my brewing recopies, a photo documentary of the successes and the failures.

These are my current brewing supplies, about 60 dozen (720) 750ml crate bottles and 2 fermentation tanks.

BOTTLES!!!!!!!

Current Fermentation Tanks

I'm wanting to add at the very least 5 5lt carboy's and maybe 2 or 3 of the big ones (23 lt)