I'm talking strong ginger that'll be close to a ginger beer in the level of burn. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would like it to end up somewhere in 5-6%.
Thanks!
Posted Sep 24, 2016, 10:38 AM UTC
I'd probably use a dried ale yeast. S-04 or US-05. It will handle that abv just fine. I've used S-04 in a hybrid malt cider (2/3 juice, 1/3 wort) and it worked well.
How much ginger do you plan on using? I have 4 gallons of apple juice here ready to go, and the missus was just asking me for a ginger cider recently.
Ah, I wish I could say. This is my first attempt, going to try a small amount in the early stages and see how it goes, then possibly add more if it's not as strong as I'd like. As my friend said, you can always add more but can't take it back out.
I'd like to hear what you end up doing, and we can swap notes later!
Edit: Oh, and also, thank you for the suggestions!
Side note: one way to dose your ginger is to juice it. Chop it in a food processor and squeeze juice out the pulp. I usually get about half the root's weight out of it as juice (so, 1 lb of ginger will give about 1c of juice)
My local meadery owner says he uses 40lbs of baby ginger to 100gal of mead in secondary. He ended up with had a really strong, excellent ginger but without being burny (because it's baby ginger). In guessing you could scale down to 2lbs of regular ginger and come out with something pretty great.
I recommend S-04; it doesn't take things to bone-dry, and you'll want some sweetness.
Are you bottling? I'd consider just making a ginger syrup for your bottling sugar.
I did this with with a champagne yeast and fermented it out all the way, really dry. Then I added priming sugar and bottle conditioned to about 5 vol CO2. Highly carved like a sparkling wine. You can safely do this in a plastic soda bottle. It's easily the best tasting cider I've ever made. I didn't use fresh ginger, but rather Taiwanese ginger tea cubes, which are essentially spicy ginger and molasses cubes that you dissolve in a cup of hot water and drink. I just added one cube per cup of cider. It also boosted the ABV due to the molasses.
Yep I would also suggest champagne yeast. It's a classic for dry cider.
I make a ginger jalapeño cider with 6oz of ginger and Wyeast 3711. Turns out great.
The jalapeño adds the burn you are looking for as well.
Something I've always wondered about working with peppers/chilis: do you take the seeds out, or leave them in?
Honestly, the easiest thing with any vegetable or spice, especially peppers, is to just soak them in grain alcohol and make a tincture. Then you can tweak it how you want. Make one tincture with flesh, one with seeds, and go mad scientist on a glass with a syringe to figure out the dosing.
I add the jalapeños to vodka with the seeds, strain the vodka and add that.
I've got a 3711 cider going right now. First time using it. Have you found that it's slow? I'm used to using wlp002 which seems to just chew right through but this 3711 is taking its sweeeeeet time. Is that normal?
I brew mine at 87F. It finishes in about 7-9 days. I essentially pretend it is a saison and let it go wild.
Damn. That's so high. I've got it set at 69. Gonna crank that baby up.
Montrachet wine yeast works great for a hard apple cider. 5g packet per 5 gallons.
Heard this yeast strain is notorious for making phenols. What temp do you ferment this strain?
The times I have made a hard cider with it (never made anything else with it) I never got any kind of off flavor. This is the only thing I let ferment at room temp. I just stick it in my basement for a month.
Back sweeten with candied ginger all minced up in a cheesecloth bag.
This sounds amazing. When you make it please share the recipe.
search google for Mino Choi ginger cider. He recommends Notty.
EDIT: I made this recipe about two week ago and I'm about to stabilize and keg backsweeten. I used two cups of chopped ginger in the primary and I can't really detect the ginger I may make a tincture with some vodka to up the ginger flavor.
English strains would work well. S04, s05, 1318, 1968.
I use mangrove jack's M02 for my cider. Ferments totally dry and typically leaves me with a 7% cider with FG at 1.000. I backsweeten with 2x 12oz cans of apple juice concentrate and then keg. Makes a perfect base apple cider.
I'm getting ready to do a cider with Nottingham Ale yeast.