Sometimes, someone gives you a gift. It's rude to reject a gift isn't it?
This gift was a Coopers Ginger Beer Kit that was 9 years past it's best before date. I knew the contents of the can would be fine. Tinned items last years and years. It's usually only the yeast in these packs that goes out of date.
I did test the yeast to see if it would come to life, but the yeast that was likely packaged 11 years ago showed no signs of life.
But back to the Ginger Beer. Now I dont like ginger beer, but it got me thinking.
A local cider maker - Honey's - in a little village called Midford, make a cider called Stoney Bonk. This is a mix of ginger beer and their scrumpy cider and it's delicious. It has the warming effect from the ginger and it's mellowed out by the cider. Delicious chilled and even nicer drank warm, a bit like a mulled cider.
So that was it. Ginger Cider here we come.
I popped open the tin and checked the ginger beer concentrate. I tasted it. oh WOW, that was hot and I was tasting ginger for the whole night.
But it proved it was good to go. So I opened a tin of John Bull Cider and poured them both into the fermenter.
Topped it up to 17 litres - 32 pints - with cold tap water and then added the yeast from the cider kit.
I didnt add any more sugar as a quick check with a hydrometer showed it was going to come out at about 5.5% - perfect.
So I left it for 2 weeks to do its thing, the aromas were amazing.
Then i checked it with a hydrometer and it was still at 1.010. Hmmmm, thats a bit high.
So I put the lid back on and left it for another week. Tested it again and it's still 1.010 and refusing to budge.
I surmised that this is because of the malt extract used in the ginger beer kit keeping the SG high. Not a problem, it means the ginger cider has a gentle sweetness, so I wont need to back sweeten.
Into bottles with some sugar for the secondary fermentation to occur and to create a fizz.
2 more weeks in my warm place. Now I've heard a lot about exploding bottles, but I put that down to inexperience of brewers of ginger beer in the past, but it still made me a little wary, especially with the 1.010 SG reading. So lots of checking the bottles to make sure they were not over carbonating. And no. Perfect, so no burping needed. Yay
Oh, by the way, my article I wrote a little while back about the bad press homebrew gets should be a quick interesting read.
Anyway, back to the ginger cider. So, I've put it in a cool spot in the garage to start clearing. I'm not sure if it will be clear or hazy, but we'll soon find out.
Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, I'll be able to open a bottle and have a proper taste.
A few sneaky tastes while making it were delicious, so I hoping for good results.
Now Coopers no longer make the Ginger Beer kit, or it's just not available here in the UK, but Simply make a Ginger Beer kit, so you can give it a go with that.
I'd highly recommend making this ginger cider. It's really refreshing.
You will need:
Water
We even made a video of us making it, so you can see the fun we had.
