Life, the Universe and Ginger Beer

Ginger beer is the easiest brew you can make at home, and one of the most forgiving. It needs no malt, no hops and no particular skill, only sugar, ginger, yeast and the ability to wait about a week.

• DifficultyEasy
• Hands-on time30 min from a pack, about 1½ hours from scratch
• Ready inAbout 3 weeks
• Makes4 to 23 litres, your choice

The Answer Is Ginger #

It has a long and noble history. Sailors drank it, grandmothers brewed it in the laundry, and at least one bottle in every Australian family's history has exploded in a cupboard at 2am. This guide will help you keep the first two traditions and politely skip the third.

There are two roads. A ginger beer pack is quick, consistent and very hard to get wrong. Brewing from scratch with fresh ginger takes an extra hour and rewards you with a bite that no tin has ever quite managed. Both end in the same place: a fridge full of something cold, fiery and faintly smug.

Choosing a Pack #

Every ginger beer pack works the same basic way: concentrated ginger flavour that you dissolve, top up with water and sugar, and hand over to yeast. The differences are in how much ginger bite, sweetness and colour each one brings. Popular packs include:

• Morgan's Ginger Beer (yeast included)
• Coopers Ginger Beer (makes 10 litres)
• Buderim Ginger Beer, from the famous Queensland ginger people
• Mangrove Jacks Traditional Series Ginger Beer
• Colony West Ginger Beer

Other brands work the same way. If you're after one we don't carry, ask us.

If you cannot decide, ask us which one we are drinking at the moment. We will have an opinion. We usually have several.

What you need alongside the pack #

Item	Why
A 15–30L fermenter	Somewhere for the yeast to work
Dextrose (H&S) 1kg	The sugar the yeast turns into alcohol and fizz. Use the amount on the pack label
Morgan's Ginger Beer Yeast	Only if your pack does not include yeast. Check the label
A no-rinse sanitiser (we stock several)	Clean is good. Sanitised is essential
Morgan's PET Bottles 750ml and Carbonation Drops	For bottling. Or skip both and keg it
Hydrometer	To know when it is finished, rather than guess

Road One: Brewing From a Pack #

If you have ever made a cup of tea, you have most of the skills required. The rest is waiting.

1. Clean and sanitise the fermenter, lid, tap and anything else that will touch the brew.
2. Dissolve the pack. Stand the tin in hot water for a few minutes to loosen it, then empty it into the fermenter with 2–3 litres of hot water. Add the dextrose (the amount on the label) and stir until nothing is lurking on the bottom.
3. Top up with cold water to the volume on the label. Most packs make 20–23 litres; Coopers makes 10 litres. Stir well.
4. Check the temperature. Aim for about 20–26°C before the yeast goes in. Too hot and you cook the yeast, which is unkind and also ineffective.
5. Take a gravity reading with your hydrometer and write it down. Future you will thank present you.
6. Sprinkle the yeast on top, fit the lid and airlock, and leave it somewhere out of direct sun at a steady 20–26°C.
7. Wait about 7 days, then check the gravity. When it reads the same on two days in a row, fermentation is finished.

Ginger beer from a pack usually finishes quite dry and crisp, because the yeast eats nearly all the sugar. If you prefer it sweeter, see Making it sweeter below.

Road Two: From Scratch With Fresh Ginger #

Fresh ginger gives a sharper, hotter, more alive kind of bite than any concentrate. It also makes your kitchen smell like a spice market, which is either a bonus or a reason to open a window.

Ingredients #

Method #

1. Grate or blitz the ginger. A food processor saves your knuckles. The finer it is, the more flavour comes out.
2. Simmer it. Put the ginger and sugar in the simmering water shown above and simmer gently for 10–15 minutes, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Taste it carefully. It should make you blink.
3. Add the rest of the water cold to bring the temperature down, then stir in the lemon juice or citric acid.
4. Strain into your sanitised fermenter through a clean cloth or sieve, or tip the lot in if you are happy to leave the ginger in and strain later. Leaving it in gives more bite.
5. Check the temperature. Wait until it is below 25°C before the yeast goes in.
6. Take a gravity reading, pitch the yeast, fit the lid and airlock, and keep it at a steady 20–26°C.
7. Wait 7–10 days and check the gravity. Two steady readings a day apart means it is done. Pop your first and last readings into our ABV calculator to see how strong it is.

A sugar-only brew gives yeast very little to eat besides sugar, so it can start slowly. That is normal. If nothing has happened after 48 hours, check the temperature before anything else, then come and see us.

Brighter ginger: add the ginger in two stages, half in the simmer and half raw at the end. The simmered half gives the warmth, the raw half gives the zing.

Spice It Up #

Ginger plays well with others. Add spices to either road: simmer them with the ginger when brewing from scratch, or steep them in a litre of just-boiled water for 15 minutes and add the strained liquid to a pack brew. Start small. You can always add more next batch, but you cannot un-add six cloves. Amounts are for about 23 litres; use about a fifth for a 4-litre batch.

Add-in	How much	What it does
Cinnamon sticks	2–3 sticks	Warm, Christmassy, very friendly with ginger
Whole cloves	4–6	Deep and spicy. Strong stuff, go easy
Star anise	2–3 pods	A faint liquorice note
Cardamom pods, cracked	6–10	Fragrant, a little floral
Black peppercorns, cracked	1 teaspoon	Extra heat at the back of the throat
Fresh chilli	1–2, split	Proper fire. Taste as you go
Lime zest and juice	3–4 limes	Swap for some or all of the lemon. Brighter and sharper
Fresh turmeric	A thumb, grated	Golden colour and an earthy edge
Vanilla bean	1, split	Softens the burn and makes it taste sweeter than it is
Brown sugar or a little molasses	Swap 250–500g of the dextrose	Darker colour and a caramel note

More ginger hit: add a few drops of Flavour Burst Ginger food essence at bottling or kegging, or simply grate more fresh ginger next time.

Making it sweeter #

Most ginger beer finishes dry, and plenty of people like it sweeter. The trouble is that sweetness is sugar, and sugar is yeast food: add it to the bottles and the yeast eats it and turns it into pressure. You have four safe ways around this:

You want	How to get it
Sweet in the glass	The simplest. Add a splash of Isabella's Brewed Ginger Cordial when you pour. It doubles the ginger, too
Sweet and fizzy, in bottles	Add Lactose at bottling, about 10–20g per litre, dissolved in a little boiled water. Yeast cannot eat it, so it stays sweet. It is made from milk, so it is not for anyone avoiding dairy
Sweet and fizzy, in a keg	Stabilise the finished brew, back-sweeten to taste, then carbonate with CO2 in the keg
Sweet and still	Stabilise, then back-sweeten. Without live yeast there is no fizz

Stabilising means stopping the yeast with Campden Tablets and Potassium Sorbate so you can add sugar safely, and back-sweetening means adding that sugar once fermentation has finished. Both are explained step by step in our cider guide, and they work exactly the same way for ginger beer.

Never add extra sugar to bottles of a brew that has not been stabilised. The yeast will eat it, and you will find out exactly how strong a PET bottle is. And never bottle-carbonate a stabilised brew: it will stay flat.

Bottling, Kegging and Not Redecorating the Pantry #

Ginger beer has a reputation for exploding bottles. It earned that reputation honestly, almost always because it was bottled before the yeast had finished eating. Wait for two identical gravity readings and you have already avoided most of the drama. For a clearer ginger beer, see Haze Is Not a Crime.

Bottling #

1. Sanitise your Morgan's PET Bottles and caps.
2. Add Carbonation Drops at the rate on the packet for your bottle size.
3. Fill to about 3–4cm from the top, cap tightly, and stand them somewhere at room temperature for about two weeks.
4. Use PET, not glass. A PET bottle tells you how it is going: when it is rock hard to squeeze, it is carbonated. Glass keeps its secrets until it does not.
5. Once firm, move them to the fridge. Cold slows any remaining yeast to a standstill and makes the ginger beer taste better anyway.

If a bottle ever bulges or the cap domes, chill it straight away and open it slowly over the sink.

Kegging #

Ginger beer kegs beautifully, and skipping the bottles skips every one of the risks above. Follow our kegging and regulator guides. Ginger beer is often served a bit fizzier than beer, so you can carbonate at the higher end of the range, around 12–14 PSI, set and forget.

Exact PSI for your fridge: our keg carbonation calculator works it out. Pick “High – ginger beer”.

Serving suggestion: cold, in a tall glass, with a wedge of lime. Then consider whether this was the answer you were looking for all along.

Happy brewing, and may your ginger beer only ever explode with flavour.