The following beer recipe is featured in the July/August 2011 issue of Zymurgy magazine. Access this issue along with the archives with Zymurgy Online!
Sparkling ginger mead! A refreshing spring or summer drink that will impress your friends with how classy you've become since you started homebrewing. We recommend drinking this from a tulip, and sticking your pinky out for proper balance. Recipe Courtesy of Steve Piatz's article "The Sweet Life" in the July/Aug 2011 edition of Zymurgy.
The following beer recipe is featured in the July/August 2011 issue of Zymurgy magazine. Access this issue along with the archives with Zymurgy Online!
Sparkling ginger mead! A refreshing spring or summer drink that will impress your friends with how classy you've become since you started homebrewing. We recommend drinking this from a tulip, and sticking your pinky out for proper balance. Recipe Courtesy of Steve Piatz's article "The Sweet Life" in the July/Aug 2011 edition of Zymurgy.
Ingredients:
- 18.125 lb (8.2 kg) honey, such as raspberry blossom, orange blossom or clover
- 3.25 lb (52 oz, 1.5 kg) thinly sliced fresh ginger
- 1 tsp. Fermaid K
- 2 tsp. diammonium phosphate
- 1 packet of Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast a.k.a. Narbonne
- GoFerm for rehydration
Specifications:
Yield: 5 gallons (19 L)
Original Gravity: 1.145
Directions:
- Wash the ginger with tap water. Do not bother peeling the ginger; a food processor is your best bet to slice it up. Place the ginger in a sanitized mesh bag. Boil the bag for a few minutes to sanitize it since some chemical sanitizers are not effective on fabrics and the sanitizers can be hard to rinse out of the fabric.
- Pour the honey into a large plastic fermenter. Start adding water to the fermenter. After just a couple of gallons, start stirring the mixture. Once you have a couple gallons of water and the honey mixed together, place a sanitized hydrometer in the must. Slowly add water and mix after each addition until you hit the target OG. Add 0.25 teaspoons of Fermaid K and 0.5 teaspoons of diammonium phosphate to the fermenter.
- Once you have the must mixed up, rehydrate the yeast in GoFerm, following the package directions. Once rehydration is complete, mix the rehydrated yeast and liquid into the fermenter.
- Once or twice a day, stir the must and push the bag of ginger back under the liquid. The stirring process will release a lot of CO2 from the must. Stir until almost no more bubbles are released by additional stirring. If stirring with a spoon, it will take a while to drive out all the CO2. Using a wand in the drill is faster, but be careful not to release so much CO2 so fast that the fermenter foams over the top.
- Once a day, after a round of stirring, add the dose of nutrients, 0.25 teaspoons of Fermaid K and 0.5 teaspoons of diammonium phosphate. Do this for 3 days.
- After three to four weeks, rack the mead into glass and wait for it to drop clear. Use Super-Kleer K.C. to help clarification if the mead has finished fermenting. Once clear, keg and carbonate to around 3 volumes of CO2.
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