English Ginger Beer – Redux

I’m trying that English Ginger Beer kit again. I had problems with this one on my last go round. It was problematic right from the start. My carboy didn’t have enough headspace so the fermenting beer kept going up the airlock which pushed all the water out and my beer was streaming down the sides. It didn’t happen, once or even twice, but at least a dozen times and who knows what happened overnight when I wasn’t looking. Needless to say it was a mess and masses of air seeped in there.

It still fermented fine and even after changing the airlock multiple times during the first couple of days there was plenty of fermentation. Who knows whether it was contaminated or not, but I pressed on and bottled it.

The carbonation was completely hit or miss. Some bottles were perfect and had a nice amount of fizz. Some were rather dead. There were faint traces of bubbles, but the beer looked flat.

The flavor wasn’t what I expected either. This is the beer that I thought had no ginger flavor while others say the ginger was a straight shot to the plums. Even though it was flat, when you chilled it down it was still quite nice. If you weren’t paying attention it looked like a chilled glass of Coke. When it worked it was pretty nice and even the bad ones were drinkable. I’m curious to see how this one turns out. This time it’s in a 6.5 gallon carboy with plenty of space to percolate. While it was steeping it had strong aromas of coffee and chocolate. I could smell the ginger, but I didn’t walk away with a big bouquet of it. It’s still the darkest beer I’ve made even though the alcohol content is only 4.0%.

It smelled good. It looked good. And it’s starting to show signs of fermentation. Here’s to hoping this beer turns out to be a lot more agreeable. I’m going to keep making this beer until I get it right.