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I want to make me some ginger beer (the alcoholic kind), but all the recipes and instructions I read online are different, especially the proportions and fermentation time.

Would appreciate any advice!

I like the extract recipe for Vagabond Ginger Beer in Charlie Papazian's The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It's been a while since I last brewed it, but I liked it and one of my original batches took 1st place in specialty beer category of a comp (way back when there wasn't much competition though). LMK if you can't find it online and I'll post it.

found it online, thanks for the tip!

My experience haas been to treat ginger like hops,
Bittering, flavor, and aroma additions just like hops depending on what you want

John G wrote:I like the extract recipe for Vagabond Ginger Beer in Charlie Papazian's The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It's been a while since I last brewed it, but I liked it and one of my original batches took 1st place in specialty beer category of a comp (way back when there wasn't much competition though). LMK if you can't find it online and I'll post it.

How would you describe the end product from this recipe? I wouldn't mind doing a 1 gallon batch of the stuff, but I want something that is going to put hair on your chest!

The night I made this post I started an experimental one gallon batch, going for an alcoholic jamaican-style ginger beer (rather than beer with some ginger in it). That was a couple days ago, and I haven't seen any yeast action (the air lock isn't bubbling, or if it is, it's bubbling very infrequently). Does anyone have an idea of why this would be?

I used very basic ingredients that were already in my house: fresh ginger (grated), lemon juice, lime juice, table sugar and honey. I also used baking yeast rather than brewers' yeast, which I've never done before. I figured the ginger flavour would be strong enough to overpower possible bread flavour.

Could it be that bakers' yeast takes longer to get going? Or that I used too much of it?

Any thoughts?

I'll also add that I did not use a 'ginger beer plant', I just heated everything up in a pot, waited for it to cool, strained it, poured the 'wort' right into a secondary fermenter and added my pitched bakers' yeast. The primary fermenter stage didn't seem necessary because it was already strained, and I figured gas could get out through the airlock. The plan is to siphon the liquid out of my jug before priming and bottling, leaving the fallen yeast behind. The thing is the yeast doesn't seem to have done anything...