Ginger Beer Kit or Recipe - No Artifical Sweetener

[Kevnlis]

Is it possible to find a kit that doesn't have artifical sweetener in it? If not does anyone have a recipe to make a GB without a kit at all?

Cheers and happy brewing!

[wildschwein]

Hey. As far as I know all kits come loaded with artificial sweetner. The problem with brewing ginger beer at home is that you can't bottle large amounts en mass which have not finished fermenting. So most kits advise you to add a small amount of sugar which is enough for carbonation and the sweetness is provided by lactose (is unfermentable) and/or artificial sweetners. If you look down this thread to "Ye Olde Fashioned Ginger Beer" you'll see quite a long post I did about making GB from scratch on a small scale in PET bottles with a plant which you cultivate yourself. You could however follow the the same recipe/method and just use an ale yeast of some type, which speeds up the process greatly, but can be dangerous if you forget to let the pressure out of the bottles.

If you're looking to make alcoholic ginger beer, you could also follow the same general idea and let it ferment out and there is no reason to be worried about bottle bombs.

[Kevnlis]

Sorry, I meant non-alcoholic. The kids and breast feeding wife love the stuff but it is bad for babies! Anyone brastfeeding or pregnant is not allowed to have artifical sweetners.

I have a pretty good green thumb though, will have a read of that post!

Cheers

[wildschwein]

Oh that's good, as my post is geared toward non (or very low) alcoholic GB. The method is mainly aimed at small scale production that you can do regularly rather than larger scale production like you would do with a kit. It's not that much work though and is easy enough if you get yourself in the habit of feeding the palnt and letting pressure out of bottles now and then. You don't need any special equipment either other than some soft drink bottles, a bowl a mixing spoon and a bucket to measure liquid quantites with. There is also no excessive sanatation proceedure to follow like making beer and you only really need to rinse things with hot tap water. No chemicals required.

[FazerPete]

If you go to your HBS, they should have one called Old Fashioned Ginger Beer that comes in a little round canister. It has the artificial sweetener in a separate sachet so you can choose not to use it.

Of course you only have a couple of choices with how to add sweetness:

1) If you keg, then make a sugar syrup with 300g sugar and add to keg
2) If you bottle then you'll need to sweeten it as you pour by adding to lemonade or something.

I keg my GB so I always chuck it out and do option 1.