I recently had a Trinidadian-style homemade ginger beer (non-alcoholic) and it was exceptional. The recipe was very simple (about 1lb of grated, fresh ginger to 2 gallons of water, with sugar added to taste) and, of course, as a homebrewer, my brain immediately thought "man, how good would this be with some carbonation and a mighty alcohol kick on the back end?" I have done some searching and it seems like the recipe needs to remain simple to ferment. Most recipes have some combination of corn/cane sugar, brown sugar, honey, etc. I don't think I would want to add any malt extract or anything like that because I don't want it to be too beer-like.
I am thinking I'd like to get it up to a wine-level ABV as I am sure that this will benefit from some lengthy cellaring (like the cyser I made recently). Any thoughts on amounts/types of fermentables? Types of yeast? Thanks!
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Try using honey as your primary fermentable. I have embibed many fine Ginger meads. Try a making a braggot of 5 gallons using orange blossom honey and the fresh ginger thinly sliced.
Quick and dirty
14 lbs of honey
2 lbs Liquid light extract (this makes it legaly a beer)
3 to 4 oz thinly sliced ginger root
3.5 gallons spring water
and sweet mead yeast.
this shoud get you to about 10 to 11 % abv
If you want to really kick it up you can try using freeze concentration. Using this proccess I took a 5 gallon bath of mead from 11 % to 28% by concentrating it from 5 gallons to 1 gallon.
Champagne yeast is a really good yeast to try as well.
Of course when you're not drinking Dogfish Head. Ginger beer is the mainstay of Moscow Mule and Dark and Stormy cocktails. These are two of my favorite cocktails and I have found that the Ginger Beer used is crucial.
Here's another recipe:
#mce_temp_url#
I saw a show on the cooking network, Good Eats by Alton Brown, he made ginger beer, used pretty much what you have listed white sugar. I have heard of Ginger beers before they are generally low in ach, but as you know you could bumb that up, Iam not really good at homebrewing, but I cook alot, and Ginger is a strong spice, Molassas goes with it pretty good, maybe try Beet sugar, yeast I would add some kind of top frementing yeast, if that helps, Iam still trying to come up with my own , Spongebob ale, LOL