Dave's Ginger Beer recipe

From Dave's Ginger Beer at Netcooks:

Ingredients

• 23L water
• 500-800 grams ginger root, coarsely chopped
• 4kg sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 sachet champagne yeast
• 4 lemons, sliced in half (or eighths)

Instructions

Squeeze the lemons into your largest pot, and put in the squeezed bits too. Add the ginger root and cream of tartar. Fill up with as much water as you can, then boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Add as much sugar as you can, if there's room.

Put the rest of the sugar, if there's any, in your 23L fermenting vessel. Pour the water mixture over. Top up to 23L and cool to lukewarm (no more than 30°C, ideally about 22°C). Have a taste - this gives you a clue to the final flavour - if neccessary, add more ginger or ginger powder.

Scoop out a cup of the mixture, dissolve the yeast in it, then stir it back in.

Cover and ferment for about a week at 18-23°C. Test it to see how it's doing. When you're happy with how it tastes, siphon into sterilised bottles, age upright for a week at 15-18°C, then store at below 15°C. This is a pretty unstable way of storing it - you will likely want to let out gas, or add potassium sorbate when bottling to stun remaining yeast.

If you want to bottle it fizzy, you've a couple of options; stop fermentation with a bit of sodium metabisulphite and some potassium sorbate when it tastes nice, then leave for a day, and either:

1. Keg it, adding carbon dioxide through a pressure valve, and giving the CO2 a day or more to dissolve
2. Bottle prime, with half a teaspoon cane sugar per 500ml bottle. Putting in too much sugar will probably cause your bottle to explode eventually, so watch out!
   

It'll hit at least 3% abv. within a week, and will finish at about 19% if you let it, so keep an eye out. I think it tastes best about 10-20 days in!