troubleshooting my ginger beer

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troubleshooting my ginger beer

Postby mariskaleh on Mon May 19, 2014 12:54 pm

Hi all. Hoping one of you kind folks can help me diagnose what went wrong with my first ginger beer brew...

I used the basic method --
1. Start/feed the bug with 1c water & equal parts ginger and sugar each day until bubbly
2. Add the 1c bug to 2q boiling water + 1.5c sugar + desired amount of ginger
3. When mix is cool, strain out ginger, and add lemon juice + more water
4. Store in sealed containers at room temp for ~2 wks


I used succanat instead of white sugar and bottled in carboys and GT's bottles that were rinsed well with hot water but not bleached or boiled. I wasn't sure how much carbonation to expect, so I left a conservative amount of headspace in each bottle--perhaps too much.

IS SURFACE MOLD SAFE TO DRINK?
After about 10 days, a few bottles had grayish-greenish "lily pads" floating along the surface, and a few had strand-like molds of the same color clinging to the glass, also near the surface. At first, I was only going to drink the one completely clean bottle and sacrifice the rest of the batch, but then a friend convinced me that it's probably safe to just skim the mold off the beer.

However, it was impossible to do this because of the narrow bottle necks. I poured the moldy bottles into a big measuring cup and thought I'd be able to skim the mold from there. But alas, the strands and "lily pads" sank into the dark liquid and I couldn't find them anymore. Can I assume that the liquid will now kill these presumably anaerobic molds, making the beer totally safe to drink?

NO CARBONATION OR SOURNESS
Though the bottle caps did hiss a little when opened, my beer has no detectable carbonation or sourness/fermented taste. It tastes like very sweet molasses-y (from the succanat) ginger juice. I've read a bit on here about carbonation woes, but I'm still not sure whether ginger beer MUST have carbonated to be... well, ginger beer. Does this automatically mean that my ferment wasn't long enough? Can I take the disturbed bottles back out of the fridge now and try to ferment them more?

Thanks for bearing with my long-winded post!

-Marisa in NJ
mariskaleh
 
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