How do you make ginger beer?

Answer 1

Green food coloring WOULD work (if beating the leprechaun doesn't work). And -- I'm not kidding about this -- adding green cream de menthe to the beer will color the beer markedly. It doesn't take much. We always do this on St. Patrick's Day. But not with good beer.

Answer 2

Making beerBeer making, or brewing, is a simple process in theory but actually takes a bit of effort and organization to pull off successfully. There are many great websites that describe the brewing process, but here are the basic steps for making an ale from malt extract. (Making lagers takes longer and requires cold storage.)

1. Clean. Clean and sterilize all your gear.

2. Steep. Steep your specialty grains (if there are any) in hot -- but not boiling hot -- water in your brew pot for about 30 minutes, and then remove the grains.

3. Add malt extract. Increase the heat and slowly add your liquid and dry malt extracts, stirring all the while.

4. Boil. Bring the wort to a rolling boil. The wort should boil like crazy for at least 90 minutes. Within the first half hour, if not sooner, the "hot break" will occur, and the wort will produce a lot of foam. Make sure the pot does not boil over at this point. Turn down the heat to prevent boil-overs. When the danger of boil-overs is past, you can crank up the heat again.

5. Add hops. You will add hops at different times during the boil depending on the type of beer you're making. There are many types of hops, which all have unique characteristics. Bittering hops are added early in the boil; aroma (and flavor) hops are added late. Aroma hops are sometimes called "finishing" hops.

6. Cool. Remove the heat and cool the brew pot quickly in an ice bath. This is an important process that produces the "cold break." Cool the wort down to about 70 degrees.

7. Transfer. Transfer the wort to your fermenter and pitch (add) your yeast. Agitate the wort thoroughly at this point. This aerates the wort, which is desirable at this point.

8. Ferment. Seal the lid securely and insert your airlock. Fermentation should start in 12 to 24 hours and last a few days.

9. Condition. After about a week in the primary fermenter, carefully transfer the beer -- it's beer now, although it's flat -- to a secondary fermenter. Do not transfer the ick at the bottom to the secondary. Let the beer condition in the secondary fermenter for about two weeks. Longer is okay.

10. Prime. After at least two weeks of conditioning, transfer the beer to a bottling bucket. Add your priming sugar, but be careful not to agitate the beer too much. This helps prevent oxidation of the beer. The priming sugar must not be added directly to the beer; dissolve it first in a cup of water. Make sure the sugar water is thoroughly incorporated in the beer (but remember not to over-agitate the beer).

11. Bottle. Bottle your beer and store it in a cool, dark place -- but not in the fridge. The carbonation will occur naturally in the bottle.

12. Be patient. Wait three weeks before trying a bottle. You can experiment with aging your beer longer at cellar temperatures and in your fridge.

To make beer from grain (the way the professionals do it), you have to change a few steps. It's quite a bit more involved than brewing from malt extract:

1. Mill the grain. To allow the starches in the grain to be exposed, you must first mill your malted grain to crack the husk.

2. Mash the grain. Mashing is reaction involving enzymes and starches in the grain. At a certain temperature (about 145-155 degrees F) these enzymes become active and break the starches in the grain down into sugar. Sugar is the food of yeast for fermentation.

3. Stop conversion. Next you want to bring this mixture up to 170 degrees F. This denatures the enzymes and stops conversion.

4. Sparge. In this step you strain our the grain from the liquid (called wort) using a lauter tun. The spent grain is now brewing waste, but the wort will be what turns into beer.

5. Boil. At this point, see Step 4 from the malt extract directions. It's all the same from here on out.

The all-grain method will give you more control over your finished product than using malt extract, but will take more time and skill.

Answer 3

I just put my first batch of home brewed beer in the fermentation bucket tonight. I bought two kits from a homebrew supply company. The first kit was the necessary hardware: food grade plastic buckets for fermenting and bottling, a capper, a bag of caps, a hydrometer (a device used to calculate potential alcohol in a liquid based on its gravity, or density compared to pure water), siphon tubing, airlock, cleaning and sanitizing supplies, a bottle filler, etc. The second kit was the ingredients i would need for brewing my first batch of beer: two types of liquid malt extract, some specialty grains (whole barley), two types of hops (one for bittering, the second for aroma), yeast, priming sugar and a grain bag. After cleaning and sanitizing the equipment, you fill a large stockpot (at least 3 gallon capacity) and bring it to 155 degrees. Add the malted barley in the grain bag after crushing it lightly with a rolling pin. Next, warm up the liquid malt extract in a smaller pot with a tea towel inside with the water. Once the grains have steeped for the time indicated in the instructions, take the liquid (now called mash) off the heat and stir in the malt extract, stirring so it doesn't scorch on the bottom of the pot (YUCK) and bring the mixture to a full boil. The next addition will be the hops. Pay attention to which hops get added and in what amounts and when they're added. After the boil, cool the wort (pronounced wert- unfermented beer) to 80 degrees as quickly as possible to negate any bacterial invasions (bacteria are the mortal enemies of the yeast cultures in beer). Transfer the wort to your fermenter after straining through a colander and a strainer and add the yeast (also called pitching). Secure the lid to the fermenter, fill the airlock halfway with water (or sanitizer, or vodka) and insert it into the hole of the lid. Stash the fermenting bucket in a climate-controlled area (spare bathrooms are a great location) and leave it alone to ferment for the amount of time in the instructions. Next, clean all the equipment you used in the cooking process. On bottling day (for my first batch, that's two weeks from now- October 19th), boil the priming sugar in the amount of water in the instructions and pour it into the bottling bucket (which has been cleaned and sanitized along with all of the bottles, caps, tubing and filler wand, right?)Why priming sugar? So your beer will have bubbles. Any carbonation your beer would have had escaped during fermentation through the airlock.. Fill the bottles , and cap them with your capper (a two-person team will make this process much smoother. Now, a 5 gallon batch typically fills 56 bottles in the 12 ounce capacity, which works out to be two cases plus a six-pack if you're going to reuse bottles from your favorite brewery; no twist-off bottles here, folks. Stash the now filled bottles in the same place you stashed the beer in the fermentation stage for the conditioning period written in the instructions. Now, it's time to taste the fruits of your hard work. Chill a couple (heck, make it six) bottles of your fresh homebrew and call up some of your friends to come over and try your product.

Answer 4

http://www.Google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&q=make+ginger+beer&start=0&sa=N

Answer 5

Grain is malted and the sugars pulled out of it to create wort. Yeast is added to ferment the sugars into alcohol. Hops are used to help preserve the beer.