Ginger

[Jake]

I'm going to be brewing a 5gal batch of winter warmer at the upcoming Mash Occur at JQ's house, and I'm thinking of spicing it up with ginger and pure honey

I'm thinking about a pound or two of honey, but am not sure how much ginger I should use ... I've read everywhere from a couple grams to 16oz lol. Anyone have any experience with this?

[Richard]

Yeah - the grated fresh variety is best for this. An ounce or two will give you enough flavour to balance with others... I would lean towards 2oz since the WW is very rich in flavour to start with, and you'll need that much just to taste it. when I made ginger beer I used a lot of ginger (two pounds or more, sometimes).

[Jake]

Also, would you suggest honey at the end of primary? ... I'm thinking 1.5lbs of honey after signs that fermentation is slowing ...

[Richard]

I've never tried that, but my instinct is that you're not going to gain anything versus adding it before primary. Dissolving the stuff cold is a right pain in the ass at any rate.

My technique is to add the stuff after flame-out, immediately before whirlpooling and cooling. Reason being the heat and whirlpool dissolves it perfectly, and you don't steep it for long enough to lose significant flavour/aroma.

[Jake]

I'd say it's time for an experiment ... I'll try it this time at flameout, and my next batch I'll add at the end of fermentation.

From what I read you don't want to boil the stuff and alot of the flavour and aroma from honey gets blown off during a vigorous primary fermentation. I say this based on this beersmith article I came across the other day:

http://beersmith.com/blog/2009/09/05/brewing-beer-with-honey/

I'd rather just add at flameout and see how it turns out

[sdixon]

I've used ginger a number of times. I use approximately 2 grams or 1 - 2 teaspoons of fresh grated ginger. It gives me a very subtle taste that is hard to identify if you didn't know what it was. I prefer that you cannot easily identify what the spice addition is... as soon as you can tell "ahh that's ginger" you have added too much.

Honey I also use a lot... 1.5 to 2 pounds is a good amount to give you a bit of body and barely noticeable taste.

[sdixon]

Yes, add both at flameout.

[Richard]

Yeah, I've read a whole bunch on Honey - I think I was actually ranting on here some months back regarding a dodgy advice column in BYO. You don't lose significant aroma via fermentation blow-off, it's much less volatile than say... hops. By all means experiment away, but my hypothesis would be you'll see very little difference

Never boil honey - flameout (once things have stopped boiling) only.

steve's right re: the ginger too... however I suspect with other stuff going on in a WW if you're after even "barely detectable" you'd need about a quarter of an ounce at least.