Hi All,
I am planning on brewing the Ginger Snap Saison extract kit next week, which uses crystalized ginger. In surfing around the interwebs, I’ve seen a few postings of brewers who have added extra ginger or crystalized ginger to the secondary. Unfortunately, all of these posts seem to be a few years old, and not active at the moment. So I am hoping someone can give me a bit of help by starting a new thread.
If I want to add more crystalized ginger to the secondary, do I need to do anything special? Once I siphon into the secondary, can I just pour the ginger in? And if so, should I expect it to dissolve over time, even at ~64 degrees? Should I try to make a simple syrup with it first, then let that cool? or keep the ginger in a mesh bag of some sort?
Thanks!
Over a week with no reply so I will try to give my 2 cents. First be careful with any spice. It is easy to ruin a beer by overdoing it. Ginger is one of those that can be overpowering if too much is used.
I’m not familiar with the kit but from what I can gather crystallized ginger is rolled in course sugar to preserve it. The sugar will ferment if you add it to secondary and there is viable yeast left. Fresh ginger can be very strong so again go easy if you decide to try that. I’m not sure how you would go about it though. One thought would be to make a “tincture” by soaking it in vodka for a while then decant the liquid. Never heard of anyone doing that with ginger though.
If you do decide to add ginger of any kind to secondary it would be best to go slow. Add small amounts, let it sit and try a sample. With something like the tincture, it could be added to the bottling bucket a little at a time and tested before adding the priming sugar.
My thoughts on kits are that they have been tried before selling them so for the first attempt follow the instructions and see how you like it before modifying it. Try it again if you are not happy with it or think it could be improved.
