cellini's Diaryland Diary

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The Lovliest Smell in the World

Oh how I love the smell of fermenting beer. It's lovely. One of my favorite smells in the world. I got a nice snout full this morning before leaving for work. I suspect that this batch will be ready to bottle on Sunday. Which would mean it should be nicely primed and ready to drink on New Years Eve. Just in the nick of time.

Crap. You know what I should have thought of? I should have started several batches weeks ago to specially package and give as Christmas presents to beer-loving friends. Like perhaps a saison and a special porter. Chocolate stout? That would have been very wintery. I could have bottled them in champagne bottles or something like that and made special labels. It would have been lovely. Oh well.

I just had a lovely idea for a beer experiment. Ginger wheat. I have a pound of dry wheat malt extract that is unspoken for and not needed for the Yell0w Snow clone that I'm brewing soon. Oh! There is wild ginger growing all over the place on my parents property. I need to go out there this weekend anyhow with a shotgun to harvest some mistletoe. I can gather enough to flavor a one gallon batch.

Ok, here is my proposed recipe for a literal ginger ale:


Wild G1ngered Wheat Ale

1 lb dry wheat malt extract
1/4 lb corn sugar

1/4 oz cascades hops (boiling)
1/8 oz cascades hops (flavor and bouquet)
1 oz grated wild ginger root

Nottingham yeast

Boil the malt, corn sugar and 1/4 oz of hops in a gallon of water for one hour. Add the remaining 1/8 oz of hops and the ginger when there is 5 minutes left to go. Cool the hot wort immediately with cold water to bring total volume back up to 1 gallon (what with evaporation). Rack into small fermenter. Pitch Nottingham yeast when fully cooled. Bottle when ready.

Totally fucking easy. It will take me no more than 90 minutes, start to finish. I bet it will be really fucking good. I'd do it after work today if I had the ginger. I have a bunch of little one gallon glass jugs that I use for fermenting experimental batches like this. Normally I don't use corn sugar in my beer but in this case I think it's appropriate. I want this beer on the light and fluffy side. Yet high in alcohol. The ginger flavor should mask the taste of the alcohol, as should the slight sweetness resulting from the Nottingham yeast, which settles down and stops working before it has eaten up every scrap of sugar available. You don't tend to get really dry beer from wheat malt regardless of the yeast anyhow. It will be one of those things that you drink and it sneaks up on you, stronger than you'd realized. I'm keeping the hops light here in the overall spirit of the thing. A touch of bitterness from the hops to sit behind the sweetness of the wheat and the sharpness of the ginger to keep things well balanced rather than cloying. And the slight floral bouquet and citrusy flavor of cascades will present the ginger flavor nicely.

It's a good design for a beer. A good plan.

One of the things I like about making beer is that even when you design a recipe and it doesn't work out, it's still pretty good. The only time a batch is really wasted is if it gets contaminated with bacteria or something. It's always drinkable and always better than most of what you'd find at the supermarket, even if it didn't turn out like you'd intended.

Uh-oh. It seems that some species of wild ginger contain a carcinogen and diuretic. That's no good. I'm having trouble identifying the species that grows at my parents' place. None of the pictures look quite like it. If I can't nail down the exact species that I'm dealing with to ensure that this particular chemical compound is not present then I will have to go with commercially obtained ginger. Phooey.

4:22 p.m. - 2007-12-20

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