Last night over pizza, we cracked open our very first bottle of Jake’s homemade ginger beer…..and although the taste was crisp and clean and spicy, there was no carbonation. The beer was totally flat. Flat as an Eastern European supermodel. There wasn’t an ounce of fizz. No bubbles, no head, whatsoever.
We were crestfallen….brewfallen.
It’s such a bummer when you go through all the time and energy to make 5 GALLONS of homebrew and not have it come out! We have 5 GALLONS of flat ginger beer!!! What do you do with 5 gallons of flat bottled beer? Dump it into the sink hole? Feed it to the chickens? Bake 450 loaves of ginger bear bread? Drink it? (Knowing us—the two biggest skinflints in SkintFlint Ville—we’ll probably drink it, grimacing with every swallow. “No wounded soldiers, bro!”)
Though all may not be lost.
After doing some research on the Googles, it seems that the most likely culprit is that the ambient temperature in the grotto — the subterranean space beneath our house we converted to a wine/beer cellar — is too cool for beer. And this particular brew may need another few weeks to finish carbonating.
So we’ll make some necessary changes to our operation and try another taste test in another couple of weeks.
All original content © 2012 by Jessie Knadler
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Ginger ale (which I know is completely different than ginger beer) is a great marinade for pork roast. If you google ginger ale pork you’ll get a lot of recipes. Maybe that might work for a few bottles.
Great suggestion! Thank you. We’ll have to give it a try.
oh, pooh! what a major bummer! my suggestion, should your alterations fail to amend the situation, is to make ginger syrup and take it medicinally all winter. great for increasing circulation, aiding in digestion, staving off illness, etc.
Interesting. I’d never heard anything like that. I’m all for boozing it up in the name of good health.
My dad has this handy machine which he uses to carbonate his water, and you might be able to carbonate it by the bunch. He got his for 20 dollars, but that was in Germany… I have seen them here for a bit more, but it can’t hurt to look, especially if you have 5 gallons to work with!
can’t you re-rack it?
We could, be “re-rack” sounds like work.
I just bought a beer kit to start brewing beer for my boating parties. Where could I venture to discover the bizarre, Medieval beer recipes that would be the talk of the campus?