Ginger Wine

[robertG]

I’ve been making ginger wine for a couple years now. It’s an interesting wine that has both table wine and cooking wine value. You can stop the ferment with a cold crash to achieve a higher sweetness or completely ferment it out and once aged has a whiskey like quality. I use a splash of maple syrup as a back sweetener when serving on occasion for my girlfriends who like sweeter wines. Either way it’s a very healthy and inexpensive wine. It costs me under fifty cents per litre.
***Ginger is highly fibrous, so I freeze it for a couple of days before making a batch. This breaks down the fibres and the result is juicy. You can boil the ginger in water and use a submersion blender to turn it to pulp but you do lose some of the volatile flavours so instead I use my meat grinder that I also use for BARF diet pet food and sausage making to create the pulp.***

What you will need;
~800 to 1200 grams fresh ginger root
~4 kg of sugar
~a 23 litre fermenter bucket and carboy
~water(I overfill the 23 litre primary bucket to aid in racking without drawing too much pulp into the siphon and clogging it for an easier transfer).
~yeast(I use Freshman’s bakers yeast, the ABV is under 10% so you don’t need expensive wine yeast).
Optional; Heaping tablespoon of Cinnamon, a tablespoon of cloves, and a tablespoon of cayenne powder

Note; I’m currently experimenting by adding a 250 ml bottle of horseradish to the batch. I plan on trying fresh horseradish in larger quantities in the future(so far so good).
~ Horseradish adds some kick that will aid the liver processing alcohol, clear your sinus’ and stiffen your pecker!

Cheers!

 

[Raptor99]

Ginger is highly fibrous, so I freeze it for a couple of days before making a batch. This breaks down the fibres and the result is juicy.

Interesting idea. I like not needing to boil it.

Do you grind the ginger before freezing it? Then do you put the thawed ginger pulp directly into the primary fermenter?

 

[robertG]

Interesting idea. I like not needing to boil it.

Do you grind the ginger before freezing it? Then do you put the thawed ginger pulp directly into the primary fermenter?

Dice the ginger up, place in a freezer bag and into the freezer a day or two. Then take it out, thaw it and grind or blend it. I use a meet grinder.
I then add my ginger pulp, and spices then some Luke warm water(not over 100 degrees feranhceight because that will harm the yeast.
Add a gallon of two of the Luke warm water and then add the 4 kg of sugar. Then start stirring as you ad more water up to the top. Add a teaspoon of yeast anytime you like after you have a couple gallons of water in the primary bucket.
If you don’t ferment it right out bone dry it’s sweet and if you like ginger ale you’ll like the wine. I cold crash it when I want to do this.
Note; If you want to add horseradish, it’s better to use fresh not prepared. The vinegar used may have mother in it that may turn your wine to vinegar.
Cheers!