What's going on in your winery today..

[wisp]

Quick question, if you don't mind, ms67.

Can the thumb sized piece of root ginger be replaced with dried ginger? If so, how much would you advise per gallon?

Cheers.

[ms67]

absolutely agree with beary, tho its a matter of taste. to my mind fresh has a citrussy, zesty, zingy, fruity freshness that you dont get with dried. dried tickles the back of my throat (the peppery that beary mentions? white pepper?). Crystallised ginger would work better for me than dried, tho the pepperiness is still too much for my liking - in wine anyway, but in homemade jams cyrstallised ginger rocks!

[ms67]

some fining .... 2 gallons of cloudy mint wine. and one gallon each of elderflower, rose petal and green tea & ginger, which were all just slightly hazy but hey the sachet does 5 gallons so i may as well use it.

[wisp]

absolutely agree with beary, tho its a matter of taste. to my mind fresh has a citrussy, zesty, zingy, fruity freshness that you dont get with dried. dried tickles the back of my throat (the peppery that beary mentions? white pepper?). Crystallised ginger would work better for me than dried, tho the pepperiness is still too much for my liking - in wine anyway, but in homemade jams cyrstallised ginger rocks!

Okay, okay. I've never used fresh ginger

What do I do with it and how do you know if it's bruised or not?

And before you have a go everything is obvious once you know!

[ms67]

no such thing as a silly question wisp, only silly answers.

first of all peel your ginger, so getting chunky roots makes sense for that. Then to bruise it i use the butt end of my big chopper that i use for everything and simply give it a whack, then slice it. It just releases more flavour, like crushing garlic before you chop it. There is the question over whether this releases more flavours only to be blown off during primary fermentation. So bruising may not be useful for brewing purposes if you are going to leave the ginger in for a few days.

by the way if you get lots of ginger, more than you need, then you may enjoy using a little to make "tea". its nice with any green tea, or even just on its own. It also freezes and then you can grate it from frozen when you want cook with it.

[goldseal]

More bottling, racking, fining, bottle cleaning.

It's amazing how much you can do when your other half isn't 'organising' you, isn't it?

[lockwood1956]

Busy day today..

Started the fruit addition timeline experiment detailed here

http://www.winesathome.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=3692

Also started a 25 litre batch of Lychee, and a two gallon batch of a white social wine, for competitions.

[ms67]

Bob (and other big volume brewers) do you still enjoy small scale brewing, or do you find it fiddly but necessary?

[lockwood1956]

I love 1 gallon batches for experimentation

[lockwood1956]

And I make competition wines in smaller batches too

[NorthernWiner]

I've made but a single 1 gallon batch in the last 10 years. I do make the occasional 3 gallon batch, though. Usually dessert wines.



Today I am a cleaning machine.

I de-labeled and scrubbed 5 cases of bottles this morning. Ok, I had a little help. I still have 2 more cases to go.

[ms67]

i'm sure ginger does have some antiseptic, antibacterial, antifungal anti this and that properties, but its never stopped or slowed any of my fermentations. possibly due to not using much, but i have seen many recipes here that use way more ginger ( like 10 times+ ) than i use and from what i can gather it seems there have not been probs with stuck ferments.

beary is right too about fiddling about removing stringy or bitty stuff, which is one reason why i only give it one solid bash. i have also got into the habit of sticking solids into a muslin bag for quick and easy removal, or two bags if you want to leave one lot of solids in for longer than another.

cheers Bob and Steve for satisfying my curiosity about small batches.

[wisp]

no such thing as a silly question wisp, only silly answers.

first of all peel your ginger, so getting chunky roots makes sense for that. Then to bruise it i use the butt end of my big chopper that i use for everything and simply give it a whack, then slice it. It just releases more flavour, like crushing garlic before you chop it. There is the question over whether this releases more flavours only to be blown off during primary fermentation. So bruising may not be useful for brewing purposes if you are going to leave the ginger in for a few days.

by the way if you get lots of ginger, more than you need, then you may enjoy using a little to make "tea". its nice with any green tea, or even just on its own. It also freezes and then you can grate it from frozen when you want cook with it.

Thanks for the advise that man . I had absolutely no idea of what to do with it - damn, I don't even buy ginger nuts

[wisp]

Calm my dear fellow, you don't want to buy bruised ginger, that would be damaged goods, nice firm, light coloured ginger that you take home and beat the living daylights out of( bash a bit with rolling pin til seperate fibres are apparent) is bruised ginger, personally I just peel/scrape, slice very thinly and chuck it in, I know that sounds a little cavalier but it saves straining out fine bits of ginger and as ginger has some preservative properties the slices yield their flavour reasonably quickly but not so fast as to hamper fermentation, (please advise if incorrect!!).
not everything is obvious even when you think you know!, as I am all too ready to tell new guys in my trade, "every day is a school day", there is allways another opinion, another technique!.

Thanks for the info OB. My next question was to be seeking advice about purchasing the stuff Good advice about the fibres, too .

The muslin bag is a good idea too ms67. Does it not inhibit the release of flavours and so forth?

[lockwood1956]

EEK!

I'm hoping you mean a recipe for Ginger-nuts and not a ginger-nut wine recipe?