Root Beer FAILED

[CrealCritter]

Just got done making up a 3 gallon batch of root beer to ferment.

Airrated, bungged and airlocked in 5 gallon glass carboy.

Ingredients

Measurements

General recipe ---> https://wellnessmama.com/11392/homemade-root-beer/#wprm-recipe-container-203644

Tasted good going into the carboy, tingly tongue and all.

Hoping for a successful ferment

 

[wyoDreamer]

When my friends would brew beer, they would put it in the closet where the water heater was. It would stay nice and warm and bubble away. Their dog would sit in front of the door and growl every time it burped, lol! They called it the monster in the closet.

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 5 - more bubbles

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 1 - very minor bubbling through the air lock.

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 6 - I got bubbles inside of bubbles. I may just have to call this Double Bubble Root Beer. No signs of letting up either. No visual signs of secondary infection. Sniff of the air lock is the faint smells of alcohol. So I suspect it will come to a halt sooner rather than later. Ginger yeast only has a 4.0 to 4.5% alcohol tolerance. So I'm going to pick up some high octane champagne yeast to add for bottling, so the bottles will carbonate.

 

[CrealCritter]

Day 7 - still chugging along with no signs of letting up yet.

Finally starting to see trub on the bottom of the carboy. I don't know if this ferment will be ready @ 10 days or not?

 

[CrealCritter]

I decided I'm going to give this exact recipe another whirl. But instead of ginger bug as an inoculant I'm going to pitch Safale US-05 beer yeast. It's supposed to produce a very clean and crisp tasting beverage. It also has an alcohol tolerance of 12%, but I won't give it that much to eat. i'm shooting for somewhere in the high 4 to low 5%. Which is plenty strong enough for me.

 

[sumi]

Sorry to hear the batch failed! Hope the next one will be good.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Perhaps you should try brewing in a goat skin. Isn't that what the Israelis did in days of old?

 

[baymule]

Too bad you can't use your own still for your own consumption. I recently got my hands on some Texas Gourdseed Corn, after 3 years of searching. There is a distillery in Houston that uses the Texas Gourdseed for brewing. Interesting. It is a white meal corn for cornbread and tortillas.

If y'all ever move to Texas, bring a still! LOL LOL