Belgian With Ginger

[charlieb]

Hello -

I will be brewing a 5 gallon batch and want to play around with some ginger. I plan to do a split batch to test.

I plan on doing a simple Belgian ale. In one fermenter I will do as normal for the Belgian. But in the other I'd like to add some ginger and see how that plays out.

To keep the ginger out of the initial boil I am thinking of boiling a small amount of wort for 10 minutes with a little bit of fresh grated ginger. Then adding this to the fermenter.

Does anyone see any problems with this? I just want a subtle hint and this seems the best way to go to achieve that.

Thanks

[mashani]

You can just boil it in some water or a simple sugar solution, you don't need to make more "wort". A simple sugar solution is good thing to add to any Belgian, and you can add it at around day 3 into the fermentation, it will kick off another round of active fermentation and dry the beer out. Let it cool (with lid on) before adding it.

I would use a small amount of Ginger, and then increase it later if you like it and want more.

As a reference point, the equivalent of 48g of fresh Ginger was somewhere between 3x-4x more then what I wanted in a 2.5 gallon saison. It was good but it was strong and overpowered other flavors. It took 6-8 months for it to become more balanced and took more like a year in the bottle before it toned down to what I had wanted/expected. A Belgian won't be quite as dry so it could probably handle more, but I'd not go with more then 24g equivalent in 2.5 gallons as a starting point, and I would probably suggest even less. If you want a "subtle hint" then much less.

[charlieb]

I was thinking much less than that. I'll probably do 2.5g. I read someone did .16oz for a 6 gallon batch and it was just subtle enough. So I'm starting there. Don't want my wife waiting 8 months for her beer lol.....