Sparkling Ginger Wine Off-Flavors

[meadman77]

I had made a few batches of this Strong Ginger Beer (or sparkling wine). OG is about 1.070 so 9.5% potential. It is nice and easy to make but it think the flavour needs a bit of improvement.

The recipe is:

4 teaspoons citric acid
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
3.5kg of sugar – depending on level of sweetness desired.
250g of fresh ginger
1 packet of beer yeast
Water to 5 gallons.

Simply mix all ingredients except yeast in a few litres of hot water. Add water up to 5 gallons. Allow to cool. Sprinkle yeast on top. Fit airlock. Leave for 4-6 weeks. Bottle with priming sugar.

The flavours that I would like to improve are:
1. There is a little bitterness. I found this also happened to another recipe for sparkling gingermead that I made recently. It seems to mellow a little over time but takes prob close to a year to go away.
2. There is a slight sulfur type smell, again especially when young.


As you can see from the recipe it uses beer yeast. Last batch I just used beer yeast from a kit that I didn't need at the time.

There is some residual sweetness to the wine so I'm guessing that the recipe is pushing the yeast close to it's limits. Also the ferment really does take close to 6 weeks and it takes a good few weeks to gas up in the bottles even a warm temps. This seems extremely slow for such a simple recipe - perhaps a lack of nutrients or an otherwise hostile environment for beer yeast? I'm wondering whether this stress is adding to such off-flavours? Although pushing a yeast to its limits seems like a good way to get a slightly sweet sparkling wine, i'm guessing it is not common practice to do it this way for a reason. I always follow the recipe exactly for the sugar content and have never had a bottle blow up. Plus I use champagne bottles.

I have considered using a different yeast like EC1118 but am worried it will end up very dry. Only option would be to monitor for sweetness, prime and bottle when am happy with it and let it gas up (monitoring one PET bottle of it every few days until hard) then pasteurising it at that point to kill the yeast. Seems like a lot of mucking around and really this is my go to "simple recipe"..

Some other changes I was thinking of making are:
1. Using 3 lemons and 1 tsp of citric acid instead of 4 tsp citric acid. As the only flavour in there is ginger, it does lack body.

2. Adding some raisons to address above issue also.

3. Using less Cream of Tartar. I have never used this for any other wine but the recipe calls for it. Other older recipes that I have seen it used in call for less than this quantity - perhaps using 1.25tsp rather than 2tsp. Not quite sure of the exact flavour that this adds. I did some research and I found that it is used for "mouthfeel" and pH balance.

4. Using raw sugar instead of white sugar. This will no doubt make it less clear (it is crystal clear when following the recipe) but might add some more rounded flavour?

Any comments on this?

 

[salcoco]

My first guess is that the citric acid maybe adding some bitterness. try tartaric acid or more cream of tartar. adding a yeast nutrient would eliminate the sulfur smell, this is possible caused by stressed yeast. using EC1118 will ferment to dryness, but adding the priming sugar will still provide your sparkle as the yeast will still be in suspension. I would believe the beer yeast is also removing all of the sugar before you bottle.

 

[BernardSmith]

I would agree with Salcoco and add yeast nutrient. I don't know but I doubt that ginger has enough nutrient for the yeast. I also would check the pH of the must before adding any acidity. If the acidity of the ginger must is close enough to 3.5 then I would allow the must to ferment and then taste the wine to see how much added acidity it needs. Seems to me that there is little need for acidity if the issue is fermentation (too much acidity and the yeast cannot do its job. Too little simply means that you need to add more sulfites when you age the wine and you need a greater ABV to help prevent spoilage but at an ABV of 9.5% I think that that is not a problem) . If the issue is taste (you want a wine to have some zing !) then adding acidity before you taste it seems illogical.
After the wine has ceased active fermentation you can taste it and see if it needs any added zing. You can either simply use your own taste to determine how much acid to add (bench test) or you can make use of TA charts and aim for a TA that is "typical" for a white non grape wine (usually between .55% and .65%) but adding teaspoonfuls of tartaric (cream of tartar) and citric acid before you taste the wine seems bizarre to me...
But all that said, a ginger wine seems like such a great idea... I also see that WVMJ (Mountaineer Jack) , on another forum suggested using at least 1 lb possibly 2 lbs /gallon ( 500 g - 1 Kg) of ginger and in fact making a tea from the ginger (boiling the ginger for 20 minutes and then removing the spice and using the tea.

 

[meadman77]

Thanks a lot. This sounds like really logical advice. I measured the pH at pitching (3.95) and then after 8 days (3.33) but not after that. Presumably it continued to become more acidic. When we say that fruit wines should be around 3.5, does this anticipate that the pH will reduce during the ferment?

I have some Young's yeast nutrient and will use it next time, hopefully it will make some difference.

1kg per gallon seems like a massive amount of ginger! Maybe not as much flavour comes across as a tea. I thought I was getting it cheap at $10/kg so 5kg for the recipe would increase the cost significantly. You can taste the ginger at the rate in the recipe. Maybe i'll increase it to 375g for 5 gallon next time to see if it is better.

I don't have the ability to test TA, only pH at the moment.

If all else fails, i'll try different yeast. I have some EC1118 and it is a real workhorse, but I have found that it strips a lot of flavour, at least in meads. Might be less of an issue with such a simple flavoured wine as this.

Definitely a few things to try and I would really recommend that people give this a go. Even though I want to improve the recipe, it is really not bad tasting and very cheap. At Christmas my cousin was talking about a bottle of it that he has had sitting in the shed for 22 years. We opening it (after chilling) and it was just as good as after 1 year! Still gassed up and everything. We thought it would be off for sure.

 

[Joontah]

How'd yeh get on with it? Any great successes over the past 4 years? Just for anyone happening upon this thread while researching, I personally use 12 pounds!!1! of ginger (grow my own, can afford lol) in a 5 gallon (5 kilograms per 20/25 litres), just one tablespoon each of tartaric & citric acid acid, dark brown sugar, a little yeast nutrient and for the big secret? A handful of loose-leaf Earl-grey tea leaves when you boil... The added Tannins really do give a boost of flavour (couple limes help too, aroma-wise; couple Habeneros help to boost teh ginger fire).