batchmiami
Member
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2013
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 3
Hey everyone, I'm a long time follower of this forum but I just joined because I want all of your expert thoughts. I'm in the process of opening a bar in downtown Miami (if anyone is every in the neighborhood stop by for a drink on me!) and we want to keg our own house sodas and run them like draft beers through taps. Everything is going great, the one issue I am having is with the ginger beer!
We have a fantastic ginger beer recipe, essentially:
1 part fresh ginger juice
2 parts lemon juice
3 parts sugar
10 parts water
It comes out fantastic, the one problem is since it isn't based on an extract the real ginger sinks to the bottom after about an hour. It separates so fast that even if I had an employee agitate the keg it would have to be done so frequently it wouldn't make sense. This leads to 2 problems, 1- the sediment carries a strong ginger flavor so the product would be inconsistent (and probably waaay too weak/overpowering depending on how much of the keg had been tapped) and also I'm afraid if we ran that sediment through a draft line it would gunk it up and ruin it (we have a 50+ foot run)
At first I figured I didn't filter it enough, so I literally filtered this for a day through a 1 micron filter- no dice. So I'm asking for your help for a solution!
The problem with simply siphoning off the "clear" liquid that sits on top of the sediment is that it doesn't have the full ginger flavor that is included when it is mixed. Also, I could pull some "clear" ginger beer with a pipet, but if I used a siphon I think it would agitate the sediment and it would come out with the "clear" ginger beer, defeating the entire purpose.
I'm wondering if there is an emulsifier that would work or some type of chemical that could be added to bind the sediment. Maybe someone has another solution. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
We have a fantastic ginger beer recipe, essentially:
1 part fresh ginger juice
2 parts lemon juice
3 parts sugar
10 parts water
It comes out fantastic, the one problem is since it isn't based on an extract the real ginger sinks to the bottom after about an hour. It separates so fast that even if I had an employee agitate the keg it would have to be done so frequently it wouldn't make sense. This leads to 2 problems, 1- the sediment carries a strong ginger flavor so the product would be inconsistent (and probably waaay too weak/overpowering depending on how much of the keg had been tapped) and also I'm afraid if we ran that sediment through a draft line it would gunk it up and ruin it (we have a 50+ foot run)
At first I figured I didn't filter it enough, so I literally filtered this for a day through a 1 micron filter- no dice. So I'm asking for your help for a solution!
The problem with simply siphoning off the "clear" liquid that sits on top of the sediment is that it doesn't have the full ginger flavor that is included when it is mixed. Also, I could pull some "clear" ginger beer with a pipet, but if I used a siphon I think it would agitate the sediment and it would come out with the "clear" ginger beer, defeating the entire purpose.
I'm wondering if there is an emulsifier that would work or some type of chemical that could be added to bind the sediment. Maybe someone has another solution. Any help would be greatly appreciated!