Ginger

Ginger is an amazing ingredient and one that has a versatile range of uses.

Fresh Ginger can be hot and pungent yet sweet and fruity all at the same time, it can bring a level of vibrancy to a mead that few other ingredients can manage to achieve. 

We can learn a lot about the use of ginger from the chefs and pastry cooks of the world. Ginger can take on different flavour profiles depending on how it is treated. The warm sweet taste of ginger bread that a baker often seeks is very different to the pungent and hot flavours of raw ginger that the Asian chef seeks out.

Fresh ginger will bring those pungent flavours, but as ginger is dried it gives up a lot of those volatile flavours, it becomes softer and much more approachable as it brings less volatile heat with it: this is the ginger sought out for baking and the ginger that brings that ginger bread baked goods familiarity with it.

The ginger becomes even softer as it blends with spices like cinnamon, star anise and nutmeg.

A reasonable amount of the pungency of ginger is lost in the fermenter, though not all. I make two products with ginger, for my Ginger Bread Mead I use ginger that has been dried, and I then also roast a portion of this. I use this in primary. I will then add more roasted dried ginger in secondary.

For my Green Ginger Wine I use fresh ginger in primary, chopped and minced, hit with amylase and pectinase and at a rate of 1kg per ten litres. Green ginger wine is predominantly a raisin wine with ginger, after racking off the raisins and ginger I add another 1kg of ginger per 20 litres and leave that for six weeks before racking into a barrel for long term (2 to 3 years) ageing. (worth noting, I also use dates in this recipe)

The ginger flavour in these two products is very different, yet in both is the star of the show.

Fresh ginger and lemon creates an amazing mead at the session mead level, as a sac mead or anything in between. Balancing these two flavours with the addition of a herb such as thyme, rosemary or mint adds to the drinking experience. Hops could also be really pleasant, though this is still on my "fermentation bucket list".

Find your use for Ginger, find your favourite way of eating it and turn that into a mead. Ginger and chocolate? Do it.