Beer Forum

Can anyone help?

I have 25ltr of Ginger Beer thats been fermenting for 3 weeks in a keg, it is still producing co2 but the SP is now at 1.000

The flavour is good but it has no sweetnes or body at all. I used about 3kg of sugar.

Would adding more sugar to the keg now help with the body, can i bottle and add sugar or is it too late to save the brew.

By the way I am very new to brewing, any advise would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading
Dropski

No body AND no soul?

Sugars are going to be entirely fermentable, meaning that the yeast is going to mow right through them and leave very little behind in terms of sweetness or body. More sugar wouldn't help, but you might consider wine conditioner. It'll prevent your yeast from doing anything though, so won't be able to carb.

Cheers, I will try that as it sounds like it could help.

Agreed. With that much simple sugar in the recipe your beer will be quite dry as the yeast will completely consume the sugars and create alcohol out of them. I think this one might be a loss for you, but work on your next recipe that includes more malt instead of simple sugars.

If you are hellbent on trying to save this one, then you could always consider adding back some boiled/cooled maltodextrin to your beer before packaging. 8 oz should give you about 4 gravity points back although the body might not taste that much different from 1.000. And adding back this product after fermentation doesn't always help improve the finished beer. Good luck!

Or blend it.

All these options seem to be worth a go thanks for the help. I have used this recipe b4 with good results but fermentation was quicker this time. I am going to start using grains soon so maybe back here asking for more help.
Cheers
dropski

Is there anything besides sugar for fermentables? If not, I would guess you just weren't using healthy yeast before & it was pooping out early.

Only used brown sugar, molasses, lemon, ginger and cream of tartar. I upped the total volumes time round as the last batch was perfect. Trial and error i suppose but not put off by it. thanks for the help lads.
Dropski