Since there's very little on the web about GBP, and I acquired a legitimate culture not long ago, I figured I'd document my experiences thus far.
The culture proper (in it's SCOBY form) double themselves each batch with the proper calcium content and ample sugar/ginger in order to create more polysaccharide grains. I've been doing gallon batches for a spell and have found different reactions with different recipes. From conventional wisdom, unrefined sugar and ginger are all it needs to be healthy, other kinds of sugars and acids can affect the health of the "plant" negatively (e.g. turning white, crumbly, less effective etc.) I have, however, made successful batches with other ingredient and then put the culture in with the aforementioned "healthy" ingredients and brought the culture back to normal health. Some things I've observed:
While using spray malt or LME is doable, the culture seems to get a little white and crumbly after 2 batches or more. This may be due to using hops in one (anti-bacterial) or may be due to complex sugars not agreeing with the culture. It does make a FANTASTIC ginger beer, but you may want to do it with spare culture or regenerate the culture with a few batches of just unrefined sugar and ginger.
be ready to make small batches frequently, the usual 1-gallon batch takes 3 day to be carbed and ready to drink.
I'll post recipes in the daytime when I can make more noise with my keyboard, happy meading and look forward to more interesting tidbits about this spectacular culture!
The culture proper (in it's SCOBY form) double themselves each batch with the proper calcium content and ample sugar/ginger in order to create more polysaccharide grains. I've been doing gallon batches for a spell and have found different reactions with different recipes. From conventional wisdom, unrefined sugar and ginger are all it needs to be healthy, other kinds of sugars and acids can affect the health of the "plant" negatively (e.g. turning white, crumbly, less effective etc.) I have, however, made successful batches with other ingredient and then put the culture in with the aforementioned "healthy" ingredients and brought the culture back to normal health. Some things I've observed:
While using spray malt or LME is doable, the culture seems to get a little white and crumbly after 2 batches or more. This may be due to using hops in one (anti-bacterial) or may be due to complex sugars not agreeing with the culture. It does make a FANTASTIC ginger beer, but you may want to do it with spare culture or regenerate the culture with a few batches of just unrefined sugar and ginger.
be ready to make small batches frequently, the usual 1-gallon batch takes 3 day to be carbed and ready to drink.
I'll post recipes in the daytime when I can make more noise with my keyboard, happy meading and look forward to more interesting tidbits about this spectacular culture!
