You probably know we’re crazy about homemade ginger ale. It’s spicy, sweet, and has such a great flavor! One of the most popular questions we get is, “Does ginger beer have alcohol?” along with many others regarding ginger beer alcohol content.
In this week’s video we’re testing seven batches of homemade ginger ale made with a ginger bug to show the alcohol content as it ferments for each day. It’s quite a science experiement!
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Does Ginger Beer Have Alcohol?
If you’re brewing homemade ginger ale using a ginger bug starter, then yes! Your ginger ale does in fact contain alcohol. The trick is, depending on how long you ferment your ginger beer and how much sugar you start with, the alcohol content can vary a lot.
During the process of fermentation, bacteria and yeast eat the sugar in your soda syrup and turn it into byproducts that include alcohol. If you ferment for only one day, you will have many times less alcohol than if you were to ferment for a whole week.
We’ve always had a ballpark figure for how much alcohol ginger ale has but never knew the exact amounts for our favorite recipe. That is, until today!
Alcohol Content in Ginger Beer – Using a Hydrometer
Beer brewers measure the alcohol content in their beer using what’s called a hydrometer. We’ve been dying to know how alcohol ginger ale has so we decided to pick one up and run an experiment!
Using our shiny new hydrometer, we’re measuring something called Specific Gravity. This is the ratio of the density of a substance (our ginger ale) compared to the density of a known (water).
When we mix up our sugary soda syrup, it becomes dense with sugar. As the bacteria and yeast eat the sugar, our substance doesn’t have as much sugar and becomes less dense. When we measure the density difference, we can find out how much sugar was eaten and get a rough calculation of the alcohol content in ginger beer.
We’re taking a measurement of the specific gravity before we ferment called the Original Gravity (og) and then after a period of fermentation taking another reading called the Final Gravity (fg).
Once we have these two calculations, we plug it into the brewers formula to get the ABV or Alcohol By Volume. This is normally the alcohol percentage you see displayed on beer or wine bottles.
Alcohol By Volume (ABV) Formula:
ABV = (og – fg) * 131.25
Homemade Ginger Beer Alcohol Content – Results!
Using our original homemade ginger ale recipe, we made seven batches of ginger ale each staggered by a day. After making a batch, we measured the original gravity of each to account for any possible fluctuations in the recipe and we also used the exact same ginger bug without changing it.
After one week of making a batch of ginger ale every day, we now had a full week of results! This means that we can now see how much alcohol ginger ale had after one day, two days, and so on up to a full week of fermentation. How exciting!
We then took measurements of the final gravity of every batch and plugged the numbers into our formula.
Here’s our results:
Alcohol Content – Homemade Ginger Ale (7 Days)
| Days | ABV % | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.26% | Very light and sweet |
| 2 | 0.79% | Same |
| 3 | 1.31% | Beginning to taste a little alcoholic |
| 4 | 1.31% | Same |
| 5 | 1.58% | Our favorite in the taste test |
| 6 | 2.36% | Beginning to be sour |
| 7 | 2.36% | A little more sour |
After a week of results, we were actually a little surprised at how fast we got to 1% alcohol. It really does make a big difference how long you ferment ginger ale before it starts to get a little alcoholic. Wow! The other thing that surprised us is after a week, the alcohol content in the ginger beer didn’t get as strong as we thought it would.
It slowed down in terms of alcohol, but still had such a great flavor! You basically have a light beer in terms of alcohol content.
Knowing a general range of what the percent alcohol can get to is a good thing to keep in mind if you don’t react well to alcohol or if you’re giving your homemade ginger ale to kids. This isn’t any kind of recommendation, only a few more data points for you to consider to make your own decisions.
Surprised?
We definitely were and we had a ton of fun with this experiment! If you want to try your hand at testing the alcohol content of your favorite homemade ferments, pick up one of these nice hydrometers. We bought the glass one to see a clearer view.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode on the alcohol content of homemade ginger ale. Leave us a comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel!
Have you two purchased a ginger beer plant yet? I know you’ve done ferments with a ginger bug but honestly, when i purchased a ginger beer plant, I totally upped the game. The ginger beer plant is similar to water kefir in appearance but they tend to cling together. Almost similar to milk kefir but, of course, they ferment the same as you would with a water kefir. There are two places where you can buy one. I went with the overseas connection because that is the only product he offers and his reviews were all positive.
Here’s his website.
https://gingerbeerplant.net/
Thanks for the idea Mark! No we haven’t tried the ginger beer plant but it sounds like it would have some nice flavor! We’ll have to try it some time. Thanks for the comment! 🙂