Last week hanging out with some friends, Phill asked me if I'd brew up a batch of ginger beer and bring it to his and Brandy's housewarming party later this week. I've been wanting to brew a new batch anyways, since I think I finally figured out the proper ginger-to-everything-else ratio, but I haven't been able to because of being sick and then being in Chicago.
This is the first batch where I played around with adding more than the basic ginger, sugar, lemon juice and water to the mix. I've been contemplating adding cinnamon and/or honey, so I made up enough to fill four two-liter bottles: one plain, one cinnamon, one honey and one with cinnamon, honey and More Stuff. The cinnamon I just added when I poured it into bottles to ferment, the honey I didn't want to mess with the fermentation so I added it after I decanted, filtered and re-bottled the beer for aging in the fridge.
Side note here: 24 hours into the brew I released the pressure in all of the bottles, as I typically do. The first bottle I did this to was one with cinnamon in it, and I wasn't thinking. Let's just say that a cinnamon stick makes for a very active nucleation site, which my nose and half of my kitchen learned the hard way.
I took a small sample of each before I put them in the fridge, and from these initial tastes, I think things are going to turn out very well. I've found from past experience that after about three days in the fridge the taste gets much better, and I've timed that to happen at the housewarming party, so I think things are going to work out well. We'll see what everyone thinks.
I have some random photos of filtering it here