I want to make a batch of alcoholic ginger beer. However, I know from past experience that one problem with ginger beer is that the bulk of the fermentation happens in the bottles, and I can't drink it fast enough: it gradually hardens and gets more and more bitter (and more alcoholic) until the last bottle is nigh-undrinkable.
What's a good way to prevent this from happening?
I gather that when making, um, non-ginger beer (is there a term for this?), fermentation is controlled by using a mixture of sucrose and lactose. Apparently the yeast will feed off the sucrose but not the lactose, so once the yeast has consumed all the sucrose fermentation stops but you still get a sweet flavour from the lactose. OTOH I have also seen ginger beer kits that have artificial sweeteners in them, probably for the same reason. I can't stand the taste of these; does lactose affect flavour? And would this work with ginger beer anyway?
Are there any other techniques I should look at? Obviously because the bottles are pressurised I can't take the lid off to add anything when I want fermentation to stop. Another thing that might work is irradiation, but unfortunately my fission reactor's on the blink.
