I'm digging up some old photos to share. I'm partial to ginger beers, and experimented with other flavours available here (in Taiwan). Roselle is our favourite (with lemon, of course), and always carbonated quickly. Turmeric by itself was too much flavour-wise, but half and half with ginger was tasty.
Are you adding yeast, or doing it wild? The few times I've tried ginger beer, it always ends up with a thick, almost gelatinous microbial mat. One time I strained it out and it tasted ok, but feels like I'm doing something wrong.
I'm using the wild yeast from the ginger/turmeric. It only takes a day or so to get the "ginger bug" going, and I've never had any issues. Ginger is all local and unprocessed (I'm washing dirt off it), so maybe that makes a difference?
The gelatinous mat is probably a scoby pellicle, I think it's normal
No yeast, no. Organic ginger, regular white sugar, and water, feed it daily and stir twice a day. After a few days it will hiss. No I don't get any gelatinous nothing. The ginger beer does get lees at the bottom of the bottle but no, nothing slimy.