Ginger beer

Traditional ginger beer is a sweetened and

Current ginger beers are often manufactured rather than brewed, frequently with flavour and colour additives, with artificial carbonation. Ginger ales are not brewed.

Brewed ginger beer originated in Yorkshire in England in the mid-18th century, it was popular in Britain and its colonies from the 18th century. Other spices were variously added and any alcohol content was limited to 2% by excise tax laws in 1855.^{[citation needed]} Few brewers have maintained an alcoholic product.^{[citation needed]}

Ginger beer is still produced at home using a symbiotic colony of yeast and a Lactobacillus (bacteria) known as a "ginger beer plant" or from a "ginger bug" starter created from fermenting ginger, sugar, and water.^[1]

History

Brewed ginger beer originated in Yorkshire in England in the mid-18th century^[2] and became popular throughout Britain, the United States, Ireland, South Africa and Canada, reaching a peak of popularity in the early 20th century.^[3]

Production

Alcoholic ginger beer

Brewed ginger beer originated in the UK, but is sold worldwide. It is usually labelled "alcoholic ginger beer" to distinguish it from the more established commercial ginger beers, which are often not brewed using fermentation but carbonated with pressurized carbon dioxide, though traditional non-alcoholic ginger beer may also be produced by brewing.^[4]

Ginger beer plant

Ginger beer plant (GBP), a form of fermentation starter, is used to create the fermentation process. Ginger beer was defined by Harry Marshall Ward as “beverage containing a symbiotic mixture of yeast and bacteria, and containing sufficient amounts of nitrogenous organic matter and beet sugar or cane sugar in its aqueous solution”.^[5] The GBP was first described by Ward in 1892, from samples he received in 1887.^[6][7][8]

Also known as "

In the UK, the origins of the original ginger beer plant is unknown. When a batch of ginger beer was made using some ginger beer "plant" (GBP), the jelly-like residue was also bottled and became the new GBP. Some of this GBP was kept for making the next batch of ginger beer, and some was given to friends and family, so the plant was passed on through generations. Following Ward's research and experiments, he created his own ginger beer from a new plant that he had made, and he proposed, but did not prove, that the plant was created by contaminants found on the raw materials, with the yeast coming from the raw brown sugar and the bacteria coming from the ginger root.[13]

Yeast starter

An alternative method of instigating fermentation is using a ginger beer starter, often called a "ginger bug", which can be made by fermenting a mixture of water, brewer's or baker's yeast (not the SCOBY described above), ginger, and sugar. This is kept for a week or longer, with sugar regularly added, e.g., daily, to increase alcohol content. More ginger may also be added. When finished, this concentrated mix is strained, diluted with water and lemon juice, and bottled.^[14][15] This is the process used by some commercial ginger beer makers. Ginger beer made from a yeast-based starter is reported to not have the same taste or mouth feel as that made with ginger beer plant. The near-complete loss of the ginger beer plant is likely due to the decrease in home brewing and the increased commercial production of ginger beer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Large-scale breweries favoured the use of yeast, as used in conventional beer-making, because of ease for scaled production.

Ginger beer soft drink

Non-alcoholic ginger beer is commonly a type of carbonated soft drink flavoured with ginger.^{[clarification needed]}

However, some non-alcoholic ginger beers are made by brewing, followed by heating to reduce alcohol content to below 0.5% ABV, below which beverages are legally classified as "non-alcoholic" in many jurisdictions.^[16]

Mixed drinks

The ginger beer soft drink may be mixed with

• Ginger ale
• Crabbie's
• Root beer
• Barritt's Ginger Beer
• Sockerdricka
• Caribbean cuisine
• Ginger wine
• Canton (liqueur)
• Socată
• Tilda (cocktail)
• List of soft drink flavors
• Donoghue v. Stevenson
  , legal case involving ginger beer

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ginger beer.

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on

• Ginger beer

• Of the Street Sale of Ginger-Beer, Sherbet, Lemonade,&C., from London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 1, Henry Mayhew, 1851; subsequent pages cover the costs and income of street ginger beer sellers.
• http://www.scienceinschool.org/sites/default/files/issuePdf/issue8.pdf