North Americans are known for their fondness for ginger beer. This drink, with its unique spicy tang, is a main ingredient in popular cocktails such as the Dark and Stormy and the Moscow Mule. Unlike ginger ale, ginger beer is often brewed from ginger root, offering a stronger spicy taste. According to Future Market Insights, North Americans consume more ginger beer than any other continent. However, the origin of this beverage is traced back to Britain.

Ginger beer consumption is generally believed to have started in 18th-century England. The English had an advantage in manufacturing this beverage due to their access to ginger and sugar; two key ingredients in ginger beer. England’s involvement in the colonization of the Caribbean enabled them to import sugar and substantial quantities of ginger, cultivated by enslaved individuals in Jamaica. By the 1700s, the once rare spice had become common, and with their knowledge of mead and beer brewing, the English could easily create ginger beer.

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Ginger has been added to mead and ale mixtures since it was first introduced to the British Isles. This was likely for medicinal purposes, or to introduce new flavors to the beverages. Although these were not genuine ginger beers, they likely evolved into them. True ginger beers, brewed by fermenting ginger with yeast and bacteria, came later, though the precise details of this discovery remain unclear.

We do know, however, that these early ginger beers contained a low alcohol content due to the fermentation process, similar to the “small beers” the British had been drinking since the Middle Ages in place of unclean drinking water. These small beers were often brewed at home from spent mash that had already been used to brew more powerful beers. Ginger beer was likely brewed at home in a similar fashion, and because of its low alcohol content, it would’ve provided the same hydrating benefits as small beers. Ginger beer contained the added bonus of the spice’s medicinal qualities.

Ginger beer grew in popularity across England, eventually being mass-produced in stoneware bottles. The sturdy thickness of these bottles allowed them to be shipped across the Atlantic to a growing North American market as colonization settled in. The love of ginger beer followed the colonists to the Americas, where it would grow into the biggest market for the beverage in the world a few centuries later.

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