Ginger ale

Ginger ale is a carbonated soft drink flavoured with ginger, enjoyed on its own or as a mixer in cocktails. It originated in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, and its dry style, developed in Canada, is today the most widely sold.

History

According to the documented record, the first ginger ale was made in Belfast in the 1850s by Thomas Joseph Cantrell, an Irish apothecary and surgeon who set out to create a soft drink. This was the so-called golden style: a dark, generally sweet drink with a strong ginger character, fermented with a microbial starter such as yeast or a ginger bug, and sold through the local firm Grattan and Company.

The dry style, paler and with a much milder ginger flavour, was developed by the Canadian chemist and pharmacist John J. McLaughlin, who had set up a soda water bottling plant in 1890. From around 1904 he began making flavour extracts to add to plain water, and in 1907 Canada Dry Ginger Ale was patented. During Prohibition in the United States, the dry version became popular as a mixer for alcoholic drinks. Modern industrial production instead carbonates chilled water with carbon dioxide at the end of the process rather than relying on fermentation.

Culture

Ginger ale is drunk as a soft drink, but its most widespread role is as a cocktail and punch ingredient, where it lowers the alcohol content. It also serves as a non-alcoholic stand-in for champagne, sparkling wine or beer at celebrations and in the performing arts, since it resembles them in colour and bubbles. In England it is mixed with beer to make a shandy. It has long been used as a home remedy for digestive discomfort and nausea, a popular belief rather than a medical treatment.

In North America, brands such as Canada Dry, Schweppes and Seagram's have made the dry style the market reference, while Vernors, from Detroit, keeps the golden style, aged three years in oak barrels. In that city, the Boston cooler, made with vanilla ice cream and Vernors, is a local classic.

Trivia