J&C's Cocktails: The J&C's international Ginger Beer Tasting (english Version)

Today:

The J&C's international - Ginger Beer Tasting -

...Actually you are not allowed to call it Ginger “Beer” when it's produced in Germany while it’s not even a beer in the proper german sense, well, to make it simple it's a Lemonade. But, in fact, it is one of the very few “fillers” or “mixers” that, besides the fizz and the taste in general brings another very interesting factor into the game which is wonderful to work with especially behind the bar: Spice & Hotness!

However today we only want to focus on the pure taste of these more or less spicy ginger lemonades. We want to taste and try them to narrow down our favorite pick. A pick of Ginger Beer which we are looking forward to working with or we just want to enjoy chilled and with no extras.

This selection may lead to different results depending on personal liking considering lemonade and, when it comes to ginger, sensibility towards spice. For that reason we rated the hotness of each Ginger Beer in comparison to each other on a scale from 1-5, however that criterion will not be directly influencing the score.

Is “very hot” any good? Where does the hotness come from? Is spicy/hot/fiery actually hot?

Those were quite tricky questions, which we could only partially answer, which also is why we chose to use this rating system.

Some manufacturers tend to work with different ingredients to achieve the wanted hotness (Chili, pepper,...)

That is also why it could be that people with a higher sensibility towards hotness may experience the actually spicier Ginger Beers as more pleasant than the milder ones because different sources of spice lead to different results, for example how it develops on your tongue or if it hits you right in your face (or tongue). We tried to capture all of these factors in the tab “hotness” behind the slash ( / ).

Hence that value (measured from 1-5) will determine the drinkability for more sensitive people and – if we did well – finally the overall quality of hotness and the Ginger Beer containing it.

The table above can help you to pick the right Ginger Beer for all sorts of purposes. For cocktails or long drinks containing Ginger Beer for example you will need one with a much more present fizz, so it won't get lost in the drink, making it flat. Obviously, that is not the case if you’re drinking Ginger Beer on its own.

Thus we want to represent our favorites and let our readers see the justifiably individual interpretation of the results.

In our opinion, the Black Forest Ginger shows the most natural taste and the most elegant form of spice in this comparison although we would have wished for the spice to be more intense.

At the same time the FeverTree Ginger Beer might be the best Filler for Moscow Mule, Cocktails and Co.

We would be so glad if you think of us next time you take a sip out of one of those spicy copper mugs or just trying to get that spicy kick on the go! ;)

Until then, we hope you have fun with our informative listing!

By the way: This article will be a permanent project of J&C's, we will add another Ginger Beers to the Test as soon as we can grab one to make this comparison as complete as possible.