I’m not married but my partner and I hosted something similar to a wedding a few years ago. Instead of beer, fancy wines or batched cocktails, I ordered 30 litres of ginger beer from a Sierra Leonean home cook in Guildford, Sydney.
I thought I loved ginger beer – it was a regular drink order, I’d even order a coffee with a side of ginger beer (I’d ask for an extra-big glass, pour in the shot of espresso, followed by ginger beer).
But I didn’t realise how much I could love it until I tasted this home-brew. I felt like a time-travelling dancer from the baroque period listening to pop music for the first time – the songs I loved from the past, they just don’t carry nearly as much oomph as I thought they did.
I want a ginger beer to be powerfully, aggressively gingery and, for the same reason I never want to bite into a piece of raw ginger, balanced with a good but not childish dose of sugar. That’s what I was looking for when I did this taste-test.
Eight friends and I blind-tasted 17 different supermarket brands, scoring them based on aroma and taste, as well as giving a separate rating for their ginger power. We included ginger ales in the taste test but they’ve been excluded from the final results because they contain little to no ginger, and as one reviewer said, they’re like an AI-produced soft drink, generic and only faintly reflective of a meaningful experience.
We found most supermarket ginger beers to be enjoyable, easy beverages, a standard I imagine most brands are aiming for: a drink for kids and booze-free dudes who fear emasculation. That approach produces some delicious drinks, but it doesn’t produce anything like the Guildford unicorn. I found many ginger beers I’d happily buy, but I didn’t find the one I want to drink for the rest of my life.
Best overall
Capi Spicy Ginger Beer, 4 x 250ml, $9.99, ($0.99 per 100ml), available from select grocers and bottle shops
Score: 8/10
During most Guardian Australia taste tests there is usually one product that scores highly with all the reviewers. Because of that, I’m usually confident the results would be replicated with a different set of reviewers. This taste test was the exception. It was like judging the cutest dog – you remember all the weirdest ones, but how do you pick a clear winner? Reviewers liked the ginger level (it scored a seven out of 10 on the ginger power scale) the spice-sweetness balance and the strong fizz: “Seems more natural, as in not a post-process carbonation but a [by-product],” one wrote. What they didn’t like was the smell, like Bundaberg but made in an aquatic centre. As another reviewer described: “Smells like chlorine but I don’t mind it.”
Best value
Kirks Olde Stoney Ginger Beer, 1.25L, $2.70 ($0.22 per 100ml), available at major supermarkets
Score: 6.5/10
I’ve included two ginger beers in the best value category because this one, slightly cheaper and high scoring, is arguably not a ginger beer. There is some ginger flavour in it, but in the same way Starburst’s pink lollies have a strawberry flavour, it’s an approximation so vague it’s a completely different thing. The reviewers also said it was perfume-y, vanilla-y and citrusy … and oral health product-y. “What Dettol would make if it made drinks,” one reviewer wrote. But those who thought it tasted like dental goo also said it was delicious.
Bundaberg Ginger Beer, 750ml, $3.75, ($0.50 per 100ml), available at major supermarkets
Score: 5.5/10
There’s an irony to Bundaberg’s branding. It’s in a beer bottle, it has “beer” in the name and the ads have featured tributes to “old-school dads”. When all the other blokes are drinking beer, Bundy is a safe, masculine non-alcoholic option – until you taste it. It’s the opposite of the macho whisky-beer-shiraz archetype, extremely sweet and lacking spice or depth. As one reviewer wrote: “Pretty, but pass if you want something more gutsy.” (We also tasted Bundaberg Diet Ginger Beer, which has a similar taste but a confounding funky, vinegary aroma. I’m guessing this is from the addition of malic acid.)
The rest
Fever-Tree Premium Ginger Beer, 500ml, $5, ($1 per 100ml), available from Woolworths, select grocers and bottle shops
Score: 8/10
If the ginger power scale was included in the final scores, Fever-Tree would have won. Reviewers wrote: “Very clear distilled ginger flavour,” “Clears the sinus, but in a good way” and “I love how spicy this is.” It would have scored higher if it wasn’t so sweet – a criticism you could level at most of these products (almost all the brands featured in the results have more than 10g of sugar per 100ml), and the fact the peppery, ginger kick peters out quickly. But not everyone is into the same level of sensory maximalism, so a brief ginger rush might not be the worst thing.
Hot Ginger Beer by Strangelove, 4 x 180ml, $8.40 ($1.17 per 100ml) available from Woolworths, select grocers and bottle shops
Score: 7/10
Drinking this after eight other ginger beers was like watching a Park Chan-wook film when your only experience of screen entertainment is Lizzie McGuire. There’s a lot going on and you might need a minute to decide whether you like it. It’s aggressive on the mouth and in the nose, and has a strong fizz and bitter aftertaste. “Overly spicy but unbalanced,” one reviewer summarised. A little extra sweetness would help the spice attack feel more like a spice hug (it’s one of the least sugary branded products we tried) but maybe this is just a reminder, like my extremely gradual journey into gabba fandom, we rarely like weird or different things the first time we try them.
Strangelove Double Ginger Beer, 4 x 300ml, $9.40 ($0.78 per 100ml), available from Woolworths, select grocers and bottle shops
Score: 6/10
If Strangelove’s Hot Ginger Beer is a Korean horror-comedy, then this is a Marvel film with no action scenes – an artefact made for an undefined but niche audience. Like Strangelove’s other ginger beer, it’s heavily spiced (although not as robustly) but this has even less sweetness. Some reviewers described it as medicinal, one said it was like “drinking a bath bomb”, but one voted it the best ginger beer of the day. If anyone is looking to replicate my morning ginger-beer-coffee cocktail (if you do, please let me know), the Strangelove brands are the worst mixers – they’re all bitter-sour-harsh when you need sweetness.
Bobby Ginger Beer, 330ml, $4 ($1.21 per 100ml), available at select grocers
Score: 6/10
The marketing copy on the back of the can reads: “Hey, I’m bobby [sic] The unconventional soft drink”, but reviewers described it as “unremarkable”, “not really trying to do anything” and “like a room full of people settled on a safe bet”. Those safe drinkers might think the inclusion of prebiotics is a little zany (no reviewers detected any funk during the taste test), but for me the most unconventional thing going on is the use of punctuation. It’s the Sunrise breakfast TV of the soft drink aisle – a most forgettable sensory experience.
Burrandy Ginger Beer, 6 x 375ml, $6.49 ($0.29 per 100ml), available at Aldi
Score: 5/10
There is no ambiguity about what Aldi is trying to do here, Burrandy is a Bundaberg imitator. The name, the colours, the size of the bottles – it’s hilariously and admirably shameless. Imitators are rarely better but, as is often the case for Aldi products, at least they’re cheaper. Taste-wise, Burrandy is an exaggeration of the Bundaberg low-ginger, high-sweet profile. As one reviewer wrote, “I worry about my teeth drinking this.” The diet version is also radically sweet, just weirdly so, like attending your year 6 formal.
Daylesford and Hepburn Mineral Springs Co Organic Brewed Ginger Beer, 300ml, $3.99 ($1.33 per 100ml) available at select grocers
Score: 4/10
Reviewers described the aroma as being like petrichor, the wet dirt smell after rainfall. Two compared it to flyspray; another wrote, “You could clean a dishwasher with this.” On my own scorecard I wrote: “Reminder, these drinks are supposed to taste like ginger.” But the ingredients listed only carbonated water, organic sugar, organic lemon juice, brewed ginger beer base and “natural flavours”. I wish I had an explanation.
