The History of Ginger Beer

Ginger beer is essentially made from leaving water, sugar and ginger to ferment using something called a "ginger beer plant" as the fermenter.  The "ginger beer plant" is not what is usually considered a plant but a composite organism consisting of a fungus, the yeast Saccharomyces florentinus (formerly S. pyriformis) and the bacterium Lactobacillus hilgardii (formerly Brevibacterium vermiforme), which form a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (known as a "SCOBY").  It forms a gelatinous substance that allows it to be easily transferred from one fermenting substrate to the next.

Ginger beer was arguably invented in Yorkshire in the mid-18th century but it wasn't until the 1830's that it really started to gain momentum across the UK.  At this point most ginger beer would have been sold to customers with their own containers.  We have no real evidence to support the fact that specific stone ginger beer bottles were produced for it's consumption until perhaps the 1850's in Berkshire.  Even then these were normally salt glazed and made by local potters normally in the same village or town to the ginger beer brewers.  At this time there was no such thing as refrigeration and stone ginger beer bottles were thought to keep the drink cool.  Largely the drink was sold in the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  Hence most ginger beer stone bottles that you see today are mainly from these regions. 

In 1855 some standardisation in the UK started to take place when a law was passed for British excise regulations that ginger beer could not exceed 2% alcohol in strength.  These regulations had resulted from the huge growth in popularity of the drink in the years prior to that.  In reality the strength of the ginger beer tended to be much lower than the 2% limit anyway but some types had to be diluted before being sold.  Due to the poor quality of the water during Victorian times, ginger beer was even quite popularly drunk by children.  Popularity of the drink continued to grow and by this time ginger beer brewers had started to have the stone bottles mass produced by bottle manufacturers mainly in the cities.  The stone bottles were still salt glazed but usually incised (or impressed) (see "TYPES OF BOTTLE" page) with the ginger beer brewer's name and town.  The bottles remained the property of the brewer and were expected to be returned after consumption of the contents.  The bottles could then be washed, refilled and resold.  These incised stone bottles remained popularly in place to around 1880.

Around 1880 bottle manufacturing had advanced enough for the stone ginger beer bottles to be colour glazed and have transfer printing designs on them (see "TYPES OF BOTTLE" page).  These transfer designs were produced by rubber stamping the bottles with the transfer print.  Most designs were simple and still basically had the brewer's name and town on.  With the competition between brewers and the continuing growth in popularity of the drink, brewers started branding their bottles with occasionally more elaborate designs to try to advertise and encourage brand loyalty.  Some even had the tops of the ginger beers coloured something other than brown.  This made identification of the bottles much easier and of course they stood out more to the consumers.  Royal Doulton even capitalised on the market by producing a machine capable of printing the transfers onto ginger beer bottles.  These transfers were much clearer than the old 'rubber stamp' technique (see "TYPES OF BOTTLE" page).

Not all ginger beer sellers converted to transfer prints on their ginger beer bottles.  This was particularly so in places where there was little competition to affect brand loyalty.  Even as late as after 1910 some ginger beer brewers still used incised bottles to sell their drinks in.  Of course not all bottles were either incised or transferred.  Some of course were plain ginger beer bottles which the ginger beer seller then pasted his own label onto.  Bottle diggers find many many plain ginger beers in old Victorian rubbish dumps.

Ginger beer continued to be very popular into the late 1920's.  As a result, nearly all towns and even some villages had ginger beer brewers in the early 20th Century.  Some larger scale ginger beer brewers started to use bottles instead of stone ginger beers.  This was perhaps as early as 1910.  They took advantage of the huge glass bottling plants because on a larger scale, the production process of the glass bottles was cheaper and quicker.  The process of brewing ginger beer made a lot of sediment.  This was often found at the bottom of the bottled ginger beer.  As a result, the earlier glass bottles produced were made to hide this and they were deliberately produced in very dark glass almost black at times.  Another reason for this use of dark glass was the fact that sunlight made the ginger beer go off much quicker and darker glass prevented this almost as effectively as the stone ginger beer bottles.

In late Victorian and early Edwardian times water quality had started to improve dramatically and people were becoming more health conscious.  People became much more wary of what they were eating and drinking.  Whilst being sold in stone bottles (or sometimes dark glass bottles) customers could not actually see what they were buying and the habit of drinking out of those bottles meant that sediment was sometimes consumed.  With the dawn of refrigeration, the cool stone bottles used became less relevant.  A combination of these two things saw the demise of the stone ginger beer bottle during the 1930's.  By the mid-1930's ginger beer was still popular but on the demise.  At this time, it was almost wholly produced and manufactured in glass bottles which were seen as much more fashionable.  Although the glass was still fairly dark, normally brown or green any sediment could be seen quite clearly at the bottom of the bottle.  This fell firmly in line with public demand but was probably more to do with improved glass manufacture and therefore thinner glass than any consicious decision to change the colour.  Even today, traditional bottled beers are sold in green or more normally dark brown glass bottles.  Perhaps this a remnant of the deicsions made from those days long past.