Alcohol-Free Ginger Beer, the Fountain Way
Reader ratingsFresh ginger syrup, lemon juice and cold soda water, never fermented: an alcohol-free ginger beer after the street fountains of 1850s London.
- Recipe makes
- About 300 ml ginger syrup, enough for 10 drinks
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Includes about 30 minutes for the ginger syrup to cool. Each drink then takes a minute.
Alcohol-free ginger beer in a plain tumbler, with fresh ginger and half a lemon.
The story behind the recipe
The “ginger beer” pumped from a London street fountain around 1850 was lemon juice and water, sometimes sweetened, with gas forced in as each glass was drawn. Ginger was left out, and with no yeast in the works there was no alcohol either. This version keeps the fountain’s lemon, sugar and fizz and adds a syrup of simmered fresh ginger.
Halfpennies in Petticoat Lane
Henry Mayhew, who interviewed London’s street traders for London Labour and the London Poor, found two kinds of ginger beer on sale. Sellers who brewed their own stirred ginger, sugar, cloves and yeast together and bottled it a day later. The fountains, which had spread through the streets in the past five years or so, needed none of that. Their ingredients, he notes, were “of a very cheap description”: lemon juice sold under the name of lime juice, a pound of sugar now and then, and water, with carbon dioxide pumped in at the tap for the sparkle.
The finest fountain in London belonged to a dancing-master and usually stood in Petticoat Lane. It was mahogany, its brass pump handles and glass receivers polished until “the whole glitters handsomely to the light,” and it was drawn by two ponies, “the aristocratic ‘pair.’” Between six and one on a fine Sunday morning, its two servers took £7 or £8 in halfpennies, at a halfpenny a glass. By UK consumer prices (Bank of England) that morning’s takings come to about £850 to £970 today.
Read more about this recipe
Ginger, lemon and soda
Simmered fresh ginger gives the syrup its heat, and cold soda water stands in for the fountain’s pump. Expect a pale gold drink, sharp with lemon, warm with ginger and lightly sweet. Mayhew was told that some fountain keepers stretched a thinner mix with oil of vitriol, which is concentrated sulfuric acid and has no place in a drink; here lemon juice does all the sharpening. Leaving out ice is our choice: chill the soda well instead, so the glass keeps its fizz and isn’t watered down.
Why most of the period’s other “non-alcoholic” beers held a little alcohol is in What Were Victorian Non-Alcoholic Beers?
Recipe makes: About 300 ml ginger syrup, enough for 10 drinks
Ingredients
For About 300 ml ginger syrup, enough for 10 drinks. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 300 ml ginger syrup, enough for 10 drinks.
Ginger syrup
- Fresh ginger, thinly sliced60 g
- Water240 ml
- Sugar200 g
Per drink
- Ginger syrup30 ml
- Fresh lemon juice15 ml
- Soda water, chilled180 ml
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 60 g fresh ginger, thinly sliced
- 240 ml water
- 200 g sugar
- 30 ml ginger syrup
- 15 ml fresh lemon juice
- 180 ml soda water, chilled
Equipment
Small saucepan with a lid
Fine strainer
Clean bottle or jar for the syrup
Half-pint tumbler, about 285 ml
Instructions
For the syrup, put the fresh ginger and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover, turn the heat down and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Strain the hot liquid into a jug, pressing on the ginger, and stir in the sugar until it has dissolved. Leave to cool for about 30 minutes, then pour into a clean bottle and refrigerate.
For each drink, pour the ginger syrup and the lemon juice into a half-pint tumbler and stir.
Pour in the very cold soda water slowly, stir once and serve at once. For more ginger heat, use up to half as much syrup again.
Nutrition
80calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 300 ml ginger syrup, enough for 10 drinks
- Servings
- 10
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for granulated sugar and lemon juice, for one drink with 30 ml of the syrup.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Scale the ginger syrup ingredients together. The drink ingredients are for one glass; multiply them by the number of drinks.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Mayhew’s fountains took 2 quarts of lemon juice for every 10 gallons of drink, one part in twenty. The 15 ml of lemon juice in this 225 ml drink is a little stronger, about one part in fifteen; for a sharper glass, add more. The fountain drink was hardly sweet: when sugar went in at all, it was a pound to those ten gallons. The syrup here makes a sweeter glass; use less of it if you want to come closer to the street version.
The ginger is our addition, since the fountains used none. Mayhew’s brewed ginger beer took a pound of ginger to three gallons, with cloves; simmering two whole cloves with the ginger brings the syrup nearer that bottled kind. There is no need to peel the ginger; for more heat, grate it instead of slicing it. Much the same syrup goes into Hot Ginger, the soda fountain’s winter drink, filled up with hot water in place of soda.
The drink has no alcohol, because nothing in it ferments. Keep the syrup cold and closed, and throw it out if it turns fizzy or cloudy in the bottle.
Storage
Keep the ginger syrup in a clean, closed bottle in the fridge and use it within two weeks.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After the street ginger-beer fountains described in Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1 (London: Griffin, Bohn, 1861), pp. 186–187
Recipe details
- Drink
- Alcohol-free
- Drink family
- Sodas & Soft Drinks
- Region
- British
- Era
- 19th century
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Dry January