Stones Premium Alcoholic Ginger Beer

Brewed by Angove’s
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Renmark, South Australia, Australia

(Bottle 33 cl) Pours a cloudy greenish with only the tiniest white head - mostly looks like a lemon tonic pop. Sweet aroma of lemon and ginger. Light in body, very sweet and sugary with delicious ginger notes that leaves a discreet hot bite. No bitterness. Scaringly the alcohol is not felt at all, this really appears like a normal non-alcoholic Ginger Beer. 130208

In the bottle. Pours cloudy white/yellow similar in appearance to the old soda pop known as "Wink." Ginger is the overpowering aroma. A very sweet flavor with the ginger emerging after the sweetness subsides. This has a long palate, but it is just way too sweet for me.

Tried this back in sept. last year with 3 other ginger beers. Pale light green body with no head to speak about. Sweet taste but not too heavy, ginger not too full on, this was probably runner up in the four that I tried. Refreshing enough and better balanced than a couple of the others, I just don’t think I would have more than one or two.

Bit of a curiosity: an alcoholic ginger beer brewed by an Australian winemaker under licence from the venerable Stone’s of London. The twist is that Stone’s don’t brew a ginger beer themselves, so at time of writing this is exclusive to Australia. The ingredients list includes flavours, food acid and preservatives, besides barley malt, hops and ginger extract, so expectations are modest. It poured a cloudy ’real’ lemonade colour. No head and very little visible carbonation. Classic mass-produced ginger beer aroma, thin and chemical, with some lemonade and ginger extract. Medium body but very syrupy sweet. The ginger gives it some genuine pep and mouth-prickle, but otherwise it’s like drinking a very dense solution of sugarwater. Way too sweet and syrupy for my taste. If I didn’t know this was alcholic, I’m not sure I would guess. (330ml bottle, bb 22/8/05)

Thanks to Highlandlad for bringing this one up. I tasted it almost a year ago to the day after sampling a bottle of Blue Tongue’s Ginger beer. Couldn’t find it on the site and thought nothing of it as it was a mere soda in comparison to the better Ginger beers on the market. Notes were bleak so here goes:- Poured a cloudy palest lemony beige. Intermittent in carbonation but clearly charged before bottling as the bubbles that were present were huge and clung firmly to the glass. Generous, yet sharp and biting, ginger extract nose; overly sweet and sugary. Similar in the mouth and increasing with vigour; it was sweet to the point of being clammy. Harsh, prickly carbonation bit at the front of the tongue, but moved into a clammy mess before the swallow and the aftertaste was very long and sweet with feint notes of ginger root. This was the definition of one dimensional as all I got was sugar. It wasn’t awful, actually was easy to drink chilled, but it had to be downed quickly. (33cL, BWS Balga)

Murky pale yellow colour. Sweet ginger aroma. Sweet ginger flavour and fizzy palate.

24 Apr 2006 - Sweet ginger aroma. Very light yellow-white cloudy colour low carbonation. Sweet simple ginger flavour. Easy drinking lacks a spark. Basically its lolly water.

...hmmm, bottle no pour on the roader. Pretty clean, with a decent ginger flavor. Easy drinking, not overpowering, and I guess balanced for the most part. Finished ginger and dry. Wasn’t bad.