The Ginger People Ginger Beer

Aw, look at the little dude on the tiger.

The Ginger People Ginger Beer

The bottle art is thoroughly charming, a cute little ginger guy in a turban rides on the back of a tiger. Arcing over the head it reads "A Toast to Your Strength and Vigor". The bottle is suspiciously cloudy, but we are reassured everything is fine at the bottom of the label: "Natural ginger juice gives our ginger beer its uniquely cloudy appearance..." How nice! They knew we'd be concerned but took the time to ease our fears.

The best part is the instruction to "Gently tip to and fro and enjoy". To and fro! I want the copy writer to read me bedtime tales.

I pop the cap with my everpresent Leatherman after realizing it wasn't a twist-off. "Realizing it wasn't a twist-off" is code for "nearly tore my shirt". The first whiff of the ginger beer lifted me off the ground, it smelled like heaven. Like concentrated Canadian made Ting. I literally snorted the CO2 mist drifting out of the can up into my nostrils, there was no visible gas left after I whiffed it all up.

Heaven. Then came the first drink. It's not so much that this stuff is bad as it is that it doesn't measure up to the promise of the label and the smell. It's foamy but not full of carbonated fight, it expands in my mouth and sits there like a big slug. This corpulence is matched in the taste, nothing much happens. It's not a typical ginger taste, not at all. Compared to other ginger beers it's more like a root beer than anything else, this is reflected in the foaminess as well. There's also a hint of something like damp earth, from a forest. Which I guess makes sense, considering that this is made from a root that likes loamy soil.

Which brings me back to the label. The little root guy riding the tiger, I am suspicious of who exactly he is. What root is known for resemblance to a man, eh? Not ginger, but most certainly mandrake. Unless gathered under the most carefully arranged circumstances, mandrake root gives a death wail when pulled from the ground that will strike any hearers dead. DEAD. Furthermore, mandrake can be used to create a homonculus, animating the mandrake into a little person that will do as its master wishes. We are now back to the label, where we see a little animated root man riding a tiger.

The tiger, of course, is the hole in this theory. Unless we have tiny tigers this would mean that root man on the label is actually quite large. Bigger than a person, actuallly. At this point, I'll fall back and blame the disproportinate scale on photoshop trickery.

Ha.

All that said, Ginger People Ginger Beer ain't that great. It's sweet, and leaves a delightful residue on the lips and wherever else you slop it, but otherwise the taste is pretty bland. Sure it's a ginger beer and not a ginger ale, but that ain't no excuse.