It’s International Ginger Beer Day on Sunday, March 13, and Ampersand Projects is celebrating by releasing its first ginger beer.

Ampersand (you may know them as the cans with the giant “&”) has a range of zero sugar, no calorie “add your own mixer” style alcoholic soda drinks  (“vodka soda &”, “gin soda &”). Since launching with one product back in 2018, their range now encompasses 18 products and they’re stocked at over 2000 stockists nationwide. 

The Bondi-based team behind Ampersand – Alex Bottomley, Shaun Rankins and Marcus Kellett – decided to make their first foray out of spirits a low-sugar, gluten-free, alcoholic Ginger Beer. 

Bottomley said: “It was important for us to create a product that was low sugar and also low in calories but still retain that refreshing flavour you expect from a ginger beer. We also wanted to make sure the product was sessionable and easy-drinking, so we have an optimal spice level that is not too over the top.

“We’ve noticed there’s a trend towards old-school flavours at the moment, so we were keen to capitalise on that. It’s an exciting space to be playing in, whilst not anywhere near the size of the ready-to-drink category it has a lot of potential over the next five years to take share from other categories such as cider, beer and dark rum.

“The health and wellbeing trend is not going anywhere anytime soon, so products that can offer low or no sugar have been a key driver of the huge growth of lighter ready-to-drink beverages such as seltzers, so naturally it will flow through to other categories, which is why we developed the Ginger Beer.”

The ginger beer is now available at BWS and Dan Murphys. Four pack $19.99 / Case 16 $71.99 – online or instore, individual cans are $5.99 (instore only).