Cocktails with Ginger ale
Ginger ale is a carbonated soft drink flavored with ginger and sugar, lighter and milder than ginger beer.
Substitutes for Ginger ale
Ginger beer gives a sharper, spicier and usually cloudier drink, and it will dominate a build that ale merely lengthened. Lemon-lime soda covers the sweetness and the fizz and leaves the ginger behind.
Often confused with
Ginger beer
Brewed or fermented rather than simply flavored, and much stronger: cloudier, drier; hot with real ginger. Ale accompanies a drink; beer leads it.
Ginger syrup or cordial
Concentrated and still, so it brings the ginger and none of the volume or fizz; a highball built on it needs soda for the rest.
Storage
An unopened bottle keeps for months. Once opened it goes flat within a day or two whatever you do, and a flat mixer is the most common reason a highball lands dull.
