Modern ginger beers are often manufactured rather than brewed, frequently with flavour and colour additives, with artificial carbonation.

It forms a gelatinous substance that allows it to be easily transferred from one fermenting substrate to the next, much like kefir grains, kombucha, and tibicos.

Until about 2008 laboratory-grade GBP was available only from the yeast bank Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen in Germany (catalogue number DMS 2484),[10] but the item is no longer listed.

Some of this GBP was kept for making the next batch of ginger beer, and some was given to friends and family, so the plant was passed on through generations.

Following Ward's research and experiments, he created his own ginger beer from a new plant that he had made, and he proposed, but did not prove, that the plant was created by contaminants found on the raw materials, with the yeast coming from the raw brown sugar and the bacteria coming from the ginger root.

[16] The ginger beer soft drink may be mixed with beer (usually a British ale of some sort) to make one type of shandy, or with dark rum to make a drink, originally from Bermuda, called a Dark 'N' Stormy.