Beer Styles

Pale Ale

Often referred to as golden ale, light ale and – often erroneously – as India Pale Ale, pale ales tend to be medium-bodied, light copper to golden in colour, tremendously refreshing and easy-drinking with an elegant equilibrium of malt flavours and delicate, floral hop bitterness and aroma.

India Pale Ale (IPA)

Liquid legacy of eighteenth century India - it was hot and the British ex-pats were gasping for a pint. Thing is, normal British beer wilted in the sun. So, a London brewer by the name of George Hodgson created India Pale Ale (IPA), a bespoke beer capable of keeping calm around the Cape of Good Hope. It gets its swashbuckling sea-legs from plenty of alcohol and copious amounts of hops - both armed with preservative powers.

Pilsner

The lord of lagers, first brewed in the Bohemian town of Pilsen. Also known as pilsener and pils, it's now brewed all over the world. In its most authentic form, pilsner is a well-structured, full-bodied beer with a shimmering golden hue. Beneath the dense, luxuriant white head, the velvety mouthfeel comes courtesy of the soft water; the all-malt backbone is firm and succulent; and the high hop bitterness, both on the nose and palate, is shaped by Saaz hops. Lagering should be long and loving.

Premium/Mainstream Lager

A catch-all term for the most popular beers on the planet. It originates from the German word for storage and the best lagers should be lagered for long periods in cold conditions where they develop flavour, body and complexity.

Brown Ale (UK)

Traditional British beer-style steeped in the sepia-tint of yesteryear. Once the bread and butter for British breweries, they were sweet, murky-brown beers low in alcohol - often mixed with Mild and, if you believe the cliché, associated with sooty-faced salt of the earth types. Now very much a sidelined sip, brown ales are drier, nuttier and stronger than they once were.

Mild

Marvelously malty, sometimes sweet, low in alcohol yet big in flavour and eminently drinkable, Mild was a mainstay of British pubs until the 1960s. It was first brewed to quench the rapacious thirsts of sweaty-browed farmer types and, later, wet the weary whistles of industrial workers. Mild has struggled to survive and CAMRA have been campaigning to save it from extinction for some time now. Never mind polar bears or whales, Mild needs you.

Bitters/Best Bitters

Chances are, if the pub is serving English ale then it's a bitter. Don't be hoodwinked by the misleading moniker, bitters aren't necessarily bitter in flavour. They earn their alias because they have higher hop character than sweet milds and, more recently, lagers. Bitters are the classic pub pint, often gold-to copper coloured with medium bitterness. Ideally served slightly carbonated from a cask, there's a gentle crisp hop character underlaid by a more-ish malt, medium-body. Classic bitters hover around or below 4% ABV while best bitters break free up to the 4.7% mark.

Premium/Extra Special Bitter

Extra Special Bitters (ESB) are bigger, brasher and more bitter than standard or best bitters with characteristic caramel sweetness. Often, but not always, graced with crystal malt, Fuggles and Goldings hops and a higher alcohol content.

Strong Ale/Barley Wine

In the 18th century, England was forever getting into fisticuffs with France and, consequently, drinking wine - the enemy's elixir- was regarded as most unpatriotic. So, in order to challenge posh plonk on the tables of the upper class, strong grandiose ales called Barley Wines were devised and often brewed by aristocratic country houses. Ranging from amber to deep copper-garnet in colour, they're full-bodied, malty-sweet and/or hop-heavy, and designed to develop in the hands of Father Time.

Porter

An opaque, eighteenth century opium of the masses that oiled the wheels of the Industrial Revolution and is arguably the most important beer style in history. Born in London, it first referred to a blend of three beers (strong ale, pale and mild) but soon became a beer in its own right. Thick and strong, incredibly cheap and with unprecedented consistency, porter spread through working class London quicker than the Great Fire and was soon a phenomenon both nationwide and when exported to the Baltic States. The emergence of lighter beers and First World War restrictions on making roasted malts accelerated porter's demise but today, especially in America and Scandinavia, the popularity of porter is rising again. Coloured black-ish or burnished dark brown, porters are medium-bodied dark malt-accented beers. A chocolate and coffee character is common, sweeter than stouts, more drinkable and with less burnt roast malt notes.

Stout

A drier, darker, fuller-bodied and, some would say, stouter descendant of porter. Born in London as "stout porter" and raised in Ireland, it soon lost its surname and become synonymous with a brand founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness. Having drunk imported porters and stouts from Britain, the Irish brewer decided to brew his own "dry Irish" version using unmalted roasted barley instead of dark malts - producing a more acrid, astringent and thicker interpretation. London Stouts, in contrast, were made with 100% malt grist including the original brown malt and with no roast barley. When the British government imposed restrictions on malting and beer strength during the First World War, the dry Irish style stole a march on its British counterpart and, aided by both canny advertising and the missionary zeal of Irish Diaspora, it's become the benchmark for stouts.

Oyster Stout

Given that oysters and stouts make such a smashing culinary couple, brewers thought it'd be a good idea to bring them together in the barrel. What clever folk they are. The addition of a few oysters gives a bit of briny bitterness and added smoothness to the beer. Not all oyster stouts are brewed with oysters though. It's all a bit confusing.

Chocolate Stout

Indulgent ales sometimes brewed with extra amounts of chocolate malt and sometimes brewed with actual chunks of chocolate. Expect cocoa, coffee and... er... chocolate characteristics.

Golden/Blonde Ales

In the 1980s, British ale-accented brewers began giving lager lovers the golden glad-eye in the shape of pale ales which were moderate in hops, juicy in biscuit malt and which acted as easy-sipping stepping stones across the chasm of misunderstanding that inexplicably divides ales and lagers.

German Weiss Bier/Weizen

Known in Bavaria as Weizen and elsewhere in Germany as Weissbier, German wheat beers get all their banana and clove-like flavour from the use of a unique yeast strain that brings out the true character of the wheat malt used in the brew. The proportion of wheat also tends to be higher in Germany than it is in Belgium and German brewers would never throw in herbs or spices. Weissbier can either be light or dark in appearance and most brewers produce two versions: Hefe (with yeast) or Kristal (without yeast). The latter may look cleaner and clearer but the former is by far the more flavoursome and popular.

Dunkel-weizen

Complex, dark Bavarian wheat beer brewed using a combination of darker wheat and darker barley malt. In addition to the bubblegum, banana and clove signature synonymous with "white" Weizens, there's more chocolate, more roast, more dark fruit flavours in the mix.

Belgian-style Witbier

Known as Witbiers (wheat beer) in the Flemish tongue and Biere de Blanche in French, they're spicier than their Bavarian brethren, unfiltered, often call upon coriander and orange peel for added flavour, and tend to be lower in alcohol- hovering around the 4-5% mark.

Saison/Biere de Garde

Back in the days when brewing in the hazy heat of summer was problematic, Saisons were brewed in the Spring with lots of preservative hops and spices, laid down until the weather warmed up, and released to slake the thirst of rural workers in Wallonia, the southern French-speaking region of Belgium. They tend to be tart, bitter and spicy brews with lots of fruit flavour and are usually well-hopped and, more often than not, bottle-conditioned. French interpretations are known as Bière de Garde, or "keeping beers", and traditionally hail from the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France.

Abbey Beers

Abbey-dwelling monks brewed beer in Belgium as early as the 5th century and it's estimated that Europe has, over time, boasted more than five hundred abbey breweries. The beer they made served as a benevolent boost to the local community, a healthier alternative to local dodgy water and a particularly persuasive piece of religious public relations.

Abbey beers can be divided into two categories: The first are commercial concerns bereft of "brotherly" influence, named after fictitious or defunct monasteries yet modelled on the style of beers associated with Trappist brewing.

Alternatively, Abbey beers are 'monastic visions' realized by commercial brewers on behalf of, and with permission from, religious orders and institutions who haven't the means to do so themselves (the cloisters receive cash to spend on pious deeds and the brewery benefits from the halo effect of saintly association). Some of the best abbey ales are named after entirely made-up monasteries.

Like Trappist beers, most abbey beers are either Dubbels or Tripels although many have been making manoeuvres into blonde/pale ale territory.

Trappist Beers

Trappist beers, mostly bottle-conditioned, are strong top-fermented beers ranging from pale ale to Quadrupels. They command sacrosanct status among aficionados and are revered for their hugely complex, often colossal, character.

Trappist and Abbey beers are often divided into two categories:

Dubbel - Rich, medium-to-full bodied beer that's re-fermented in the bottle. Tends to be malty and dark with fruit flavours, caramel character, candy sugar sweetness and mellow alcohol.

Tripel - Tripels disguise their strength and complexity under a golden-blonde cloak and a fluffy mousse head. Well-attenuated with a pale malt character, tripels are often sweetened with the addition of candy sugar and/or spiced up with light-to-heavy hop bitterness and re-fermented in the bottle.

Lambic

Steeped in romance and tradition, Lambic differs from other beer styles in that it is fermented using wild, naturally-occurring, yeast rather than strains that are intentionally added.

Young lambics are a very lightly carbonated acquired taste; sour, vinegary, dry, mildly mildewed with tartness and tobacco flavours. Older versions, the nearest beer gets to wine, are armed with added complexity, textured with tannin, there's tartness and a measured cheesy pong. Comparisons with a bone-dry Fino Sherry are spot on.

Kriek

The finest and most authentic form of Kriek (cherry beer) is made from steeping cherries in lambic casks for several months. The tradition of steeping whole cherries in beer, which dates back to a pre-hop era when fruit was used to make the beer more palatable, provides extra sugars for fermentation and terrific tartness.

Dark Lagers

Don't be fooled by the hoodwinking hue, dark lagers go down just as easily as lighter beers. Gaining their deep copper colour from a kaleidoscope of kilned malt, lager yeast lends a lightness of palate that's absent from ale while the hops, while present, should play second fiddle to the dry bitterness of roasted malt.

Vienna Lagers

A maroon, malt-driven lager first brewed by the Dreher family in the Austrian capital back in the 1840s just a year before the arrival of Pilsner. Nutty, slightly sweet and notable for a refined roast character and lengthy finish.

Kolsch

Kolsch looks like a German lager but it has more common with blonde British ale. Meaning "from Cologne", Kolsch gets its fruity flavour from a unique top-fermenting yeast strain. Where it differs from British pale ales is in its use of one type of malt and cold, lager-like, fermentation and lengthy maturation.

Smoked Beer/Rauchbier

Smoked beers date back to before the 18th century, when malt used for brewing was dried over wood-fuelled fires. This process gave the beer a deeply smoky character. Very, very smoky, they're like drinking a campfire through a barbecued kipper that's been swimming in lapsang souchong all its life. Some people adore it, but others will find it a little too, erm, smoky.

Chocolate beer

Yes. Chocolate and beer. Together. United in indulgent harmony. Boffins with spectacles, clipboards and brains the size of beanbags have discovered that early 18th century inhabitants of Mexico and Central America drank something resembling chocolate beer and chocolate malts can often be found working their magic in stouts, porters and dark ales.

Champagne Beer

The notoriously disobedient Champagne yeast baffled brewers for years but since the Belgians tamed it a few years ago, champagne beers have emerged to undermine the perception of beer as a poor man's drink.

Brewing Process: from grain to glass

1) Malting/Kilning

Malt derives its name from the malting process, which involves hoodwinking the grain (be it barley, wheat or rye) into thinking it is spring and, therefore, time to sprout.

Warm weather is replicated by steeping grain in water until germination begins.

In order to fuel germination, enzymes in the grain convert insoluble starch into sugar and it is these sugars that are the fermentable material used in the production of beer.

To ensure the grain doesn't steal these sugars for continued germination, the grain is kilned in order to halt the process.

By varying the temperature and length of time the barley spends in the kiln, the maltster can produce a kaleidoscope of flavours and characteristics.

Depending on the duration of kilning, malt can vary in colour from very light to extremely dark and some malts, such as Crystal, are heated while still moist to intensify the caramelised, nutty flavour.

It is the mix of different coloured malts that decides the colour of the resulting beer.

2) Milling

Once the blend of malts has been carefully chosen it's put through a mill. Milling the malt splits the kernel into grist, a granular mixture of husks and fine starchy flour.

3) Mashing

The grist is thrown into a big vessel called a mash tun and mixed with hot water (about 65 degrees) to form the 'mash' – it looks a bit like porridge and has a sweet, bready aroma.

It's during mashing when the enzymes in the malt are broken down and soluble sugars are slowly unleashed.

Temperature is key, with different sorts of sugars unlocked at different temperatures, and brewers can stick with a single temperature mashing or play around with heat in order to coax out different desirable sugars.

After about an hour, the mash has been transformed from porridge into wort - a dark orange, smooth, sweet treacle-like solution that contains all the sugars required for fermentation. It's actually rather tasty if you drink it.

As it also contains unwanted broken barley husks, the wort is "run off" through a lauter tun (essentially a sieve). Spent grains are often fed to cows. Lucky things. Captured and left behind to be sold to farmers as feed for grateful cattle, the wort is sent to the kettle, otherwise known as the copper.

The initial "runnings" of the mash is notoriously sweet and ideally suited to making strong beer as there are more sugars for the yeast to munch and turn into alcohol.

For less potent beers, the mash is sparged (sprayed with water) to achieve the right level of sugar content – often referred to as "brewing degrees" or "Plato scale" but not to be confused with ABV, the final strength of the beer.

4) Boiling

With the copper filled with wort, containing just the right sugar concentration, it is brought to a bubbling, undulating boil and this is when the hops are added.

As the intense heat will prove too much for delicate hop aromatics and evaporate the aroma compounds, the hops added at the beginning of the boil are used mostly for bitterness and herbal flavours. The high temperatures also sterilise the boil, zapping any unwanted yeast prior to fermentation.

After an hour or so, the wort is brought off the boil and cooled and further hops are added.

"Late hopping" at a lower temperature adorns the beer with floral aromatics. The heat is then turned off and the bitter wort is left to simmer and aerate. This dissolves the oxygen that the yeast likes so much.

5) Fermentation

The wort is reduced in temperature until its cooler than the other side of the pillow and decanted into a fermentation vessel.

This is where the yeast is added. At first, nothing happens and the liquid is as still as a mill pond. But then, like a scene from Jaws, the dead calm turns into a seething, foaming feeding frenzy like a mass of liquid bubble wrap that bursts and bloats both wide and high.

Things get heated in the eating frenzy but the temperature is controlled using cooling jackets so that the yeast doesn't over do it and pass out. After a while, the yeast realises that all it really wants to do is roll over and gently go to sleep.

That the yeast tends to lose appetite and enthusiasm before it has eaten all the sugars is a good thing as brewers require residual sugars to add finesse to the flavour and bulk to the body.

6) Conditioning

After all that, the beer needs to take it easy and put its feet up. If it's an ale, it is unlikely to age or mature for more than a month or so. Unless, that is, it's a strong beer and is being barrel-aged for longer periods when it will pick up more complex flavours.

The age-old tradition of dry-hopping, whereby flower hops are stewed in the ageing beer, adds extra intense aromas and is being revived by a number of experimental breweries.

Lagers need a longer rest than ale. After a chilly fermentation, it needs to chill out even further, rid itself of its rough edges and get in touch with its delicate flavours. This takes time and the longer a lager can relax the better.

Yeast

Yeast is a yellow fungus (but not primrose yellow) that comes in all manner of guises – many of which have Latin names that use far too many letters.

But there is nothing unappealing about yeast. It is wonderful, enigmatic, enchanting, sensual stuff and without it beer would be much less fun to drink.

Yeast is the single most important ingredient in beer brewing. It munches on sugars like a ravenous Pac-Man, excreting alcohol and belching out carbon dioxide as it goes. Without yeast, there'd be no booze or bubbles in beer. There'd also be less flavour and aroma.

A brewery can play around with hops, malt and even the water but it's the yeast that tends to distinguish its signature flavour from other breweries.

There are thousands of different yeast strains used in brewing and individual brewers often go to great lengths to keep the particular yeast they use a secret.

Most breweries only use one yeast strain to brew its beer. It's OK to use two but it's like having a wife and a mistress – they should never be introduced to one another.

That's because yeast is a capricious little devil. On good form, yeast can also furnish the beer with some fantastic fruity flavours yet, when it wheedles its way into the wrong beer, it can also deliver some fairly unsavoury ones.

In America, there is such a thing as yeast hustling. A rather geeky pastime, it involves home brewers visiting breweries and 'taking" a swab or a sample of the yeast in an effort to replicate a certain beer.

Beer yeast strains but can be loosely divided into two categories; lager yeast and ale yeast.

Ale yeast likes eating maltose in the warm (55 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit) and remains buoyant in the fermentation vessel.

Lager yeast, meanwhile, excels at lower temperatures (34-55 degrees Fahrenheit) and prefers to eat in smaller groups, which means they float to the bottom of the fermentation vessel.

Beers that tend to rely on the yeast for much of their character tend to be top fermenters (ale), while those that rely on the other main ingredients tend to be bottom fermenters (lager).

Yet what differentiates ale yeast from lager yeast is what they eat and what they don't eat.

Lager yeast is a polite, if a little dry, dinner guest. It will consume pretty much everything put in front of it, won't contribute much flavour to the evening and remain in the background.

Ale yeast, by contrast, is a fussy eater that'll refuse to consume the residual sugars and by-products that it doesn't really fancy. It'll stamp its opinionated influence on the evening and its flavoursome yet entertaining outbursts may clash with the other dinner guests – be they malt, water or hops.

What is yeast?

Yeast is a single cellular organism only visible through a microscope. Unfortunately, Mesopotamians, Ancient Egyptians and beer makers of Babylon didn't have microscopes or, for that matter, internet access to www.beergenie.com.

As such, they were blissfully oblivious to the wonders of molecular biology. All they knew was that something in the beer, somewhere in the froth and dregs of the beer, was somehow transforming sugars into a liquid that made you happy and healthy.

As they couldn't see, or possibly know, about the spectacular shape-shifting substance that is yeast, they assumed it was the work of a higher being. So it, whatever it was, was christened 'God is Good' - a mysterious manna from heaven.

It wasn't until 1857 that Louis Pasteur realised that, far from being a divine gift, fermentation was a natural chemical reaction in which yeast ate, expelled and multiplied.

Yet it was an Emil Christian Hansen, a novelist and full-time chemist working at the Carlsberg Brewery in Denmark, who discovered how to domesticate yeast that had, hitherto, been wild.

Not content with devising a way to isolate a single beer yeast cell and propagate it, he worked out that different yeasts behave and feed more effectively at different temperatures. He was a proper clever clogs.

Grain

Rice, rye, wheat, oats, sorghum, maize and spelt are just some of the grains used by brewers, both now and in the past, but when they talk of malt, in the vast majority of cases they mean barley.

Barley is a brewer's best buddy. It is to beer, what the grape is to wine – furnishing it with the fuel for fermentation. Not only that, it dictates a beer's mouth-feel, flavour, body and colour.

Barley also serves as a springboard of sweetness from which hop and yeast character can thrust itself and perform tasty tricks.

Barley is a notoriously hard and curmudgeonly character. Robust and resistant to mould, it is strong and sinewy and blessed with easily-extractable starch.

Unlike other cereals like wheat, barley has its own husk which protects the germinating sprout. The husk also acts as a natural filter-like sieve which means brewing is less messy. Barley is brilliant.

Barley was first used to brew beer, and make bread, by the Ancient Egyptians.

It is now grown in more than a hundred countries, predominantly in the Northern hemisphere between the latitudes of 45 degrees and 55 degrees.

There are three principal classifications of barley - two, four and six-row – which take their name from the number of kernel rows at the top of the stem.

Four-row barley is unsuitable for brewing while, outside of North America where it's used in light lagers alongside rice and corn, six-row is seldom seen. So it's two-row barley, rich in starch, which is most widely used.

Malted barley can be roughly divided into two camps: base malts and speciality malts:

Base malts will make up most, sometimes all, of the grain for a particular beer and will often be blended with other base malts.

Speciality malts, in contrast, are used in smaller quantities to add colour and flavour to the beer.

Brewers use myriad malts when brewing: To brew a lager or pilsner, brewers call on the light bready, shortbread characteristics of pale or pilsner malt. Pale ales tend to be mashed using the amber-coloured biscuit malt or Vienna malt while dark brown and black dry-roasted malts give porter and stout their opaque appearance, bittersweet character and full-body. Peated malts, like those used in whisky, are also summoned to impart some sweet smokiness.

Dark dry-roasted malt varieties are cured longer in the kiln. Examples include Crystal, Chocolate and Brown malt and they tend to be used in big quantities when brewing heavier ales.

Brewers also use unmalted barley too. As there are no fermentable sugars present, unmalted barley is used in small quantities to enhance the flavour and bulk out a beer's mouthfeel.

The art of kilning is incredibly nuanced and a brewer can call upon a huge combination of different malts – be it pale, crystal or chocolate malt. Delicate yet detectable differences can also be discovered within each defined malt style.

Barley is by no means the sole cereal in beer and in their pursuit of new flavours, textures and tastes, brewers are experimenting with other varieties.

Beers brewed with rice and corn are synonymous with the light-drinking lagers of North America and Australasia.

Wheat is the Naomi Campbell of the brewing world. It looks pretty, but is (allegedly) high maintenance and (allegedly) a nightmare to work with. Awkward and fussy with husks (the analogy weakens a little here) that don't self-filtrate, it causes mayhem in the mash-tun, its fruity tang clashes with hop flavours and it only really gets on with particularly disobedient yeast strains. But when wheat works, it's wonderful.

Hops

All hail the hop. No. Seriously. Hail it. Go on, hands in the air. Hail that hop as if it's a Hackney Carriage heading for Heaven.

For without the hop, beer would be nowhere near as splendid as it is. Before it reared its cone-like head, packed with a wealth of resins and essential oils, brewers had to rely on all manner of herbs, flowers and spices to counterbalance the crude sweetness of dark, heavily malted beer. These included heather, yarrow, bog myrtle, gooseberries, seaweed and other things we simply haven't got time to tell you about.

It was initially treated with suspicion by drinkers and brewers. This was because it was first brought over to Britain from Holland, a nation renowned for its naughtiness.

But, today, hops are cherished and loved. Brewers use hops like a chef uses spice and seasoning. When used early in the brewing process, hops bless beer with its zesty, herbal, grassy bitterness while hops that are added towards the end of the brew adorn beer with its array of alluring aromas. But that's not all. Like little cone-headed green gargoyles, hops preserve beer and ward off stuff that simply isn't welcome in a decent brew. Without hops, beer would also lose its head quicker than a stroppy teenager with anger management issues.

They say hops are the "grapes of beer". And they're right. Kind of. Hops are varietal like grapes, each type imparting a bespoke bouquet and variety of flavours to beer - just as Cabernet Sauvignon grapes or Riesling grapes give wine certain characteristics. But, unlike grapes, hops don't provide fermentable sugars that yeast turns into alcohol. That's barley's role – and one that it's jolly good at.

Hops are mostly picked in the summer, dried and used predominantly in pellet or fresh flower form. Alpha acids and hop oils are the flavour compounds that brewers seek to coax from the hop cones. Hops abundant in alpha acids, known as bittering hops, are added early for bitterness while finishing hops, heavy in hop oils yet unresponsive when boiled for long periods, are added late in the brewing process to enhance the beer's aroma. To really emphasise aromatics in their ale, brewers will often throw more finishing hops into the cask - a technique known as 'late hopping' that furnishes the beer with extra hop oils and aromas.

The essential oils of the hop can be seen when the cone is gently rubbed in the hands and sniffed. In the hop cone, there's a resinous yellow powder called Lupulin. It's this which holds all the wonderful taste sensations that brewers need, their holy grail of flavour.

There are hundreds of hop varieties that a brewer can choose from. Each hop has its own bitterness levels and flavours and all hops can be dual purpose but, like a football player, they're often more effective when played in the right position. Using a hop that's high in alpha acids for its aroma rather than its bitterness is akin to playing Wayne Rooney in goal. The key to a brewer's art is discovering a formation that works best and, in recent years, they've been increasingly experimenting with single-hop beers.

Hop Facts

• Before they were purposely cultivated and first used in brewing, back in the eighth century, hops had been called upon to cure an array of ailments. Leprosy, dysentery, tuberculosis, ants-in-your-pants, etc...

• Hops are grown on bines up to 7m (20ft) in height.

• Hops are a member of the same botanical family as cannabis.

• Hops are an aphrodisiac for men yet an inducer of sleep for females - which is rather inconvenient if you think about it.

• In the likely scenario of him waking her from a deep sleep with lofty ideas of hanky-panky, it's worth noting that hops also cure earache.

• It was the Roman writer Pliny who, in the sixth century, first referred to hops.

• The first written account of brewing using hops came from an unlikely source; a German nun called Hildegard Bingen who, it is claimed, was also the first person to write about the female orgasm.

• The hop was widely used by European brewers as early as the 14th century, it was deliberately introduced to North America during the 1600s and it is now cultivated for brewing purposes in China, Japan and Tasmania.

• As a dioecious plant, the hop's male and female flowers grow separately. Like a Women's Olympic shot-put coach, brewers are only interested in the larger female ones.

Water

Water. Even if we could live in a world without water, we'd be living in a world with no beer and that, let's face it, is not worth thinking about.

Water is the bedrock of beer. 95% of a pint of beer is water. For every pint of beer made, almost five pints are used in the production process. If it weren't for the wonder of water, the barley wouldn't even germinate and beer would be stripped of its life-enhancing powers.

Anyway, here's how water works: Once rinsed from a rain-cloud, water picks up an acidic edge from gases in the air. On hitting the ground, the rain water accrues mineral salts and characteristics as it soaks into the soil, permeates porous rocks and settles on the impervious stone that forms the water table.

This means that the geology of a given geographic area determined the mineral content, hardness and softness of the local water. And this means, not all water is the same.

Before the age of water treatment, the type of beer that could be brewed depended on its immediate environs. It was no coincidence, therefore, that, historically, the world's most prestigious brewing centres were also blessed with a specific and consistent supply of high-quality, beer friendly H₂O.

In the Czech Republic town of Pilsen, for example, water is softer than a baby's behind and almost entirely bereft of mineral salts. As such, the local water here complements the delicate hop and measured malt flavours of the Pilsner style.

The famous lagers of Munich, meanwhile, owe their silky, velvet-smooth mouth feel to water that is almost mineral-free and softer than a mattress full of sheep.

The mineral-rich, high-alkaline waters of Dublin and London lent themselves perfectly to the brewing of porters and stouts.

The water in Burton-on-Trent, harder than a gravedigger's heart and high in minerals and sulphates, gave the town's eponymous ale its dryness and sulphuric aroma – known as the 'Burton Snatch'.

But all those sentences above about geography and water, are rendered fairly obsolete by the fact that breweries now have the technology to manipulate and replicate water from anywhere in the world.