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All beer guides

Twelve plain-English guides to understanding, choosing, serving and even brewing beer. Start with beer styles explained if you are new, or jump straight to what you are curious about.

Five glasses of beer lined up from pale straw to jet black, with hops and wheat stalks beside them

Styles

Beer Styles Explained

A plain-English map of beer styles: how ales differ from lagers, the main style families, and what ABV, IBU and SRM on a tap list actually tell you.

Four IPA glasses, two clear and two hazy, under a shower of green hop cones and a grapefruit slice

Styles

IPA Decoded

What separates a West Coast IPA from a hazy one, what 'double' and 'session' mean, where cold IPA fits, and how to keep hoppy beer tasting fresh.

A tall glass of stout with a creamy head next to a porter, surrounded by coffee beans and a chocolate bar

Styles

Stouts vs Porters

The shared history of porter and stout, the main sub-styles from dry Irish stout to Baltic porter, what nitro does, and why dark beer is not always heavy.

A tulip glass of pink sour beer beside a wooden barrel, cherries and lemon slices

Styles

Sour Beer Guide

Why some beers are tart on purpose: kettle sours vs barrel-aged wild ales, Berliner Weisse, gose, lambic and Flanders red, plus how to start your sour journey.

A wooden table set with a cheese board, a chili pepper, oysters and three glasses of different beers

Pairing

Beer & Food Pairing

A practical framework for pairing beer with food: match intensity, then complement, contrast or cut. Includes a course-by-course pairing table and cheese tips.

A wooden shelf holding six beer glasses: pint, tulip, snifter, pilsner, weizen and teku

Gear

Beer Glassware Guide

How glass shape affects aroma, head and temperature; the common beer glasses from nonic to teku; how to keep glasses beer-clean; and a sensible starter set.

A cheerful cartoon beer-glass character sniffing a tulip glass next to a magnifying glass and a flavour wheel

Tasting

How to Taste Beer

A step-by-step method for tasting beer: setting up, reading colour and head, smelling, sipping, judging mouthfeel and finish, and spotting common off-flavours.

A steaming brew kettle on a burner beside a fermenting bucket with an airlock, malt grains and hop cones

Homebrew

Homebrewing Basics

A beginner's walkthrough of extract homebrewing: equipment checklist, ingredients, brew day steps, fermentation, bottling and the mistakes most first batches make.

A sparkling clean fermenter surrounded by soap bubbles, a spray bottle and a scrub brush

Homebrew

Cleaning vs Sanitizing

Why homebrewers clean first and sanitize second, which products suit each job, what needs sanitizing on brew day, and how to tell infection from normal fermentation.

A cartoon map with a winding road, colourful pins, a small shuttle van and a brewery building with a tap sign

Travel

Brewery Trip Planning

How to plan a brewery day or weekend: choosing a region, building a realistic route, getting around safely, pacing with standard drinks, taproom etiquette and bringing beer home.

An open fridge full of cans beside a sun shining on a clear bottle marked with a warning cross and a thermometer

Know-how

Storing Beer

Light, heat and oxygen are beer's enemies. Learn why beer skunks, how to store cans and bottles, which styles to drink fresh or cellar, and how to read package dates.

A beer tap pouring golden beer into a tilted glass, with a dotted arc showing the 45-degree angle

Know-how

How to Pour a Beer

The 45-degree pour explained, how much foam to aim for, style-specific pours for wheat beer, nitro and bottle-conditioned ales, and how to fix too much or too little head.