I was recently sitting in my favourite beer bar and noticed a style on the tap menu that I’ve never seen before: grisette. While sipping on my pint, a quick Google search revealed it to be a type of beer that falls under the Farmhouse Ale style and a close cousin of Saison. It got […]
Welcome to another edition of Ingredient Spotlight. Today we’ll be looking at an often overlooked addition to beer – corn! In this article we’ll look at the changing way corn and maize has been used in brewing for over a thousand years. We’ll explore the history of corn, some different styles of corn beverages and […]
If you’ve been to an alcohol retailer or supermarket in the last year or so, you may have noticed a new product is taking up more shelf space: low and no alcohol beer, wine and spirits. These drinks are more popular than ever before and seem to come in an endless variety of flavours and […]
In today’s “Ingredient Spotlight” we’re looking at the slightly mysterious world of yeast. Yeast has been used to ferment things for many centuries but it’s only relatively recently that we’ve actually started to understand how it works. For thousands of years, humans have used yeast in food and beverage preparation. Our ancestors understood that something […]
I recently found a long forgotten crate of home brew beer that I had stashed under my parents house. There were a few different styles in there: pale ale, XPA, blonde ale, wheat beer and even some homemade cherry wine (fortified with grain alcohol). These beers were all from 2020-21 which means at the time […]
In today’s “ingredient spotlight” we’ll be looking at barley. Specifically, we’ll be exploring malted barley. Along with hops, malted barley is one of the ingredients that gives beer its unique flavour. Barley is one of the four key ingredients for beer along with water, hops and yeast (according to the Reinheitsgebot or German Beer Purity […]
There’s nothing more satisfying than opening a cold bottle of beer that you’ve brewed yourself. Brewing at home is a great pastime. It’s fun and you might even save a few bucks! This article is for new brewers: it offers some advice on how to get started if you’re new to the hobby. If you […]
Today I am travelling from Italy to Australia by air. From door to door, it’s a roughly 30 hour journey starting in Naples, flying to Munich, Singapore and finally, Sydney. It’s a long trip, and for refreshment I’ll be sampling airport beers from the Continent to Asia. The beers will be very loosely rated according […]
Ale and lager are the two most popular styles of beer available today. Most of the commercially available brews that we enjoy as beer lovers will probably fall into one of these two categories. Can you tell a lager from an ale? In this article we’ll discover the differences between these two famous styles. We’ll […]
If you drink beer, the distinct aroma and taste of hops is unmistakable. This bitter, oily flower has been used as an additive in beer since at least the 9th Century. In this ‘Ingredient Spotlight’ we look at the humble hop plant or humulus lupulus. We’ll take a look at what hops are, how they […]