I’ve been living in little ol’ New Zealand on and off for around 12 years now, and it's safe to say that my palate has changed in that time. For various reasons, I now drink less old wine, more whisky and for sure... more hoppy, high alcohol, colder, fizzier beer. When in Rome I guess. I’ve learnt to enjoy a good punch in the palate from a fistful of hops as much as the next IPA nut… but there are times when I revert to type, remembering the training I acquired in the pubs of London. One of my all...

In the 1500s a law was passed in Bavaria called the Reinheitsgebot. You may know it better as the German Purity Law. It’s essentially a decree that states that all beer will contain only water, hops, barley and yeast. It has stood the Germans well in many ways; this is the country that many of us turn to when we want a super clean and pure lager to quaff. That said, there are also those who believe it has stood in the way of German beer innovation, and, I guess this is true to a certain extent; we don’t necessarily think...

Lager is an odd one isn’t it. A reputation tarnished in some ways by large scale commercial brewing and a history aligned with over-consumption. The phrase lager lout didn’t just appear out of nowhere. But this is a style that epitomises one aspect of beer that is almost unique in the world of drinks in my opinion. That notion of quenching ones thirst and, yes, to a certain degree, the fact that sometimes you don’t want to ‘just’ sip a drink. Lager arguably doesn’t need to do a lot to deliver the drinkability that we all love it for, but,...

In the whirlwind of the current craft beer scene it is easy to forget about brewing’s rich history. Strong beers, adjuncts, hazies and big hops feel like new styles that we, the current generation, somehow own, but these beers have a long and rich history which the Belgians certainly helped shape.The monks of Hoegaarden (a small town southwest of Brussels in Belgium) were the first to experiment with wheat beer back in the middle ages. They took sour wheat recipes and added spice and sweetness with coriander and orange peel. This new, rich and complex style was a hit and,...

I stumbled across an interesting beer article the other day that got me thinking about ABV. It was a list of the highest rated beers in the US by each state. Now, I am sure there were many ways to pore over this data, preferred styles by region etc but the one thing that stood out, head and shoulders above anything else, was the apparent popularity of high strength beers. A measly four out of 50 of the beers were under 7% abv and many were over 10%.Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon. High strength barrel-aged stouts often win...