Beer is all about the subtle art of deception. You don’t want to find yourself thinking about a sweaty brewhouse whilst chugging on a crisp pilsner on a summer’s day. Equally, although we are all well aware of beer’s initial ingredients - the final product should shine in its own right like a nugget of gold crafted by a alchemist, leaving us bamboozled as if we’ve just witnessed a rabbit pulled from a hat.And if there was one beer style to epitomise this art of subterfuge, the beer to catch us all off guard - it’s got to be the...

The story of the Trojan horse is as old as storytelling itself. You know it right? The one where the Greeks sack the city of Troy by leaving a splendid horse gift at the city gates. The Trojans unwittingly accept the gift (well it’s hard to turn down a giant majestic wooden horse right!), only to find it’s full of Greek soldiers who open the city gates that night allowing in an army. It’s now a metaphor for a trick or deception that results in a foe being invited into a home or place of security. Think of the Trojan...

As Scott jogged along the Santa Monica beachfront, the sun dropped over the horizon casting a strange sienna glow over the sea, making it look somehow like a vast bowl of chocolate milk. He loved these moments of tranquillity - with the peachy warmth of the sun countered by the soft kiss of a cooling sea breeze and the thought of a cold one, or two, that night on the balcony of his Beverly Hills condo.First though, his derigeur reward for knocking another gruelling week of work on the head and for nailing his daily 5k run. He’d run past...

What kind of beer consumer are you? Perhaps you’re the archetypal craft beer grazer who shifts from one new brew to the next, roaming between breweries and styles? Or, alternatively, perhaps you’re an old school stalwart - who sticks limpet-like to a brew of choice, preferring to trust what they know, rather than taking a risk?I guess I am somewhere in the middle - I mean with the cost of beer these days - you really don’t want to get home and open a can only to be disappointed. I get angry enough with a badly made flat white -...

Breakfast for a king, lunch for a prince and dinner for a pauper - that’s the saying - and I wonder if a lot of what is being brewed these days, is made with this in mind. All those grains start most beers out on a breakfast footing from the get go, but I feel the analogy is deeper than just that.Last week’s beer, the mighty Parabola from Firestone (which you can read about here) is a prime example. With its flavour profile of malty grains, coffee and dried fruits, it really is reminiscent of a rather decent, and relatively...