<aside> ❓ We sell a number of different styles of beer and they come in all different colours, opacities and tastes. It's not always easy to spot when a certain beer looks as it should.
Luckily we have at least one beer expert in the team & a couple of handy tools to help identify a bad beer just by using pictures, videos or even just a description. One of those tools is Untappd. Where you can search a number of different beers for pictures & descriptions:
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The main variation in styles stems from the yeast used to ferment beer:
However the full picture is actually a lot more complex, the BJCP (BEER JUDGE CERTIFICATION PROGRAM) 2015 edition lists 34 different categories of beer styles, each broken down into further sub-styles. We’ve listed a few of the main ones below. The pictures only show generic examples and will NOT be the appearance of every beer in the style.
The most recognised ‘style’ world-wide & everyone will automatically think the mass produced generic Carling, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Stella Artois, etc. But even Lager is so much more complex than just that. Lagers originate from German lagerbier left to ferment in caves at low temperature, which tend to be crisp clean beers, pale ones are Helles or dark ones are Dunkels. A similar style is the more hoppy Pilsner which come from the Czech Republic.
Probably the next most recognised style, there again covering a wide range of sub styles. When someone is asking for a ‘bitter’ meaning something like John Smiths, they are wanting something that isn’t very hoppy tasting, quite malty & usually not very strong ABV One of the most popular Pale Ale styles is the IPA – India Pale Ale. Hops are a preservative & when the British used to ship troops to India, they’d stock the boats with supplies & to help the beer survive the long journey without turning bad they would put loads of hops in it. This is where the India Pale Ale term came from. They tend to be fruitier, more flavoursome Pale Ales dependent on the hops that are used in the brew. Contrary to popular belief, the fruity flavours in many pale ales do not come from actual fruit, just the combination of the malt, hops & barley.
These are created when there is a larger proportion of wheat used in the brew than malted barley. They tend to fall into 2 main categories Weizenbier (German) or Witbier (Belgium/Netherlands) Usually cloudy looking due to the wheat used, although you can get Kristalweizen beers that are brewed clear (just to confuse matters). They usually have a really foamy head with tight bubbles German Weizenbiers tend to have flavours of banana & clove whilst the Witbeir tend to have a spicy flavour usually coriander & orange. These flavours aren’t due to those ingredients being used in the brew, but from the yeast strains that are used to ferment the beer
These two styles come from the same origins. Porters were a dark malty beer first developed in London in the early 18th Century. Usually lower in percentage, when higher ABV ones where brewed they were called a ‘Stout Porter’ this is where the term Stout first was used. At some point they just became a style in their own right.