Beer Styles

Discover more about beer styles, iconic beers, and how best to enjoy them.

Beer Styles
Getting Blind With Crafty: IPA (Part I)

It's been a while, but our blind tastings are back. And, having punished panelists with some less than thrilling lineups previously, here we tackle flavour of the month IPA. With so many now available, we're splitting the tasting over two panels.

The Story Of: Boatrocker Ramjet

For the second in our series looking at the story behind some of the coolest, most iconic or most sought after beers in Australia we showcase Boatrocker's Ramjet. The imperial stout even has its own day, with the first Ramjet Day on April 9, 2016.

Reduced To Beers

A Perth restaurant is taking the beer cocktail concept to another level. At Baby Mammoth, they're creating beer vermouths with local and imported craft beers to use within cocktails, a Pia Poynton discovers.

The Story Of: Watermelon Warhead

We're kicking off a new series looking at the story behind some of the coolest, most iconic and downright funky beers to come out of Australia. With 100 kegs ready for a major release, first up is Feral's Watermelon Warhead.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Last year, Lion announced it was closing the White Rabbit brewery in Healesville and moving Little Creatures' little sibling to Geelong. The move – and considerable expansion and diversification – is now complete, as Kerry McBride discovered.

Getting Blind With Crafty: Pale Lagers

For our final blind tasting of 2015, we looked at a style that's becoming increasingly popular with Australian craft brewers: pale lagers. We lined up 26 different beers (including a few "New World" versions) from brewers big and small. And this is how they fared.

Drinking In Style: Pale Lagers

Love lager or keen to know a little more about the world's most popular style? Before we publish the results of our pale lager blind tasting, here's Resident Beer Scholar Chris Brady with another colourful journey into beer's multifarious past.

Beer Food: Butchers With Butchers

As the South Australian craft beer industry continues to grow, it's reaching beyond the breweries, brewpubs and beer bars to forge partnerships throughout Adelaide's food and beverage scene.

Beer Food With Beersine: Steak with Beernaise Sauce

The beer food guru behind Beersine is back with another of his favourite beer food recipes. This time Mitch offers up his versatile twist on Béarnaise sauce as well as what to pair with it.

Getting Blind With Crafty: Stouts

For our latest Blind Tasting we gathered a panel of beer experts to taste more than 25 local and international stouts. Who came out on top?

S&W Big Pale B2
Bintani Abstrax B
Tall Story

A noble goal, unfettered ignorance, vitriol, unpleasantness, dismay and, ultimately, rebirth and redemption. The remarkable story of Tasmania's Two Metre Tall.

Beer Food: The Mega Dega Dessert

Yesterday we announced Mitch from Beersine was to be our regular beer food guru. Here he presents the dessert he created to pair with Clout Stout at Good Beer Week's Mega Dega III.

Big Beers

With winter closing in, here's an article The Crafty Pint's founder originally wrote for James Halliday's Wine Companion Magazine looking at big, hearty beers.

Getting Blind with Crafty: English Ales

We head to the land where The Crafty Pint's founder spent most of his formative years for this blind tasting, which features a range of English style ales.

Drinking In Style: English Ales

They may not have the sex appeal of many US-inspired contemporary beers, but classics are classics for a reason. Here our resident scholar looks at some of the most popular English ale styles.

Getting Blind With Crafty: How We Judge

Approximately every couple of months, we host a blind tasting of beers – usually matching the season or a current hot topic. Here's how we carry out the judging and the thinking behind our methods.

Getting Blind With Crafty: XPA / Session IPA

For our first Blind Tasting of 2015, we assembled a panel of beer lovers, experts and brewers to assess XPAs and session IPAs, two hot-right-now "styles".

The Pondering Pint: Rating Beers

The other day, an email arrived about a new beer that was the result of a collaboration between breweries. There were two attachments both purporting to be about said beer. A cursory glance showed that…

Getting Blind With Crafty: Porter

After a six-month hiatus instigated by a combination of incapacitation at Crafty Towers, a disgusting workload and then the inexorable passage of time, we finally got the Blind Tasting show back on the…

Drinking In Style: Porter

After a rather lengthy break, we reconvened the Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel at the weekend for a look at porters. As ever, before publishing the results, here we have our Resident Beer Scholar, Chris…

Getting Blind With Crafty: Christmas Ales

“All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth…” Or in the case of a Christmas blind tasting, how about a classic coming out on top (to prove…

Drinking In Style: Christmas Beers

On the eve of our final Blind Tasting of 2013, resident Beer Scholar Chris Brady has taken another delve into the past so he can deliver another sermon of style. This time we’re looking at Christmas beers because, well, because it’s Christmas.

Getting Blind With Crafty: Golden & Summer Ales

With summer upon us, it seemed only right to have a look at the quaffable end of the ale world for our latest Blind Tasting. That said, the choice of style (in a fairly loose sense) wasn’t met with unanimous…

Drinking In Style: Golden Ales

With summer approaching, we decided to look at the lighter end of the beer spectrum for our next Blind Tasting. As such, we opted for a rather loose collection of beers that fall under the Golden / Summer…

Getting Blind With Crafty: Ambers and Reds

There was much change afoot for our latest Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel at the weekend. For a start, it featured an entirely new set of panellists. Each and every one of those who taken part in a previous…

Drinking In Style: Amber and Red Ales

In order to keep pace with the Crafty Pint Tasting Panel, this month's instalment of Drinking In Style takes a look at two styles named for their respective hues: amber and red. If only there were a green ale to complete a brewer's traffic light…

Drinking In Style: Imperial Stouts

In conjunction with our blind tasting of imperial stouts, we return to our resident beer scholar, Chris Brady, to find out more about the historic style that is embraced my growing number of Aussie brewers each winter.

Getting Blind With Crafty: Imperial Stouts

So which beers came out on top in the biggest (in every way) Crafty Pint blind tasting to date? HOw did the Aussies fare against beers from the Old World. Read on to find out...

Ask Brewer Jayne: How to judge beers

This weekend is the occasion of the next Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel. We say “occasion” as it will feature Imperial Stouts and thus is the one causing the most ripples of excitement among panelists. Usually,…

James Halliday Article - Stout Advice

With our next piece for James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine sent off to the publishers today, it seems a good time to dust down another of our features for the mag. What’s more, our latest dip…

Krush HPA bonus
Holgate at 25
Getting Blind With Crafty: Brown Ales

What with things having turned cooler for most of Australia, for the fifth Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel we decided it was time to turn towards the darker realms of the beer world. And, with the star…

Drinking in Style: Brown Ales

After a brief post-Good Beer Week hiatus, the Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel returned this week and with it our regular series looking at beer styles is back. Crafty Towers' resident beer scholar (he’s…

Getting Blind With Crafty: Pint of Origin Pale-Off

The latest Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel was one with a touch of Good Beer Week about it. With the festival imminent – and amongst its attractions the expanded Pint of Origin state-by-state showcase…

Drinking in Style: American Pale Ales

With Good Beer Week imminent, we figured we should do a Pint of Origin style face-off for the next Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel. So later today, the motley crew of brewers (amateur and professional),…

Getting Blind with Crafty: Saisons

There was an interesting build up to the most recent Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel. In our hunt to gather a solid collection of Australian and top international versions of the saison style, we found…

Drinking In Style: Saisons

Want to know a little more about the beers you love? Then read on, as Crafty’s resident “beer dork” Chris Brady (his words, not ours) kicks off what will be regular features looking at the beers of the world. Kicking it off is a look at saisons.

Getting Blind With Crafty: IPAs

After a couple of lager-centric panels to kick off what are now monthly Blind Tasting Panels, the third showdown saw a sharp shift in direction into the beer style that is probably closest to the hearts…

Getting Blind With Crafty: Pilsners

The Crafty Pint’s blind tasting panels are up and running for 2013. The first took place late last year with a panel focused mainly on premium lagers, after we were contacted by Hahn and Malt Shovel…

Taking The Pils

In 1988, Australia was busy celebrating its bicentennial, the Ronald Reagan era in the States was coming to a close, Allan Border was captain of the cricket team, the year’s big Aussie films included…

James Halliday Article: Brighter Shade Of Pale

Towards the end of the month, the next edition of James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine will feature an article by The Crafty Pint looking back at what has been an incredible year for craft beer in…

Lallemand 1
Bintani- Updated Behind The Brew- E
The Saisonnières Return

Just before Christmas last year, we brought you news of a brand new brewing company in Australia that was preparing to release its first beer into the world. Since then, the La Sirène Saison has gone…

Taken To Cask

When the Lambs Go Bar in Fitzroy closed earlier this year, mourning was kept to a minimum with owners Jason and Adam King popping up just a few streets away at the refurbished Rainbow Hotel. One thing…

Beer Appreciation: The Perfect Pour

If you appreciate quality beer and are willing to spend that little bit more putting class in your glass, you may as well give said beer every chance to sing. That can mean selecting the right glass to…

Beer & Food: Cheese

In recent weeks, we’ve noticed a rash of beer and cheese matching events appearing in the Crafty diary. Heck, when we popped into a London pub to meet a fellow beer writer recently, it wasn’t long…

Australia's First Cicerone

As beer gradually regains respect around the world as something far more than just a social lubricant, there are increasing numbers of folks dedicating themselves to helping others understand it better…

A Right Fruity Harvest

For the past few weeks, this year’s hop harvest beers have been flying out of breweries across the land. There’s been a fair bit of variety too: Red Hill’s velvety Hop Harvest Ale uses its homegrown…

Really Real Ale

Up until now, if you wanted to taste genuine real ale on tap in Australia – real ale as defined by the UK"s Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) – you had one choice: head to the Wig & Pen in Canberra. That…

Show Us Your Hops!

Across the southern states, hop farmers, commercial brewers, their friends and home brewers have been busy picking this year’s harvest of hops in the past week or two, many of which will go into specialty,…

Beer & Food: Double Trouble Chicken

We’re delighted to bring you our first homespun recipe, courtesy of Crafty reader Jenn Davidson, wife of November’s Blogger of the Month James and a fairly recent convert to the world of craft beer.…

Beer & Food: Offally Good Part II

With Josie Bones just weeks away from opening, what better time to whet your appetite for crazy meat dishes washed down with awesome beers? So, as promised earlier, here’s the second of the recipes from…