Beer Styles
Discover more about beer styles, iconic beers, and how best to enjoy them.
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…
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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…
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…
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…
Beer & Food: Black Forest
OK, so other than the cherries added to the glass this isn’t strictly beer and food, but where else to file Crafty’s first beer cocktail? A couple of weeks back we brought you the news that Beer DeLuxe…
Beer & Food: Offally Good Part I
The official launch of Chris Badenoch’s book, The Entire Beast, took place last night. It’s the former Masterchef / current Iron Chef / future Josie Bones owner’s guide to using pretty much every…
Pint of Pumpkin, Please
Either The Crafty Pint timed this East Coast trip remarkably fortuitously or there’s so much innovation going on in Australia’s craft breweries these days that there are unexpected treats waiting around…
Beer & Food: Salmon and Strawberry Appetiser
Anyone that’s picked up a bottle or three of Red Hill’s Temptation might want to give this a try – it’s the recipe for the dish that was matched with it at a beer dinner at St Kilda’s Circa restaurant…
Beer & Food: Carbonnade of Beef from the Courthouse Hotel
Judging by the growing number of beer dinners indicates, the pairing of beer and food is becoming ever more popular, aided by the likes of high profile characters like Paul Mercurio and Chris Badenoch…
Braggots
Hands up who’s heard of a braggot before? Not many, I’ll wager. And not surprising, really, given it’s a mead-ale hybrid with origins in Medieval England. A few homebrewers out there may have tried…
